Take Your Camera Off Auto: Putting It All Together

Congratulations! You now know all the elements of the exposure triangle. I hope that things are making sense. I can say from my experience that the more you play with the settings, the more and more how it all works together becomes clear.

All that said, I thought I'd give a few examples of some possible scenarios and how I might approach them.

I've been learning some really interesting things lately and as such, I'm now trying to keep my shutter speed at 1/100th. I mainly shoot with my 50mm so the shutter speed is double my focal length. I don't go below 1/60th of a second unless my camera is stabilized. I also want my ISO as low as possible, so I always keep it at 100 and adjust from there. Aperture depends on how many people I'm photographing and how much of the background I want in focus, but I usually don't want a ton in focus, so I'm going to have a large aperture (small number).

Let's say I'm taking a photo at 3 o'clock on a sunny day. I'm definitely not going to need my sensor to be more sensitive to light, so ISO 100 is good. Having a wider aperture lets more light in, so I'm probably going to have to raise my shutter speed.

In the evening or on a cloudy day, I might need to bump up my ISO to 200 or 400 in order to avoid dropping my shutter speed too low. If I still can't get enough light, I might take out my flash.

Or maybe I'm photographing something that's moving quickly. I need my shutter speed up, which will make my photo darker if I only change that one setting. I either need my aperture wider or a higher ISO to keep my photo bright.

This all depends on your style, of course. I like my client's faces to be light and clear, which means I need a lot of light on their face. But some people like more dramatic photos with shadows. That's cool too! It makes life easier in a lot of ways because you're not as dependent on the amount of light because you want shadows!

Get out your camera and start playing around! Some photos will be awful, but it's really helpful to actually see what the settings are doing to your photograph. If you have any questions, leave a comment!!