Welcome to the fourth lesson in Photography – A Basic Course on the Camera. In this series, we cover all the basics of camera design and use. We talk about the ‘exposure triangle’: shutter speed, aperture and ISO. We talk about focus, depth of field and sharpness, as well as how lenses work, what focal lengths mean and how they put light on the sensor. We also look at the camera itself, how it works, what all the options mean and how they affect your photos.
One camera function that can be a lot of fun to play with (and that can get you some interesting results) is slow sync flash.
When shooting with a subject in low light situations you generally have two options; either to shoot with a flash or to shoot with a slow shutter speed.
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Capturing movement in images is something that many photographers only think to do when they are photographing sports or other fast moving subjects.
While there is an obvious opportunity in sports photography to emphasize the movement of participants – almost every type of photography can benefit from the emphasis of movement in a shot – even when the movement is very small, slow and/or subtle.
Should I use my camera’s Portrait mode when shooting Portraits or would I be better off manually setting my camera up?
Unless you have a high end DSLR, most digital cameras these days come with an array of shooting modes (including portrait mode) for a photographer to choose from when out using their camera. These shooting modes are designed to help camera owners to quickly tell their camera what type of shot they are taking to give the camera a hint at what type of effect you want.
Although, as discussed in exposure, the shutter speeds and apertures are interchangeable as far as exposure is concerned, they each have their own unique effect on the picture. Let’s take a look at shutter speeds first as their effect is easily understood. We’ll look at apertures further down the page.
The shorter the time that the shutter is open the sharper the photo will be.
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