Photography Basics – Putting It Together – Shutter Speed/ISO/Aperture

So now that you know what Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO are – how do they work together?

Aperture is how wide open the lens is, ISO is how dark or bright your light is, and shutter speed is how long that shutter has to stay open to get a good exposure.

  • So if I know that I want to shoot with a lot of blur – I am going to set an aperture of 2.5 or 4.
  • I know that the shutter has to be shooting at faster than 1/60 a second to get a good sharp picture unless I am set up on a tripod.
  • I also know that I would prefer the lowest ISO possible to get less grain.

 

I would do a test shot in AV mode to see what settings I am getting with my selected aperture and see if I am good to go.

If it is not giving me what I want because of low light conditions – I would switch to manual mode – I might go up on ISO to get the exposure correct with my 2.5 or 4 aperture and my 1/60 shutter. I would continue to adjust the ISO up until it was causing too much grain or I would switch to a tripod so I could keep the low ISO and have a sharp photo with a slower shutter speed.

Figuring out how each of these works together for you is just going to take practice. You want to set up different scenarios for yourself and focus on your goals and what settings are going to get you there.

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