Photography manual mode Settings: Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO Made Simple

1. Intro: Hello, I'm Yan De Mergeds with over nine years experience in photography. In this course, we will dive into the essentials of photography, aperture, sutter speed, and ISO. You might wonder, do I really need to learn this? The answer is absolutely yes. These three elements form the foundations of photography, and understanding them is crucial for taking full control of your camera. By mastering these basics, you will be able to move beyond the limitations of your camera auto settings and confidently use manual mode to capture the images you envision. Think of it as learning to drive a car, once you understand how to handle the steering wheel, pedals, and gears, the rest is all about practice and refining your technique. Many beginners try to avoid learning these fundamentals because they seem complicated or intimidating. However, they constantly appear in your photographic journey, and now is the perfect time to understand them. Once you grasp these core principles, you will have truly begun your journey into the world of photography. Mastering them opens up a new level of creative control, allowing you to capture images exactly the way you want. No matter the lighting conditions and the fear of using manual mode will begun. Without a further ado, let's get started. 2. Understanding Aperture, Shutter Speed & ISO: Let's take as example, the human eye to demonstrate the aperture. As we have a larger opening on a lens that can capture light, the more exposure we have. This means we will have more bright images. Generally speaking, more light to our image means more sharp image. But if we have doubts over exposing the image, we prefer slightly darker images than overexposed ones because we can recover more easily colors from other exposed images than overexposed ones. Now the aperture is measured in F stops. Let's assume in our example that the maximum aperture is the F stop 1.8. As we go to 2.8 and way up, we will notice that the opening of the lens gets smaller. This means that less light passes through from the lens to the sensor, and we will get darker images. Aperture does not only affect the amount of light, but the depth of the field itself. 1.4 F stop has sallow depth of the field, and images taken with 11 stops have deep depth where both foreground and background are sharp. Generally, if we are at a low light situation, like in an event, we will use F 2.8 to F four, as we need more light, but not the shallower depth of the field of 1.4 aperture in order to not have issues nailing focus, especially when we are just starting out. If we are taking such a sunlight, we may have aperture at four or above depending on what object we need to capture. Satter speed refers to the amount of time the camera shatter remains open, allowing light to reach the sensor and capture the image. Think of it as blinking your eyes. A scatter speed of 1 second is like keeping your eyes closed and then opening them for exactly 1 second duration. Faster shatter speeds, such as 200 of a second are much quicker. 200 times faster than 1 second. At these speeds, you can freeze movement and capture sharp images, even if the subject moves a little bit. However, when using 1 second shutter speed to photograph a moving subject, the movement will cause the image to appear blurry. As the subject has time to shift during that second. To capture sharp images in various conditions, you need to adjust the sutter speed according to your environment and your subject's movement. When shooting in bright light, you generally need a faster shatter speed to avoid overexposure like this. If you are photographing a stationary subject while holding the camera in your hand a shutter speed of at least one 160th to one 200th is recommended to avoid camera shape. For capturing fast action, even higher speeds are necessary to freeze motion. In low light, slower shutter speeds, such as one 60th to 125th are often used to allow more light into the camera. If you go even slower, such as half second, it can be challenging to keep the image sharp, even if you take a shot of a stationary subject, especially if you are not using a tripod. If your subject is moving while using a tripod in same conditions, again, the image will be blurry. When using slower sutter speeds, you may need to adjust IO to get the right exposure and avoid very dark images or very bright ones. When shooting handled, keep in mind that Sater speed slower than one 200th can result in blurry images due to camera sake. Using a tripod can help stabilize the camera for logger exposures. The choice of Satter speed should match the desired effect. A faster sutter speed freezes motion while a slower speed can create motion blur for artistic effects such as light rails or flowing water. Satter speed is one of the key settings you will often change based on the situation and the outcome you want to achieve. Whether you are trying to fish a fast moving subject or capture a scene with low light, selecting the right sutter speed is essential for achieving the desired effect. In some cases, adjusting only aperture and Satter speed is not enough. This is when we need to adjust ISO setting. For example, in low light scenario that we have aperture in 2.8 Satter speed at one 80th and still images are dark. ISO is an artificial light that will brighten our images, but also it will add noticeable noise after a specific point before ending gap unusable. That's why we cannot raise the ISO too high. For example, 6400 or above 10,000 depending on your camera model may have much noise already. For example, a photo taking with 10,000 and the photo taken with 2000 but with lower shutter speed is looking like this. We raise our so when we cannot bright our photos with aperture or shutter speed. Of course, we can bright up the photo in post, but the final image will have less noise if we have correctly iso levels during the shooting. Thus, we are trying to get to as close to the final image during the shoot and make micro adjustments later in post. We do not forget that we have an endifer tool to help us achieve best results, and this is the flash which we will see in other class. So that's it for the three key elements that you need to understand in order to set your camera to manual mode. You need to practice these three settings in order to achieve the best results. If you have a mirrorless camera and you enable the exposure of simulation, you will get an idea of how the photograph will be after you take the shot, but this will only work if you do not use a flash. This tool mirrorless cameras have is very helpful for those starting now photography because you can make adjustments at these three elements without the need of taking first the shot. As you can see, by changing the settings, you get an idea of what the photo will be if you take the shot. 3. Project: Our project focuses on mastering camera settings, ISO, aperture, and Sater speed through practical exercises. By experimenting with these three settings, you will gain a deeper understanding of how to control your camera in different scenarios. You will take three types of photos, a photo of a moving object using settings that create a motion blur effect, a photo of an object in low light conditions, a photo of a fast moving object using settings that help us to freeze the motion. Don't forget to upload at least one of your photos to the project gallery to share your progress with the other students. 4. Outro: In this course, we explore the essentials of autography aperture, Satter speed, and ISO. We learned how it's setting works and how to adjust them for bright and low light conditions, as well as for moving or stationary subjects. With these tools, you are now equipped to take full control of your camera and capture stunning images in any situation. If you have any questions, let me know in the discussion. I look forward to seeing your project and remember practice makes perfect.