Ok so this is yet another of my guides which is aimed at helping a bunch of people who have asked me about basic photography recently.
When taking a photograph using any camera, you are aiming to get a good and even exposure out of an image. The settings on your manual camera allow you change how much light enters your camera, and how it falls on the CCD chip. The light is gathered on the CCD chip, and turned into an image. So lets go through your settings;
ISO
The ISO number changes how sensitive your CCD chip becomes to light. The lower the number, the slower it is to react to light falling on it. So using a high ISO (around ISO 1000) allows you to take pictures in very low light. Great right? Well no, it comes with huge draw backs. The higher your ISO is, the more grain you'll have in your final image, especially in very low light. In fact, you should always shoot with the lowest ISO possible for the highest quality image.I personally never shoot over ISO 400, which is ok for lit indoor surroundings. Most of my work is shot at ISO100, which produces the nicest images. Unfortunately, the lower your ISO, the longer your exposure needs to be.
Shutter Speed
Shutter speed is measured in seconds. So why do some of the numbers looks so confusing? Well the shutter speed is often so quick that it is measured as a fraction of a second. Yep. And when you start seeing numbers like 0"5, this means it is half of a second. So 2"0 is a two second exposure. 'B' or 'BULB' means the shutter will stay open until you release your finger from the button. So why do we set the shutter speed? Well the shutter is simply setting how long light is going to be thrown onto the CCD chip. The shorter the shutter speed, the more light the CCD will needed to be able to have a good exposure. A long shutter will increase your chances of getting motion blur.
f Number / Aperture
The f Number and Aperture are normally used interchangeably. Setting your f Number changes how big the hole that you are letting light through is.That hole is called the Aperture. The Aperture controls how much light is being put onto the CCD chip at ANY ONE TIME. It is not a period of time, like the Shutter speed is. Ok so things get a little confusing with the f Number here. The smaller the f Number is, the bigger the aperture is. The bigger aperture obviously lets more light in then a small aperture size.
Depth of field (DoF)
Your depth of field is the distance of an image that is in focus. Simple enough. There is not a setting for depth of field, and it can get complicated because a number of factors determine how much DoF you have.But your DoF is controlled by what f Number you select. The smaller the f Number, the smaller the DoF range will be.
