Photography 101 - Understanding Aperture and Shutter Speed

Pre-set modes like "Sports" and "Night Portrait" make it easy for us to just point and shoot. If you're learning about photography, one of the first things you will learn is that if you want more creative control, you must learn how to use the aperture and shutter speed settings. If you're wondering which cameras have these settings, some digital compacts have them while most of the bridge (prosumer) cameras do and all SLRs have them.

At first it seems a little daunting to start using manual camera settings, but the vast improvement in your pictures will be worth the effort.

Photography 101 – Introducing Aperture

The aperture works much like an iris in a person's eye. Just like your irises widen or narrow to let in more or less light through the pupils, the camera's lens diaphragm widens or narrows to let in more or less light through the lens. The aperture is the size of this opening.
Aperture lets the photographer (or the camera's exposure computer if it's set to automatic) increase or reduce the amount of light that gets through to the sensor, thus helping determine how bright or dark the picture will be.

The aperture also controls the depth of field of the image.

To get a good idea of what this means, make a fist, holding it front of your eye. Then gradually open your fist. Notice when the opening in your hand is small everything you see is in focus? But when it's open wide the object closest to you is sharper than the background?

A small aperture is good for taking pictures where you want it all in focus, like a landscape.

An Aperture Priority setting on your camera allows you to set the aperture within the camera's range of f-stop numbers (or called f-stop for short). These number represent ratios, and the larger the f-stop number, the narrower the aperture. So the larger the f-stop number on your camera, the larger the depth of field.

The reason for the "Priority" in the setting's name is that when you set the aperture, the camera does its best to set the shutter speed so that the exposure is right (not too dark or too bright). In other words, in the wider scheme of exposure, the aperture setting will have priority, while shutter speed plays a supporting role.

Photography 101 – Introducing Shutter Speed

While the aperture controls how much light at one time falls on the image sensor, the shutter speed controls the length of time the camera allows in the light.

You may have noticed how people in pictures taken in the 19th century rarely are smiling. Shutter speeds were so slow back then that people had to hold perfectly still for several minutes – not to mention in all those stiff clothes they wore for picture day. No wonder they looked so stern!

The most common shutter speeds today are 1/500th of a second to 1/60th of a second. The Shutter Priority setting lets you choose speeds (within the camera's range) specifically for the effect you want.

For shutter speeds slower than 1/60 you will probably need a tripod or other camera support because when the shutter is open that long the camera records the tiniest jiggle, causing the photo to be out of focus or outright blurry.

To freeze action, set the camera's Shutter Priority to a fast speed, which is what Sports mode does. Only with this manual setting, you can be more selective. For example, a soccer game may require up to 1/500 to freeze the action, while if photographing a pet sitting quietly, a shutter speed of around 1/125 will freeze the small actions, like a slight twitch of the tail.

Using manual settings like Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority give you more creative control, which means better pictures that you can display on your wall.

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