Hellobee

I want to preface this by saying I am by no means anywhere near an expert or a professional; I fall squarely in the category of beginner, hobbyist, and mamarazzi.  I am still at the start of my own photography journey, but through some workshops and books I have managed to cross one tiny little hurdle when shooting with my camera: the exposure triangle which allowed me to go from auto shooting, where my camera made all the decisions, to manual shooting where I control everything.

The exposure triangle is ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed. Together the three of them, when done properly, will help you get the best exposure of your picture (think back in the film days about exposure in film; the same idea applies in that you need to capture the right amount of light to get the picture to not be too dark or too bright).

Pictures shot in manual are usually better since you, rather than the camera, are in control of how you want the image to look. So I thought I would share what little knowledge I can impart on this, as I would have loved for someone to have broken these things down for me when I first got my camera.

(f 3.2, 1/25, ISO 800)

I shoot with a Canon (a very base model — the Rebel T2i), so things might be set differently on Nikon or Sony or another brand, and you might need to check your manual that came with the camera to find these settings if you can’t find them.

When you look inside your viewfinder of your camera, you should see a little meter bar that looks like this:

The idea of the exposure triangle is to get that meter bar at the 0 point, as that means your exposure is correct. It can depend on what you are focusing on and that’s a little more complicated, but if the objective is shooting your child’s face, then when you aim your focus on your child’s face you want to move all your settings (ISO, aperture, and shutter speed) around until you find the right mix to make that bar sit at 0. If you go to the left it means you are underexposing so your picture will be darker, and if you go to the right side it means you are exposing too much and your picture will be too bright and possibly washed out.

So what do ISO, aperture, and shutter speed do? Here is a little break down with some examples.

ISO: In my camera, ISO ranges from 100 all the way up to 6400. In every situation you will want the lowest ISO you can get (100 on my camera), as the more you bump up the ISO, the more grain will appear in your photo and affect the crispness of the image. You’ll get more accustomed to knowing what to set your ISO as a starting point when you play with your settings more, but I know that if it’s a bright sunny day to try to set my ISO at around 800 at the very highest and play with it from there. Usually when I’m outside, I rarely go over 400 ISO unless it’s cloudy or dark and gloomy. If it’s night time and I’m inside and there isn’t much light, I will often bump my ISO up as high as I can and deal with the fact that there will be grain in my images. If I go outside and my ISO is at 100 and I see that my meter is underexposed, I can bump it up to 200 or 400 and not suffer too much with grain. The rule of thumb is always the lowest ISO is the best.

Here are a few image examples of different ISOs. Both of these were shot at ISO 200.

In the first image, you can see I really should have bumped up my ISO as the image is quite dark.  I probably needed to adjust other settings, but ISO alone would have helped in making Drake’s face more light and clear. As you can see from the image, the light source (sliding glass door) is behind Drake and his face is turned away from it so this made it harder for the camera since there wasn’t enough light. Had Drake been facing the other way where the light was coming in, ISO 200 may have worked.

In this next image there was a lot of light coming in from the bathroom window, so ISO 200 did work in this image.

Here is an example of grain as you raise your ISO. I take sleeping photos of Drake sometimes when I can sneak into his room at night. He has a night light, but that’s the only light in there and he isn’t always facing it when I am taking photos. I obviously don’t want to turn on more lights in this situation, so I need my ISO at its max (for my camera it’s 6400, though better models can go way beyond that) to help me out, but in return I have to deal with the grain of the photo.

This is also ISO 6400, but with a lot more light as it’s day time.  I believe this was a cloudy day in Drake’s bedroom. Most likely if you magnify into this photo you’ll see some grain, especially compared to the bathroom photo I posted above at ISO 200.

Apeture: Apeture is basically another way for your camera to use light.  Apetures will vary depending on what kind of lens you are using, but you should see something that looks like this: f/1.4 or f/2.5. Apetures can vary from lens to lens, but the idea behind it is the lower the apeture, the more bokeh you get. Bokeh is a pretty way of saying blurry background. You know those images where you have one thing in focus but the rest is blurred out in the background making that one thing stand out more? That’s what your apeture does. So the lower your apeture (like a f/1.4), the more light you are letting into your camera and the more blur you are getting. On the other hand, the higher your apeture (like a f/5.5) the less light you are letting in and the more background you are getting in focus.

Of the three settings, aperture is the one I feel can also be the most confusing. When people say shoot wide open to get good bokeh, what they want is your aperture to actually be the smaller number, whereas if you close up your aperture you are actually using a larger number. While I shoot Canon my best friend has a Nikon and she informed me that Nikon cameras actually have a little picture of the app on their view finder screen so you can see the aperture getting bigger or smaller depending on how you are adjusting it, and that makes it easier to understand.

My camera can go down to an aperture of 1.4.  To be perfectly honest I have no idea what the highest number is as I rarely shoot higher than an aperture of 3 maybe 4.  I prefer to shoot as wide as I can with the lowest aperture to get pretty bokeh, as oftentimes the background isn’t that pretty so it’s nice to be able to still get a decent photo of Drake without worrying about what’s behind him. It is hard to shoot at lower apertures than it is to shoot at wider ones because your plane of focus is much narrower.

