Understanding exposure is the first step to creating interesting photographs in manual mode. If you just got a DSLR camera I’m begging you to learn how to use creative exposures with your camera. If you’ve been using your DSLR in green mode (fully automatic mode) you’ve probably experienced some frustration with trying to make your photographs look better than ones taken on your phone. I’ve been there and I had to figure it out the hard way over an entire year! Let me teach you how to take better photographs by understanding exposure so that you don’t waste a year of your life.
Exposure is how bright or dark a photograph is. If a photographer says their photo is under-exposed, it’s too dark. If they say their photograph is over-exposed, it’s too bright. The trick is getting the exposure just right. That’s it! I told you exposure is easy. While the fully automatic mode will balance the exposure, using creative exposure modes will help you take dynamic photographs while balancing your own exposures.
When I talk about green mode I’m talking about fully automatic mode. This is the mode on your camera that chooses every setting for you. Sounds great and easy right? The camera will make my photograph look great, right? Wrong. The camera has no idea what type of photo you want or what situation you are in. It’s one job is to read surrounding light and balance it. It doesn’t care if your kids are running around inside and you don’t want to use a flash because it makes them look like they are in a prison! It doesn’t care that it’s dark and you don’t want your family to be blurry. Let me show you. Here’s a photograph using automatic mode followed by the same photograph I took using a creative mode.
I did not edit these photos, they were just taken with a balanced exposure. The first photograph was taken using automatic mode. The camera chose everything for me and determined the scene was too dark so it incorporated the flash. The shutter speed was very fast because the flash was used. That froze the water in place and caused inconsistent lighting with distracting highlights throughout the photograph.
The second photograph was taken using a creative exposure mode (manual mode) at the same balanced exposure. This time I chose all of the settings myself. I was able to make the water look smoother, more dynamic, and less distracting while showing the same lighting throughout the photograph. My point: stop using automatic mode!
The next step is understanding how aperture, shutter, and ISO work together.
Let’s start with a story. I found myself on the sidelines of a University of Tennessee football game one glorious fall day. My mission: get amazing photographs that can be used in sports articles. No pressure, right? The game started around noon and it was a beautiful, sunny day. I knew that I wanted to use a fast shutter speed so that the athlete’s movements wouldn’t be blurry, so I set the shutter speed to about 1/500. I also knew that I wanted the background of the stadium to be out of focus so the athletes will be the main focal point of the photograph, so I set the aperture as wide open as it would go to about f/4. My ISO was still set to a previous shoot at ISO 800. As the teams got ready to run a play I brought my viewfinder to my right eye and clicked away. After the play, I looked at the LCD screen on the back of my DSLR and WOW, that was the brightest photo I have ever taken! What a terrible shot!
So, what happened? Let’s break it down.
The aperture in your camera is a group of tiny blades that open and close based on the size you set it to. You’ll hear a lot of photographers talk about small apertures and large apertures. They are referring to how big of an opening there is in the middle of the blades. A large aperture represents a large opening. A small aperture represents a small opening. The larger the aperture opening is in the middle of the blades, the more light is getting into the camera.
If you take a photograph with a large aperture and the photo is too bright, you would fix it by using a smaller aperture. Apertures are measured by f-stops. An f-stop of f/4, like I was using at the game, will have a very large opening in the middle of the aperture blades. An f-stop of f/22 will have a very small opening in the middle of the aperture blades.
The aperture also controls the depth of field, which is the amount of distance that is in focus in a photograph. An f-stop of f/4 will have a very shallow depth of field and will make the farther distances from your subject out of focus. An f-stop of f/22 will show far distances more in focus. Take a look at the image below so it will make more sense.
Photo by Kurt Copeland
The shutter is the amount of time your camera is taking a photograph. For example, in the story above, my shutter at the game was around 1/500. That means my camera was taking a photograph for 1/500th of a second. That’s a fast shutter! A faster shutter speed like this will freeze fast movement in a photograph. However, when you slow your shutter speed down you will start to see blur wherever there is movement. I wanted to freeze the action of the football game so I was using a fast shutter speed.
