Understanding Aperture & Depth of Field

A low f-number of f/2.8 means a wide aperture and a shallow depth of field.

For beginners, perhaps the best way to dramatically improve your photos is to master depth of field. For example, you can isolate a subject by blurring out the background, which really makes your subject “pop.”  Or you can set a wide depth of field to make the whole picture as sharp as possible.  There are… Continue reading Understanding Aperture & Depth of Field

Mastering Shutter Speed

If you are going to elevate your photography above the level of snapshots, one of the three things you need to master is shutter speed.  This article will show you how to do that. There are two parts to shutter speed; a boring part and a fun part.  The boring part is that a lot of times, you just want… Continue reading Mastering Shutter Speed

The Easy 5 Step Program for Beginning Flash Photography

When you are just starting out with photography the whole flash thing can just seems like a complete mystery.  Sometimes the flash pops up, sometimes it doesn’t.  Sometimes is lights things up, sometimes it doesn’t.  And sometimes it creates a harsh glare.  When I was starting out, I always felt like I was doing something wrong, but the whole thing seemed too… Continue reading The Easy 5 Step Program for Beginning Flash Photography

Controlling Exposure

In the last post, I walked you through how a camera exposes a picture.  In this post, I will go through the three controls of exposure: shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. The graphic immediately below should give you the gist of it, and there is more explanation below.  Once you know how each of them… Continue reading Controlling Exposure

Understanding Exposure: How your Camera Works

Exposure affects much more than just how light or dark your photo is, although it certainly affects that.  The same controls that determine exposure levels also largely control whether the background will be blurred out or in focus.  They also control how much “noise” is in the picture.  And they also determine whether the action will be frozen or… Continue reading Understanding Exposure: How your Camera Works

Mastering Your Camera’s Exposure Controls (Video)

As you may have seen, there are a lot of articles here on the exposure process. I start with an article on the exposure process generally, and then get into the specifics of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. There is even an article with some specific scenarios to walk through using these exposure controls. In… Continue reading Mastering Your Camera’s Exposure Controls (Video)

Introducing: The Histogram

You have probably seen a chart like the ones below before.  These charts may appear on your camera LCD after you have taken a photo, like the one on the left.  If you have done any post-processing at all it is commonly displayed there as well.  The chart to the right was displayed in Photoshop. You may have ignored… Continue reading Introducing: The Histogram

The First Thing to Look at When Buying a Digital Camera

No, it is not the number of megapixels.  Although that is important. Camera manufacturers have long understood that people look at megapixels first, and they have occasionally been guilty of cramming a bunch of megapixels in a camera without regard to other factors, including the one I want to talk about.  The result was cameras with lots of… Continue reading The First Thing to Look at When Buying a Digital Camera