SLR Photography Tips; An introduction to exposure, the subject and your camera.

SLR photography tips deals with the affects of exposure and light relative to the subject and the camera exposure settings. Although white balance and ISO also impact exposure this page is primarily about aperture and shutter speed.

Your camera is performing amazing feats as it deals with many aspects of lighting and exposure.

Do you often take pictures on the automatic setting? If so, are you always happy with the results?

If not, or to experiment, you can change this by utilzing a few slr photography tips.

Many factors affect exposure and you may want to check out another introduction page including exposure and composition.

Do you take photos on the automatic setting, hope for the best and haven't given much thought to what's happening?

Are some photos too dark and some too light?

While it's recognized a number of photographers utilize post processing for improving the image, "getting it right in the camera" will help you become a better photographer.

However, this can pose a challenge at the best of times!

Harsh daylight is an example of this and one needs to be aware of a few simple photography tips lighting solutions.

Even with the camera on automatic there will be times when the light contrast is difficult for the camera to correctly expose.

What to do?

It's up to you to decide what you want to expose for in the picture.

When the camera has a lot of extreme light conditions there's a limit to what the camera can record with all that contrast.

You could leave it alone, such as the left above photo, deciding you like the mood and affect.

You could use your flash to create "fill light" to fall on the subject.

In this case, exposure for the background helps create a mood. It also prevents the background from being overexposed, too light, if you were to see the detail of the person.

The bear is easier to deal with because the contrast is not so extreme.

However, the camera is still attempting to figure out what to correctly expose.

Once again, what is the subject?

Another consideration is does the subject allow you to go back and work with the natural lighting of sunrise or sunset?

The trees are lighter but so is the bear; allowing for improved exposure.

How did the exposure change from the underexposed, too dark, to the correct exposure?

In this example the camera setting was changed from the automatic setting to manual.

Why?

SLR photography tips; to over ride what the camera thought was a correct exposure, which for the trees it was. However, the bear is the subject.

What changed? In this example, the shutter speed; from 1/750 second in the dark photo to 1/250 second in the lighter photo.

The reason the exposure became lighter is because only the shutter speed changed, controlled by the photographer.

slr photography tips: you can use the manual exposure setting to choose both the aperture and the shutter speed.

If you like, do this exercise and if necessary dig out the camera manual to help you.

If you have a digital slr you will be able to do this. A compact digital may have these features depending on the available manual settings.

Change your mode dial to the manual setting, most likely represented by the M.

Choose an aperture setting. Look for a number very likely written with the letter F, such as f8.0. It could be higher such as f 16 or lower such as f 3.5.

Choose the shutter speed, for example 1/500 of a second. It may be written as a fraction but not necessarily. If you see 500 it still means 1/500. If you see 1" the " means one second.

Take a picture.

Now change only the shutter speed to a slower speed such as 1/125 or 1/90 of a second.

Ah ha! What have you noticed? Lighter, right? This is because more light was allowed in to the camera for a sightly longer period of time.

Go the other way if you want, such as 1/1000 of a second which is a faster speed and it will be darker.

You can also witness light changing by adjusting only the aperture.

Go through the same exercise but leave the shutter speed alone and change only the aperture.

For example, change from f/4.0 to f/16 and compare the two pictures. The f/4.0 will be the lighter of the two.

The reason being, the smaller the f number, known as the aperture or f-stop, the more light into the camera.

Aperture relates to the amount of light hitting the sensor.

Shutter speed to the duration, or time, light hits the sensor.

In a nutshell, the sensor is what records the image.

One more exercise with SLR photography tips; put your camera back on automatic and identify what is being displayed for aperture and shutter speed.

Now change the position of your camera to a lighter or darker location and note what happens.

Did you notice how both numbers change?

This is because your camera is attempting to give you what it thinks is the correct exposure. Both numbers change because they both factor in to exposure.

When the camera changes one number, for example the f-stop, it continues to adjust for the exposure and therefore needs to change the shutter speed as well.

This is why you were able to change the exposure in manual, for this exercise. Your pictures changed exposure because only one factor changed; either the aperture or the shutter speed.

Exposure is a wide topic and there will be other pages coming to further explain this; including more about manual exposure settings.

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