Shutter also controls how much light is getting into the camera. With a faster shutter, your camera is taking a faster photograph, thus less light will enter the camera. If you are using a slower shutter speed such as 1/30th of a second, more light will enter the camera. Also, when you use a slower shutter speed you are risking a blurry photograph from your hands moving. I recommend using a tripod with anything below 1/60th of a second. If that doesn’t make sense, use the image below to better understand shutter speed.
ISO is the third way that you can control light. ISO determines how sensitive the camera sensor is to light. ISO is also pretty easy to grasp. The lower ISO number, the less light . So, an ISO of 100 is not going to let the sensor see much light. An ISO of 2400 is going to allow the sensor to see a lot of light.
The only problem with ISO is the higher you go, the more the photograph will look grainy. A high ISO can cause what is called noise. It almost looks like there are tiny splotches of dust all over the photograph. So, lower ISO means less light and less noise. A higher ISO means more light and more noise. Here’s an image explaining the ISO, light, and noise.
Now that we understand aperture, shutter and ISO, let’s visit my day on the football field again. I think we are at the point in the story where I have ruined the photograph, my photography career, and will eventually end up homeless. But wait! There’s hope! I understand how aperture, shutter and ISO work together! Since I know I want to keep my aperture wide open to create a lot of depth of field, I can either increase the shutter speed to let in less light and still be able to freeze motion in the photograph, or I can decrease the ISO. Since it was a very sunny day and I had a fast enough shutter to freeze the action of the game already, I decided to decrease the ISO. Presto! A perfectly exposed photograph and my life is back on track!
Success! I balanced the aperture, shutter, and ISO!
Once you understand how to balance light with aperture, shutter, and ISO to get a proper exposure, you can use your camera in manual mode with ease! Just remember to practice and you will continue to get better!
Now that you understand exposure, aperture, shutter, and ISO, let’s explore your creative exposure settings. The DSLR camera dial is where you are going to find the different creative settings you will use to create incredible photographs that everyone will be jealous of and ask how you did it.
TV or S – This is called the shutter priority mode. In the TV mode on a Canon or S mode on other manufacturers (why do you have to be different, Canon?) you have the ability to change the shutter speed. You will also be able to change your ISO. However, your camera will use the settings you have chosen to automatically set the aperture to balance the light.
AV or A – This is called the aperture priority mode. In AV mode on a Canon or A mode on other cameras you have the ability to set the aperture and ISO yourself. Your camera will automatically adjust the light for proper exposure by setting the shutter speed for you.
There are benefits to using the shutter priority and aperture priority. For example, if you knew you wanted a lot of depth without caring what the shutter speed was set to, you could use the aperture priority at f/4 and let your camera balance the exposure for you by setting a shutter speed. However, there are also drawbacks. For the previous example using aperture priority, say you realized you had to have the shutter set to a certain speed. When you are using a priority mode, you don’t have the control to set aperture, shutter, and ISO all at once. That’s why manual mode is so important.
M – The M setting is your manual mode. In manual mode you have absolute power and dominion over your DSLR. Muahaha! You are the king of the castle in manual mode! You are able to change the aperture, shutter, and ISO in manual mode to balance the exposure, so it is very important that you understand what each one does! My advice: Get into manual mode as early as possible to start practicing with it. Do not get frustrated or give up. Manual mode takes a long time to master and requires a lot of trial and error! You can do it!
You’re almost there! Soon people will be begging you to bring your camera everywhere because you take the best photographs they have ever seen!
Confession: I used to always keep my DSLR camera on AUTO white balance. Now, I'm not ashamed of that because at the time I had no idea how to use white balance properly, or how it would actually affect the photograph for the better. So, I let my camera decide how the photo should be balanced. Why is that a confession? Well, it's the exact opposite of what I tell photographers to do now that I understand white balance.
