Camera Settings

In this session we went through the basic camera principles, if you get these basic settings right in all of your shots then you will deffinatly get your desired effect that you are hoping to get. The main few settings are ISO, Shutter speed, Apperture and finally Focus i will be going into these in more detail.

What is ISO?

ISO is the amount the camera is sensitive to light, the setting of ISO should be down to the enviroment that you are shooting at, this could be a dark or bright enviroment. if you have a 100 ISO then your camera is less sensitive to light however if you have a 3200 ISO your camera will be very sensitive to light, that is how people use light to draw a picture as this will make your shutter speed long aswell.

This image has been taken to demonstrate ISO, the left one has been taken at 100 ISO you can see that it is a much darker image as it is at a low ISO, However the other image on the right is of a much higher ISO 3200 to be exact and it is a much sharper and brighter image, however if you look closer the image goes a little bit grainy. so you should be careful when you are shooting to get a specific effect as something such as a grainy picture may ruin your shot, before setting your camera to get a desiredd shot you must have a rough idea of what type of image you will get out of that particular setting.

What is Shutter speed?

Shutter speed is the amount of time the shutter of the camera is open, if your shutter speed is open for "1s" this is 1 second then the shutter is open for 1 second while that shutter is open light passes through the lense, the longer the shutter is open the more light passes through the camera, the quiker the shutter speed the less light that passes through. These are some of the shutter speeds.

1/1000 s

1/500 s

1/250 s

1/125 s

1/60 s

1/30 s

1/15 s

1/8 s

1/4 s

1/2 s

1 s

These are some of the effects you can achive by playing with the shutter speed of your camera.

 

As well as to make light drawings using a longer shutter speed also is frequantly used in motorsport, the reason it is used in this is because it puts speed and motion into the shot, this goes to show that just because it is an image doesn't mean you can't have motion init.

What is Apperture?

Apperture is depth of feild, the lower the F number as Apperture is mesured in F numbers/F stop the lower the value of F stop the more light let into the camera, and the higher the F stop value the less light let in. Once you master apperture you can achieve many proffessional effects. If you keep you apperture high depending on evviroment and you subject fairly close to the camera you can achieve a blurey background effect, this is good when you have a sandy and sea background.

As you can see from these two pictures you can achieve some great proffessional effects by using thiss setting to its full potentional, with mastering this you can get really creative and let your imagination use this with in your own work.

What is Manual/Auto Focus?

Manual/Auto Focus basically is a simple function on a camera which if you have on the auto focus mode, it will focus automatically, however you can choose to focus your self manually. Most of the time Auto Focus does all the work, however if you are doing portraits, working in low light enviroment, shooting out of glass or shooting action you should use manual focus. By getting the focus right you make sure the camera always gets the subject and it makes sure it is in detail. 

This video shows the importance of getting the focus right....