We talked about how important light is. But depending on your camera, you also have other tools to affect how your pictures will turn out. Let’s talk about exposure. In general and rough terms, think of exposure as the quantity of light in a picture. A very dark picture has low exposure and a bright picture has a high exposure. And notice that when I talk about exposure, I’m talking about your picture not the environment or the scene you are taking the picture of. You can have the same quantity of light in a room and make some adjustments in your camera to change the quantity of light in the picture (again not in the room). This is the exposure. Exposure is about your camera and not about the light found on your surroundings.
One of the basics and most important things you need to know when learning photography is the exposure triangle. The combination of three elements produce different effects on the pictures you want to take. Usually you want to compensate one with the other. The elements of the exposure triangle are listed below. Don’t worry if you don’t understand them right now; we will talk about each one of them.
- Aperture. The aperture is the size of the opening in the lens when a picture is taken.
- Shutter speed. The shutter speed is the time that the shutter lasts open when a picture is taken.
- ISO. It is the camera sensor’s sensitivity to light.
Let’s us begin with aperture.