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STEPUPTOMANUAL
EV: Underexposure EV: Overexposure EV: Standard exposure
Controlling exposures
When you’re exposing for
a p a r ti c u l a r s c e n e , yo u’re a c t u a l l y
carrying out a balancing act. The aim
is to get just the right amount of light
coming through the lens to hit the
camera’s sensor, by adjusting three
core variables: aperture, shutter
speed and ISO. If you’ve only ever
used Auto and semi-automatic
modes before, you might not have
noticed that when you change
a setting, the camera is actually
automatically changing the other
variables to create a balanced shot.
Close the aperture and the camera
will need to extend the shutter speed
to let in more light, or boost the ISO tomake the sensor more sensitive to
l i g h t , to e n s u re a go o d ex p o s u re.Setting your shutter speed
In Manual mode you can
choose to set your shutter speed
depending on the type of subject or
scene you’re shooting. For instance,
to capture movement in the water in
the scene above, we’ve used a slow
shutter speed of 5 secs in low light to
blur the moving water. Whereas we
needed a faster shutter speed of
1/200 sec (and some fast flash) to
freeze the model in action above.
Once you’ve set your shutter speed,
you can set the aperture and ISO
accordingly for a good exposure.EXCELLENT EXPOSURES
Get better exposures by working in Manual mode
A combination of a wide aperture, and
high ISO and fast shutter speed were
used to capture this sharp shot of a
sparrow with a blurred backgroundUnderstand the histogram
You’ll see histograms
everywhere in photography, from
your camera’s Live View display to
editing programs like Lightroom.
These graphs show you theex p o s u re i n fo r m a ti o n of yo u r s h ot.
See the three images and graphs
above – if the info’s bunched up
towards the left, it means your shot
i s u n d e rex p o s e d a n d s o m e of t h e
tones may appear pure black; if it’sbunched up on the right it means
you’ve lost some detail in your
highlights as the shot is very likely to
be overexposed. An even graph with
no bunched-up tones on the left or
right means a balanced exposure.It’s imperative
that you keep
your histogram
nice and balanced
to get the best
exposure possibleShutter speed is key to
capture movement, with
slow shutter speeds for
pretty blur in seascapes...
...and fast
shutter speeds
to freeze action
like this!