If you are planning to buy a camera, but you are confused about which model to buy, because you do not understand the technical terms associated with the specifications of the camera. Or, you own a camera but do not know what settings are good for taking a good image. Then you at the right place. In this article I will explain the technical terms associated with photography and the optimal camera settings without being too much technical.
PHOTOGRAPHY is the process of capturing light with the camera and the output is called an image. It the combination of both fine art and technical art. The better you know how to use the tools technically, you will be able to capture better images and how beautifully you frame the image is your fine art.
Videos are the next level images. You may be surprised, but videos are actually many images shot and displayed in a sequence in a specified time frame. Each image in a video is called a frame. The number of frames the videos shows per second, gives the illusion of the moving images.
The number of frames shown per second can be specified by a value called FPS or Frame Per Second. For instance, the video shot at 60 FPS is faster moving than a video shot at 30 FPS. In general, 30 FPS gives good result. But if you want to give slow moving effect to your video in post production software, it is better to shoot at 60 FPS or higher value based on your requirements of the shot.
The better you understand the basics, faster you will learn and master the art.
Read this article to know types of camera.
Read this article to know types of lens and what are the specification printed on the lens means.
Photography
Exposure
Exposure is the amount of light that enters into the camera while capturing an image. Cameras are only capable of capturing certain amount of light and if we are under or over that range, it records no details.
If you take an image in a bright sunny day but your image comes out dark, that means, it is underexposed. But if the image comes out just right as per the environment, the image is called properly exposed. When the image is brighter than it’s environment, it is an overexposed image.
In the same environment you can take underexposed, properly exposed and overexposed images, just by adjusting the settings of the camera as per the requirements.
Full Frame vs Crop Sensor Camera
Full Frame Camera has 36 x 24 mm sensor size but Crop sensor or APS-C camera has 23.6 x 15 .6mm sensor size. So, the Full frame camera will cover more area in the scene as compared to the Crop sensor camera. Larger sensor size also gives better quality images as they capture more details and give better low light performance.
Size of the sensor also determines the effective focal length of the lens. An image clicked with the same lens on the Crop sensor camera will cover less area of the scene and give more zoomed in result as compared to Full frame camera.
Stop
STOP or F Stop is a term used in Photography to measure the light getting into the camera. There are 3 ways in which the camera captures light.
- Aperture
- Shutter Speed
- ISO
When you double the amount of the light, coming from any of these settings it is one STOP forward. When you reduce the amount of light to half, coming through any of these settings, it is one STOP downward.
Every increasing value in the camera setting for Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO increases the amount of light by double.
Depth Of Field vs View of Field
Depth of field relates to the distance till where your camera can see clearly. Anything above that range will be out of focus or blurred in the image. Aperture value decides the depth of field in the image.
Field of view or angle of view relates to the visible extent of the scene captured by the camera. It depends on the focal length of the lens. Longer focal length will give more narrow field of view and shorter focal length will give wider field of view.
Focal Length
Focal length is the distance between the image sensor and the lens when the subject is in focus. Changes in the focal length changes the angle of view. Lens comes with different focal length and they are used according to the scene we want to shoot. Lens with short focal length gives wide angle of view. Lens with longer focal length gives lesser angle of view or zoomed in view.
Aperture
Aperture relates to the hole inside of a lens that becomes larger or smaller depending on your aperture settings. It is the physical iris inside the lens that effects how much light reaches the sensor. Larger the hole, means more light passing through the lens and reaching the sensor. Similarly, if the hole is smaller, less light will reach the sensor.
Aperture is referred as F and the numbers relates to the size of the hole. It is measured in the fractions of maximum size of the hole in the lens. For example F2 means the size of the hole is 1/2 the size of the maximum hole size of the lens. Means, only half of the available amount of the light will enter the camera. F 16 would mean the size of the hole is 1/16th of the maximum hole of the lens.
Aperture determines the depth of field. Larger hole gives shallow depth of field. That means, you will get the image with subject in focus and background out of focus with blurry bokeh effect. Smaller the hole, deeper the depth of field, means more of the background will be in focus.
General aperture settings…..
- F2 – F2.8 gives good results for indoor shoot.
- F4 – F5.6 will require good lighting conditions or flash, until you are shooting outdoors in a sunny day.
- F8 – F11 is good for landscape shooting.
Shutter Speed
Shutter Speed relates to the amount of time that the camera is capturing light. More the amount of time the camera sensor is exposed to the light while the physical shutter inside the camera flips up and down in front of the sensor, camera will capture more light.
Higher shutter speed is used for freezing action and slower shutter speed drags the action resulting in image with motion blur. So, basically the shutter speed determines the amount of motion blur you are going to get in the image.
Shutter speed is measured in seconds. For video the shutter speed must be double the frame rate. If you are shooting the video at 30 FPS, the shutter speed must be 1/60.
General shutter speed settings for photography…..
- 1/125 for static subjects like landscape.
- 1/250 for portraits, walking people or slow moving subjects.
- 1/1000 for quick moving subjects like vehicles, sports etc.
- 1/2000 for fast moving subjects like flying birds.
- 1/4000 for very fast moving subjects like high speed train.
- If you want to show motion blur in your image you can choose slower shutter speed as per the amount of blur you want in the image. Generally night sky photography or astrophotography requires very slow shutter speed.
ISO
ISO relates to the measurement of the light sensitivity of the imaging sensor inside the camera. The light enters the camera through the lens, the aperture controls the amount of light enters the camera, then it passes through the shutter, where shutter flips up and down determining the amount of light passing through the shutter based on time and then it hits the sensor.
The camera computer has ability to amplify the light signal hitting the sensor resulting in more light in the image. But when the signal is amplified it results in more noise in the image. More noise ruins the image quality. So, it is advisable to keep the ISO as low as possible for better image quality.
