Lesson #1 in photography

Your camera has a light meter which measures the light in the given shot and sets an ideal exposure automatically. Most people depend on the light meter (when your are shooting automatically) to expose, which is ok, and you may get some nice images once in a while mixed in with poorly exposed ones (too dark, too light). However, if you want to take it to the next level you MUST get comfortable with shutter speed and aperture. Oh and yes, ISO too. Don’t get overwhelmed. It’s not too difficult, however if you want to really take nice images I’d say check out this tutorial about Exposure. Getting Exposure down is key. It will take a little while but learning how to correctly expose your pictures is vital to good photography. You will be glad to took the time to learn.

This is one of my favorite websites to learn about Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. I couldn’t explain it any better.

digital-photography-school.com

This is how I began…. I read my camera manual I think 10 times all the way through. Maybe more.   Learn how to change the settings on your camera. Then go back and read the tutorial about exposure one more time.
Get that camera off auto and turn off the flash! I started with my camera on AV mode (which means you decide the aperture and the camera decides the shutter speed). I could set the f-stop and have the camera do the rest. Now PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!!! It’s fun and with digital it’s free. When I was learning it was film and expensive. Then by the time I got my images back from the lab I would forget what I did to achieve the image. I learned to take notes while I was learning. With digital you can see the results right away.
The best way to get your head around aperture is to get your camera out and do some experimenting. Find a spot where you’ve got items close to you as well as far away and take a series of shots with different aperture settings from the smallest setting to the largest. You’ll quickly see the impact that it can have and the usefulness of being able to control aperture.   If you can master aperture you put into your hands real creative control over your camera. I think that aperture is where a lot of the magic happens in photography.
Once I felt like I had a grasp of this then I moved to manual. Where I learned the relationship between Shutter speed and aperture and how to balance the two to get a correctly exposed image.
It’s fun. There is no reason anyone can’t learn how to take better photos today with all of the information out there on the web. When I first started I read every book I could get my hands on. Now when I have a question, google is my best friend. I can always find my answers.

here are some examples of knowing how to manually change your shutter speed. These were shot at a high shutter speed. These shots would have been lost on automatic…

here are some examples of a very shallow depth of field (small aperture). Do you see how Cozy’s eyes are in focus and here ears are not. Always with faces focus on the eyes. This was shot at f/1.4
Not as shallow of a depth of field in this next image as the previous image but still the background is soft and he is in focus. I shot at f/4