Photography 101 - Aperture and Shutter Speed Basics

If you're new to learning photography, camera aperture and shutter speed are two of the most important things to learn. They allow you a lot of creative control and are available to adjust in some compact cameras and most bridge and DSLR cameras.

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.

Photography 101 - Introducing Aperture

The aperture of a camera works a lot like how the iris of a person's eye works. 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 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.

If you want to see a good example of how it works, clench your hand together in a fist and hold it in front of your eye. Then gradually open your fist. See how everything is in focus when the opening in your hand is small? But when it's open wide the object closest to you is sharper than the background?

If you want to take landscape pictures where you want everything in focus, you'll want to use a small aperture.

An Aperture Priority setting on your camera allows you to set the aperture within the camera's range of f-stop numbers (or called f-stop for short). F stop numbers represent ratios so the larger the f-stop the smaller the aperture. So, the bigger your f-stop number on your camera, the bigger the depth of field.

The reason the setting is called "priority" is that when you set the aperture, the camera adjusts the shutter speed so that the exposure is just right. 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 aperture controls how much light at one time falls on 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. In the old days, shutter speeds used to be super slow so people would have to remain still for several minutes in order to get a shot. No wonder they had such a serious look!

Two of the most commonly used shutter speeds are 1/500th of a second and 1/60th of a second. The Shutter Priority setting lets you choose speeds (within the camera's range) specifically for the effect you want.

For shutter speeds slower than 1/60 you will probably need a tripod or other camera support because when the shutter is open that long the camera records the tiniest jiggle, causing the photo to be out of focus or outright blurry.

If you want to freeze action (like what Sports mode does), set the camera's Shutter Priority to a fast speed. You can be a lot more selective with this manual type of setting. 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.

When using settings like Shutter Priority and Aperture Priority you get more creative control which often means you can end up with much better pictures.