Photography 101 – How to Understand Camera 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 new to photography, two of the most important things to learn are aperture and shutter speed settings as these will give you a lot of creative control. 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. And with all of your great new images, you’ll have lots of fun selecting different styles of wood photo frames and metal picture frames that make each picture stand out.

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 lens 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 better understand how this works, make a fist with your hand and hold it in front of your eye. Then slowly 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 great for taking pictures like landscapes where you want everything in focus.

When you use your camera’s Aperture Priority setting you can set the aperture to whatever f-stop number you want. These f stop numbers represent ratios meaning that the larger the f stop number, the narrower the aperture. So when the f stop setting is larger on your camera, then there will be a larger 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). Another way to look at it is, the aperture setting will have priority while the shutter speed plays a secondary role.

Photography 101 – Introducing Shutter Speed

While the camera aperture controls the amount of light that hits the image sensor, the shutter speed controls the length of time the camera allows in the light.

If you’ve ever seen really old pictures, you’ll notice that they are rarely 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 shutter speeds most commonly used 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.

If you use a shutter speed slower than 1/60, you should use a tripod or some type of camera stabilizer because when the shutter is open that long, even the slightest jiggle can create fuzzy pictures.

If you want to freeze action (like what Sports mode does), set the camera’s Shutter Priority to a fast speed. Only with this manual setting, you can be more selective. For example, a dog sitting quietly will require a shutter speed of around 1/125 in order to freeze the small twitch in the dog’s tail. On the flip side, taking pictures at a soccer game may require up to 1/500 to freeze fast moving actions.

Using manual settings like Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority give you more creative control, which means better pictures that you can display in nice picture frames.