Know your camera!

Your hands are itching and you can’t wait to get out and shoot some pretty pictures with your camera. In that case, we have disappointing advice. Stay at home! Stay at home and read your camera manual. Because if you don’t know the settings of your device, you simply cannot take good pictures. Accidental hits aside.

Manuals usually do not excel in plain language and clear explanations. So it takes some effort to get through such a book. That is why we have listed a number of frequently occurring terms for you. Armed with that knowledge, going through the manual is a lot easier. Can’t find your manual so quickly? Most manuals can be downloaded for free from the following website: usermanual.com.

What actually happens when you take a photo? Well, you press the shutter button and light falls on your camera’s sensor for a short period of time. The sensor processes this into a photo. Three things determine the total amount of light that falls on the sensor: aperture, shutter speed and ISO.

The opening through which light hits the sensor is called the aperture. The larger the hole, the more light will hit the sensor. But the larger the aperture, the smaller the depth of field becomes. The size of the aperture is indicated by a number that has the letter “F” in it. Something to remember: the larger the aperture number, the smaller the opening! So F22 is a smaller hole than F4.

The shutter speed is the total time that light hits the sensor. The shutter speed is expressed in seconds or part thereof. For example, if you see 1/500, it means one five hundredth of a second. If you take pictures by hand, the shutter speed cannot be too slow, otherwise there will be motion blur. The limit for this is 1/125 for most people.

ISO is a term from the film era. ISO indicates light sensitivity. The base value is usually 100 or 200 ISO. The higher the number, the more light-sensitive the sensor becomes. With some cameras, that sensitivity goes up to ISO 6400. In low light situations, the ISO value is often increased. But a higher ISO will lead to noise in your photo. That is why it is wise, in situations where this is possible, to keep the ISO value as low as possible.

Aperture, shutter speed and ISO determine the amount of light that hits the sensor. These three together are called the exposure triangle. Why? Because if one of the three is halved, one of the other two must be doubled to keep the same amount of light. An example makes this clear: suppose you want to take a picture of a beautiful sunset. The exposure required yields the following: aperture F8, shutter speed 1/30 and ISO 100. As you have just read, a shutter speed of 1/30 increases the chance of a blurred photo. But if we now increase the ISO two steps, the shutter speed can become 2 steps smaller. The total amount of light that falls on the sensor then remains the same, in other words we have a photo with the same exposure. But a photo that hasn’t moved!

If you want to pretend to be a photographer with expertise, you start with depth of field. That’s the part of the photo that’s sharp. When you photograph a landscape that is sharp from the foreground to the horizon, we speak of a large depth of field. If you take a portrait in which the person in the foreground is sharp but the background is blurred, this is referred to as a shallow depth of field. This depth of field depends on a number of factors, such as the size of the aperture and the focal length of the lens.

One of the most difficult concepts in photography is white balance. With this setting you calibrate the camera, you tell the device what temperature the light has. Do you understand? New? Well: the light around us is not neutral white, but has a certain color. This applies just as much to sunlight as to fluorescent light or incandescent light bulbs. The human eye corrects that color until white is white again. But a camera does not do that because the device simply registers light. So photos can have an unpleasant red or blue glow. But this can be corrected by means of the white balance. Your camera has presets for direct sunlight, shade, cloudy, or fluorescent lighting.

Cameras use lenses. A lens ensures that the light hits the sensor. Parallel light falls on the lens, which then focuses it on the sensor. The point at which this beam is sharp is called the focal length. With SLR cameras, the lenses can be exchanged. Usually not with compact cameras. But these cameras use composite lenses (these are called lenses) where the focal length can be varied. And with compact cameras this is called ‘optical zoom’. Lenses have the following property: the longer the focal length, the larger the subject is depicted. So from now on you will understand that when you ‘zoom in’ the camera you are essentially increasing the focal length. Another thing to keep in mind: the greater the focal length, the shallower the depth of field.

Note the difference between ‘optical zoom’ and ‘digital zoom’. The latter is not a property of the camera, but a trick in which the photo is artificially enlarged. Something you can do later with photo editing software.

To take a photo, point the camera at the subject and then press the shutter release button. Most people overlook that the camera needs time to focus. So to ensure that the subject does not appear blurry. Therefore, give the camera time to focus. You do this by pressing the shutter button halfway. That’s the signal for your camera to lock the exposure and find focus. Then press the shutter button all the way down and the picture will be taken.