How A Camera Really Works
Ooooh camera's are such technical, complicated things aren't they? Well, no, not at all, they are very easy to get to grips with, and being able to use your camera properly will improve your images beyond belief, don't believe me? Read on...
Not only is it true, but you will be able to take lovely, well controlled images in no time.
Simply turning on your camera and just clicking the shutter button is a terrible waste of time, leaving the camera to decide how to best take the shot is foolhardy at most, and to never get of automatic mode is just plain lazy.
But it is not difficult to get the hang of, once you understand the basics, everything else should naturally follow, and the more you learn, the more you discover, and we continue to learn about photography as long as we continue to take photographs.
There are three things to know in order to be able to control your camera, they are ISO, shutter speed, and aperture diameter, or just plain old aperture, or even better, the F Stop number, but before we get into F numbers, lets begin with the ISO
ISO
ISO actually refers to film sleed, and since we mostly use digital now, it seems weird that we still sometimes call the ISO film sensitivity.
Back in the days of 35mm film, we had ISO 100, ISO 200, ISO 400, ISO 800, and so on, doubling up each time, with ISO 100 considered best for bright daytime subjects, and most family snaps, with ISO 400 being a bit faster, allowing for faster shutter speeds, low levels of light, and ISO 800 being even better at low light, with even faster exposures.
This still rings true today, on any DSLR or digital camera you will find ISO settings.
ISO 100 is the best generally, but for low light it ian't so great unless you have a tripod to hand.
ISO 400 or 500 gives faster exposures, and this means less camera shake, sharper images, which is what we want, so we tend to use sensitivities of 400 or 500, or higher if the light levels are so low and we need to capture moving subjects at speed.
You can go up to ISO 8000, or even ISO 126000 but the images are usually too messed up with digital fuzziness and noise, discolouration, and most cameras that go this high suffer from noise and distortion.
So, on a bright sunny day, ISO 100 is fabulous, if it is overcast or you ar working indoors in a well lit room, ISO 500 would be ideal, and in a room with less light, amybe ISO 1600 or there abouts, right? Ok, lets move on.
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