A digital scrapbook of photography tips - learn and be inspired to take better photographs with your digital camera.
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So, we have looked at apertures and shutter speeds by themselves. Now, lets combine the two and see how they control EXPOSURE - the amount of light that reaches the digital camera's sensor.
Take a look at the exposure combinations in the table below. Which of these combinations is letting the most light through to the digital camera's sensor?
Actually, I'm tricking you, for each of these combinations of SHUTTER SPEED and APERTURE is letting exactly the same amount of light pass through to the sensor!
You see, 1s at F45 is a slow shutter speed but only a small aperture. And, 1/1000s at F1.4 is a fast shutter speed but a large aperture.
The amount of light is the same, BUT the resulting image will look very different at each end of the scale.
A slow shutter speed, 1s, will allow subject (or camera) movement to blur the image.
A large aperture, F1.4, will result in a very narrow depth of sharp focus.
As a photographer, the trick is to know what effect you want and set the combination that will deliver the results you desire.
If you are into landscape photography you may decide that the great depth of sharp focus provided by a small aperture is most important to you. If you photograph sports you may want fast shutter speeds.
The actual combination of shutter speed and aperture will vary in relationship to the brightness of the scene you are photographing. For example, when photographing at night you will have to use slow shutter speeds of several seconds, even at F2.
Conversely, on very bright sunny days you may be able to use very fast shutter speeds even with small apertures.
You should now be able to choose which exposure mode to set on your digital camera - APERTURE PRIORITY or SHUTTER (TIME VALUE) PRIORITY - because you have a better idea of the effect you want to achieve!
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© 2008
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