After I committed to learning all about white balance, I began to notice that using the proper settings actually increased the quality of the image.
I'm sure a lot of you have tried to use white balance properly and stopped because using AUTO white balance is easier, and sometimes looked better than anything you could adjust manually.
I put this section of the book together so that, not only will you understand what each white balance setting does, but you'll know when to use each of them from now on. Let's get started! These are the basic white balance icons that I'll be covering.
First of all, the main idea of white balance is very simple; shoot for the prevailing light. For example, if you're shooting at noon on a sunny day, set your white balance for daylight. If it's cloudy, set your white balance to cloudy. It's such a simple concept!
Like I said, I used to shoot in auto all the time. In fact I still shoot in auto whenever I think the camera is doing a good job, or if I know I need to shoot quickly and don't have much time to fool with my camera settings.
When you are using auto, you're telling your camera to automatically read the prevailing light that you are shooting in. Sounds simple and perfect right? Well, yes, it's simple. However, when you let your camera automatically read the prevailing light, some color can get lost in translation. If you're shooting on auto on a sunny day instead of the daylight setting, your skies won't be as blue and there won't be as much contrast in the photo.
So, when we start to manually set the white balance on our DSLR, we need to see the prevailing light, just like I mentioned before. Once again, if the camera is using auto white balance instead of daylight during a sunny day, some colors will be washed out.
So, by using the daylight setting, you are telling your camera that the sun is out and shining bright. The camera will then show a little more saturation in the colors that were previously washed out, namely the blues.
When would you need the shade white balance setting? Well, if the prevailing light is in the shade. For example, let's say you were doing a portrait photography shoot and the best surroundings were in an alley way. Now, most likely there are going to be tall buildings on either side of you, filling the alley with shade. Naturally, you will set the white balance to shade.
Whenever you're shooting in a shady location (we're talking lighting, not sketchy areas), the temperature of the photo looks very cool (aka bluer than normal). So, when you set your white balance to shade, the camera pumps in a little more warm light (yellow and orange) to balance the photo and make it more natural looking.
Sometimes I'll even use the shade setting when it's partly cloudy outside due to the constantly changing lighting.
I usually use the cloudy setting most when I'm shooting waterfalls. Cloudy weather is perfect for waterfall photography because the clouds are a natural light diffuser. But, you can use cloudy white balance whenever you have the thick overcast sky that makes everything bleak and boring.
When the weather is really cloudy, the temperature of the photo drops. The cloudy white balance warms the photo back up, a lot like it does for the shade setting.
Alright, before you jump all over me, tungusten is how you spell it for light, tungsten is how you spell it for a type of metal. Moving on...
Have you ever been shooting inside and your photos look really gross and orange? Well, that's because the prevailing light in your environment is tungusten, and tungusten bulbs put off an orange shade of light. This is really a situation where you should be manually adjusting your white balance to the tungusten setting (it's the icon that looks like a light bulb).
Once you set your white balance to tungusten, your camera will push bluer tones into the photo to off-set the orange. When blue and orange combine, you're left with a properly balanced color that looks way more natural than orange.
OK, so fluorescent lights are those long tube lights that really make whatever is under them look strangely blue. Obviously, you don't want everything you shoot to be blue, so you will change your white balance to the prevailing fluorescent light.
In the fluorescent setting, your camera does the exact opposite of what it would do for tungusten lighting. Instead of pushing blue light into the photo, the camera will push more orange light into the photo to off-set the prevailing blue light, making the image look natural.
Yikes! You just took a photo with your flash, and not only does the person look like a deer in the headlights, they are also extremely white from the flash. That's a very bad look.
When your white balance is set to the flash setting, it will make the photo look warmer by pushing more yellows and oranges into the photo so that the skin tones will return to their natural color.
Alright! You now know how to manually set and adjust your white balance! Just remember to always look around and set your white balance to the prevailing light source you see. It's that simple!