Basics with Brian | Making sense of DSLR settings & terminology

I’ve yet to find the photographer who has not worked out where the on/off switch or shutter release button is for their camera; but there are some settings, controls that you should be able to find on your DSLR camera. It’s also important to have an idea of their value to your photography, before you press the shutter. Terminology does vary from one camera brand to the next, but a good number of terms are quite common for all brands.

Exposure modes & the mode dial 
Most cameras – except a few professional models – have a fully automatic exposure mode. Fully automatic gives almost all the picture making decisions to the camera’s automatic systems. You simply have to aim at the subject and choose when to press the shutter. Automatic modes produce nicely exposed pictures in good light, but for something creative you’ll have to have a bit more input to the process.

The mode is usually changed with a turn of the dial on the top of the camera. In addition to full automatic, you may find some preset or scene modes and the common four; program (P), aperture priority (Av/A), shutter priority (Tv/S) and manual (M) modes. Advanced photographers working to create pictures usually use one of these four modes. The preset exposure modes such as landscape, portrait, sport/action result in the camera selecting more appropriate settings than the plain full automatic setting. The amount of light captured in a picture depends on three factors, shutter speed, aperture and ISO. The camera will have an exposure meter that measures the light so that the camera can set some of the settings for a good exposure, or the photographer can use the exposure meter reading to guide their own settings. Of course there are various lens adapters that allow lenses from a different brand to be fitted to your camera, but check to make sure you won’t lose auto focus or automatic aperture control.

Aperture 

The aperture value or f-stop relates to the size of the lens iris that lets light pass through to make the photo. Larger openings in the iris let through more light and have a smaller numeric value. Smaller openings restrict the flow of light and have higher numeric values. Whilst aperture is one of the three ways to control the amount of light in photos, it also has a visible effect in pictures known as depth of field, large openings – small number – show limited depth of field and vice versa.

Shutter speed 

Shutter speed is expressed in fractions of a second, and is the time that the shutter is open and light is captured. Shutter speed also determines how motion of the camera or subject is recorded in the photos. If the shutter is only open for a short duration such as 1/2000th of a second then subjects are typically frozen in motion. Slower shutter speeds let in more light, and are often used for creative blur of moving subjects.

ISO

ISO is a measure of how sensitive the camera sensor is to light. Smaller numbers ISO 100, 200 signify 

less sensitivity and more light needed, higher numbers ISO 1600, 3200 or higher make it possible to take photos in very low light levels. The visible effect of ISO is on the picture quality, a speckled pattern of noise is more prevalent at high ISO values, and cleaner images are obtained at lower ISO values. 

White balance 

Light is all around us, and is essential to photos; but do you recognise that it has widely different colour? The camera employs an automatic process to evaluate the colour of the light that is lighting our photos, even if there are multiple light sources involved. Automatic white balance is ideal for general photography. Cameras typically feature several additional white balance presets that are designed to match common lighting such as tungsten bulbs, fluorescent lights, daylight, overcast daylight and more. 

The colour of daylight varies throughout the day, early morning or late evening it is very different than in the middle of the day. Cameras will adapt their way of seeing colour using automatic white balance but sometimes choosing one of the preset white balances results in a more aesthetically pleasing result. When accurate colour rendition is critical, for products and objects of a specific colour it is common to use a neutral grey card and a custom white balance. The process is simple; you take a shot of the grey chart in the same light as your subject, and have the camera evaluate that image. Then the white balance is used for the subsequent frames based on the grey card. 

Metering 

Your camera measures how bright the light is that is illuminating your subject, and for automatic modes will select appropriate shutter speed, aperture and or ISO settings to give a correctly exposed result. The exposure metering is usually active even in manual mode to provide a guide to the exposure for the scene.

Exposure metering for flash photos is also possible for built-in and dedicated flash units.  Cameras typically feature several metering patterns which can be selected by advanced photographers for specific situations. The standard or evaluative metering is reliable for many kinds of photos.  

Further Learning 

1. Look at the layout of your camera, do you know where the key settings are? Shutter, Aperture and ISO?

2. Are there a range buttons to change other settings such as White Balance or shooting modes? Are there custom buttons you can set to help you change particular settings quicker?

3. Are some of your setting options in the cameras menus?Can you use a touch screen to change them quickly or do you need to go into each menu?

4. Go out and try shooting a range of images that require you to make adjustments on the camera. Can you change things quickly and easily? Do you need to learn the menu layouts to speed up you process?

See more of Brian’s work at: www.p4pictures.com 

You can also see Brian’s full Back 2 Basics series live on The Photographer Academy now.