General ISO settings…..
- ISO 100 works well with Canon & ISO 200 works with Nikon as these are their native ISO for outdoor shoot in bright sunny day.
- ISO 400 is good for indoor shooting in good lighting conditions or outdoor shooting in the cloudy day.
- ISO 800 is good for indoor shoot without a flash.
- ISO 1600 + for very low light conditions.
Relation between Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO
There is no such thing as correct exposure. Different kind of images requires different exposures. The exposure settings totally depends on the kind of effect you want in your image. You may want to have certain exposure for creative reasons. So, the first step is to decide, what is your priority. Whether shutter speed or the aperture.
For example, for shooting sports, you will go for shutter speed priority, but in case of portrait, the aperture priority will work better. Once you decide in which priority you need to shoot your image, adjust the other two variables to compensate for the balanced exposure.
Shooting Modes
- AUTO (A) – In Auto Mode all the settings are done by the camera and you just need to press the shutter button to take the image.
- PROGRAM (P) – Program mode sets a fixed ISO value and allows you to change the shutter speed and aperture value.
- SHUTTER (Tv / S) – Shutter priority or time value mode allows you to set your shutter speed value and the camera adjusts the ISO and the aperture values accordingly.
- APERTURE (Av) – Aperture priority or aperture value mode allows you to set your aperture value and the camera adjusts the shutter speed and ISO values accordingly.
- MANUAL (M) – Manual mode allows you to choose shutter speed, ISO and aperture values. Even in the manual mode, the light meter works, so the camera will let you know if in the present settings will give under exposed , properly exposed or over exposed image. You can adjusts the settings, according to the effect you want in the image or until it is properly exposed.
- BULB (B) – Bulb mode is used for long exposure shots. It is specially useful for taking images of the sky in the night. It will continue to expose the camera to take the photo as long as the shutter button is pressed. So, in this mode the shutter speed duration depends on the duration for how long the shutter button is held down.
- CUSTOM (C) – Custom function allows you to save the setting for a user. It is useful if you are using the same settings and lighting conditions all the time. Example – in the studio setup. This option only comes in Pro level DSLR.
HDR
Camera can not capture all the bright and the dark information in the image at the same time because of its limited ability to capture the light information on the both sides of the spectrum. Normally the dynamic range of a digital camera is about 12 stops of light, which is much lesser than what a human eye can capture.
So, if you want your image to have all the light and the dark information in the image, take one under exposed image, one properly exposed image and one over exposed image and then merge them in the post production software like Photoshop or Lightroom. In this process basically we are increasing the dynamic range of the image. This is why such images are called High Dynamic Range images.
But this process only works well with the still subject and environment. For moving subject or human, you can increase the dynamic range of the camera by adding external lights or by using reflectors. Bigger sensor cameras has higher dynamic range.
Megapixel
Mega Pixel is an unit of measuring the number of pixels in an image. It means 1 million pixel and it is used to judge the camera’s sensor capability or the quality of digital displays.
Higher megapixel, does not always mean better image quality. If you use the same mega pixel lens with full frame and crop sensor cameras. The image taken with full frame camera will give better results because on full frame the size of each pixel will be bigger as it has bigger sensor. Bigger pixel will capture more information and light as compared to smaller pixel. For normal use and web, 20 mega pixel camera gives good enough results.
RAW vs JPEG image quality
RAW is 16 bit image quality and JPEG is 8 bit compressed image quality. 16 bit image has 281 trillion shades of colors as compared to 8 bit which has 16.8 million shades of colors. So, RAW captures more details in an image as compared to JPEG image quality. For editing in post production, RAW images gives better results. RAW images also allow you to adjust the white balance in post production softwares.
Drive Modes
Drive Modes determines the number of images your camera will capture, when the shutter button is pressed. There are many types of drive modes and they are useful in different kind of situations.
- Single Shooting – It takes single image each time, when the shutter button is pressed.
- High Speed Continous and Low Speed Continous modes are used for moving subjects. As long as the shutter button is presses the camera keeps on shooting the image.
- Silent Shoot options are good for shooting in silent environment when you do not want to make distracting camera noise.
- Self -Timer / Remote Control as the name suggests, used for taking images by triggering the camera with the remote or when you want to delay the triggering of the camera for few seconds to give yourself enough time before the image is clicked.
Focus Modes
- One shot auto focus – It allows to auto focus and then take a picture every time you click an image. It is good for taking image of static subjects.
- Servo or continuous auto focus – It is great for taking images of moving subject. The focus of the camera keeps shifting following the movement of the subject. It works well with High Speed Continous and Low Speed Continous drive modes.
Metering Modes
Camera has a light meter inside it, which measures the light available in the scene. Different metering modes determines how the camera’s light meter will operate in order to achieve a proper exposure.
- Evaluative metering is great to use in most of the situation. It works very well with back lit subject.
- Partial metering works well when the back light is brighter than the subject.
- Spot metering is used to meter very small area of an image.
- Centre weighted average metering works great for portraits.
Also note, the metering is tied to the auto focus points.
White Balance
Camera adjusts the lights to make sure the subject looks natural in different lighting situations. To do so, camera offers some presets of lighting situations.
- Auto works well in most of the situation. Specially when shooting in RAW because you have option to tweak the white balance in post production softwares like photoshop and Lightroom.
- Daylight (Approx. 5200K)
- Shade (Approx. 7000K)
- Cloudy (Approx. 6000K)
- Tungsten light (Approx. 3200K)
- White Fluorescent light (Approx. 4000K)
- Flash
- Custom
- Color temp. setting allows to set the light color temp, manually.
I hope this article helped you to know your camera better. If yes, please share!