The Exposure Triangle

If you are a beginner in photography, you are going to want to learn the basics. This post will explain just that. The exposure triangle might sound complex, but it’s actually rather simple. Once you master light, you master the art of photography. Exposure is the amount of light that reaches your camera sensor, or in other terms, it controls how light or dark your photo is. The exposure in your photos is decided by the interaction of the three parts of the exposure triangle: shutter speed, ISO, and aperture.

Shutter speed, in basic terms, is how fast your camera takes a photo. It can be thought of as a metal curtain that opens and closes each time you press the shutter release, which is the button you press to take a photo. Shutter speeds are expressed in seconds or fractions of a second, for example, 1/400 means that the shutter on the camera is closing at a rate of one 400th of a second. The longer it takes for the shutter to close, the more light, or exposure,  your camera will be able to capture. So, the lower your shutter speed is, the more exposure your photo will have. However, the lower your shutter speed is, the more motion blur your photos will have, which can be undesirable in sports photography.  

ISO in photography stands for the International Organization for Standardization because it represents sensitivity to light in numbers. In this case, sensitivity means that the higher the ISO is, the more light the lens will absorb, so if the higher the ISO is, the more light your photos will have. Unfortunately, high ISO leads to noise in your photos. Noise in photography looks similar to a sort of grainy consistency, but can also can turn out as bits of discolored pixels. Noise can be edited out using some photo processing apps.

Aperture can be described as an opening in your lens which shrinks or expands, controlling how much light reaches your camera. Aperture is measured in f-stops, which stands for focal length. Focal length is the distance between your lens and your camera sensor. In the aperture will control the depth of field in your photo, and can also effect the exposure. Depth of field is primarily what parts of your photo will be in focus for example, let’s imagine a line of penguins going outward from where you’re standing. If you have an aperture like f/2.8, which is the maximum aperture on most cameras, the only penguins that are clear will be the ones that are right in front of you, and the ones near the back will be blurry. Sometimes, using a small aperture like f/2.8 will give you an effect called bokeh, which makes the background blurry and can really enhance your photos. Using a small aperture will allow more light into your photos. On the other hand, if you use a big aperture, like f/22, it will make all of the penguins in focus, unless you have a really long line. Using a big aperture is mainly done in landscape photography, and it leaves almost everything in focus. A big aperture will also decrease the amount of exposure your photo has.

Using the right combination of these three elements can really be important, and can change how your photos look.