As Drake has gotten older, I have had to sometimes move my aperture settings higher (or closed up) because he moves too much; I can miss focus because he moves out of the focus range of my aperture and then the image is blurry. I have read as a rule of thumb that a lot of photographers never go lower than f/2.8 with little kids and how they move around. Also if you are shooting multiple children or people, you will have to make your aperture larger, otherwise even if they are all standing together, some people on the outside will be fuzzy and blurry as the focus range isn’t large enough.

I think this is aperture f/2.2 so it’s not as low as my lens can go, but still a low number. As you can see the further back you go on the line of chalk, the fuzzier they become and the actual chalk drawings are even fuzzier because my focus was on the pieces of chalk in the front.

Here I was focused on the puzzle piece and thus Drake is blurry in the back.  I like to take some of these detail kind of shots from time to time as I feel like it helps with the story.  Drake was playing with puzzles pieces on the table that day, and I have other shots that show the entire set up and his expressions.

This is aperture f/2.5 and I focused on the driveway which is why Drake is blurry in the back.  I thought it was a different way to show him playing with chalk, but it also makes the photo more interesting since he is in the background but there is enough that you can tell what’s going on in the image.

This is part of my sleeping series and shot at f/1.4 — the lowest my lens allows. This is a dim setting situation so I have the highest ISO setting, lowest aperture (to allow the most amount of light), and probably a low shutter speed too for light purposes. As you can see you can tell it’s a sleeping Drake even if he is blurred and I focused on his hand.  Aperture allows you to tell different stories depending on what you focus on and what can or cannot be seen in the back.  Notice even with my camera maxed out (high ISO, low aperture, and low shutter speed) there is grain and the focus even on the hand is soft.  Light is crucial to photography and low light situations like this one make it hard to get crisp nice photos, which is why it’s always better with more light.

Lastly this was shot in f/1.8 on my old lens where 1.8 was the lowest aperture I had.  I lucked out as this easily could have been blurry since Drake was racing toward me. But it achieved exactly what I wanted in that he is focused and the background blurs away, almost showing the motion of his movements as well as blurring out what could be distracting in the background

Shutter Speed: When it comes to the three factors of shooting (ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed) this is the one I worry about the least. Many times I set up my ISO and Aperture to be what I want depending on the situation, and just adjust my shutter speed to make my meter fall on 0.  Shutter speed is exactly what it sounds like — how fast your shutter moves — so it plays a part in how you show motion.  If you are trying to capture a photo where you want to stop motion, then you need a faster shutter speed.

Shutter speed is measured in fractions  (1/200, 1/450, 1/1000) so the smaller the number on the bottom, the slower your camera is reacting vs the larger the number on the bottom, the shutter is opening and shutting much quicker.  It can be a little confusing I’m sure, especially if you aren’t fond of math like me. As a rule of thumb I have heard a lot of photographers say not to shoot lower than 1/200 with little kids as they can move too fast. If you have a really slow shutter speed (say 1/60), you’ll just see a blur as they move too quick for the camera.  I try to stay around 1/200 or 1/250 with Drake for that reason, as well as if you have a slow shutter speed your own hand shakes can blur an image.  Most people who shoot at low speeds will have to use a tripod or rest the camera down to avoid blurring things with their own shakey hands.  As I’m chasing a toddler around most days, I just try to compensate with higher numbers when I can. Though in some of the sleeping images, I do have to lower the shutter more to allow more light in, especially when my camera is at the highest ISO and lowest aperture already.

I don’t have a lot of photos to show freezing action (what shutter speed does) but here is one of Drake throwing a stick at 1/400.  This was early in my photography journey where I was taking a class to learn these 3 settings, so the focus fell on his hand and the rest of the scene is blurry because the aperture is f/1.8, which is too narrow to capture the entire scene.

This is a much faster shutter speed at 1/1000 and catches Drake swinging outside with his aunt and uncle.  My apeture is f/4 which is much wider than the previous one, and why his aunt and uncle aren’t that blurry though the background is starting to get there.

I hope this helped and convinced some of you to try shooting manual. It’s not easy at first, but the more you play around with the settings, the more second nature it will become. When I first started I was just adjusting settings like a mad woman as Drake darted around me.  Nowadays depending on where we are, I already have a basic idea of ISO and what aperture I want to shoot at, so it’s not so frantic. But I still get caught with the wrong settings at times, so I’m still no where near mastering this as I would like too.

I took this the other day when Drake caught me by surprise by playing peek a boo. I love the image but because I wasn’t ready fast enough, it’s underexposed.

Thankfully a friend was able to help me fix it a bit in Photoshop (something I’m still struggling to master) and I’m so glad I had my camera at that moment even if the original shot wasn’t perfect.  So remember to always have your camera centrally located — you will catch more moments than you realize!

Best of luck and have fun shooting!

Do you shoot manual?