Shutter Guide

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Use of Shutter Speed while capturing waterfalls

For capturing subjects like waterfall, where capturing the flow of water gives an artistic effect, it is advisable to use a very slow shutter speed.

Effect of Shutter Speed on Motion Blur

Fast shutter speeds will “freeze” motion, while slow shutter speeds introduces blur and shows the movement

Effect of Shutter Speed on Exposure

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Shutter Speed Concept Illustrated

Shutter speed is the Measurement of the time the shutter is open, in seconds or fractions of a second. It is expressed as fractions of a second as 1 s, 1/2 s, 1/4 s … 1/250 s, 1/ 500 s. The faster the shutter speed, the shorter the time the image sensor is exposed to light and less is the exposure assuming rest all settings are same. Increasing shutter speed by one step halves the amount of time the shutter is open and vice verse.

How Shutter Speed Works

More on Depth Of Field

Effect of Aperture on Depth Of Field

Smaller the aperture size greater is the DOF. Which also means higher the f stop, higher the depth of field. F16 will produce greater DOF than F8.

Effect of Aperture on Exposure

More on Aperture Concept

Aperture Concept Illustrated

The higher the f-number, the smaller the aperture and the less is the light that passes through the lens. Opening one full f-stop doubles the amount of light. Closing down one full f-stop halves the amount of light passing through the lens and halves the brightness of the image that falls on the image sensor.

A for Aperture

Aperture is the size of opening for lens, which controls the brightness of the image that passes through the lens and falls on the image sensor. It is expressed as the F-stop, f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, /f4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22, or f/32.

Know Your Camera

Digital Zoom And Optical Zoom

Most cameras have both optical zoom and digital zoom. Optical zoom works just like a zoom lens on a film camera. The lens changes focal length and magnification as it is zoomed. Image quality stays high throughout the zoom range. Digital zoom simply crops the image to a smaller size, then enlarges the cropped portion to fill the frame again. Digital zoom results in a significant loss of quality as is clear from the examples below. It's pretty much a last resort, and if you don't have it in camera, you can do a similar job using almost any image editing program

Fill The Frame

It's a good idea to have more than half of your frame covered by just your subject's face, especially while capturing a unique expression or a candid shot.

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Exposure Value

Different Types of Lights in Photography

1. Side Lighting



Side Lighting is when the lighting is coming from the side. This usually provides a great deal of contrast can create long shadows and adds depth to the image. This type of lighting can add a dramatic flair to architectural and portraiture photography.


2. Back Lighting




Back lighting is when light is behind your subject and is directed at you and your camera. This type of lighting creates silhouettes quiet easily. Combined with certain atmospheric conditions such as fog or airborne dust you can get dramatic lighting effect

3. Rim Lighting



When light comes in at an acute angle it can create highlights along the edges of your subject. The stark contrast that it provides highlights shape and form. This type of lighting adds impact to macro, wildlife, nature and fine art photography.

4. Ambient Light



Ambient light is non-direct soft lighting that often is bounced from one surface to another. As a result of the non-direct lighting, brightness of your subject is lower than with other types of lighting. In fact this type of lighting often tricks people the most as we seldom think about it consciously. Most photographers might just ignore it looking for other types of lighting. Ambient light works well for a variety of photographic genres particularly landscape photography.

5. Soft or Diffuse Light

Soft light is diffuse providing lighting that is even. This type of lighting reduces contrast and minimizes shadows. Soft light is excellent for portraiture, macro, and nature photography.


6. Hard Light



Hard light is quite direct and can often be intense in brightness. This type of lighting creates strong shadows and high contrast. Highlights can be quiet intense under Hard lighting conditions so special care should be made with ones exposure. Hard light can be stylistically applied to most any photographic genre, but for many eyes it can be less appealing than other types of lighting.

7. Spotlight

Very simply Spot Light is when a focused amount of light highlights a particular section of your subject or scene. This type of lighting can create strong shadows and contrast. Spot light can add dramatic impact to all genres of photography


8. Artificial Lighting

The most obvious type of lighting is Artificial lighting. This can be generated from a variety studio lights, and built in or external flash units. There are few genres of photography that Artificial lighting cannot be used successfully. Artificial lighting provides a lot of flexibility and creative opportunities.


9. Various Combinations of Lighting

Lastly there is the combination of any or all of these types of lighting. There is no rule that states you have to live with just one form of lighting. Creatively lighting your subject is an integral part of the photographic process.

Courtesy - Digital Photography School

Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO Sensitivity ...simplified

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Low Angle Shot

For capturing some typical dramatic photos, sometimes one has to take a low angle shot. For example, we see always see flowers at a ‘down’ angle and hence shooting them down won’t make the photo interesting. To make flowers look gorgeous, shoot them at their level.

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ISO sensitivity setting for different sunlight conditions

Minimalistic photography

Minimalistic photography is about creating ‘empty’ spaces in the photograph, basically to emphasis a subject, which is otherwise not occupying most of the space in the frame. There is hardly any distraction in this category of photography, so that the eye of the person looking at the image can’t help but be drawn to the main element.

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Tips For Portrait Photography

1. Put the subject in one-third of the frame
2. Have a clear/uniform background
3. Focus on Eye or Nose
4. Avoid direct sunlight

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DSLR : Different Modes

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White Balance

White balance is used to adjust colors to match the color of the light source so that white objects appear white. Subjects may be lit by a number of different light sources such as sunlight, incandescent bulbs, fluorescent lighting and it might affect the tone of the photograph.

In DSLRs it is possible to adjust the white balance to suit your light source, so that white looks white, not yellow or blue. Normally there is an automatic setting and the camera decides what white balance setting to use. However if you know what your light source is you can usually set the camera to it and this may give better results. Most digital cameras have settings for sunlight, shade, electronic flash, fluorescent lighting and tungsten lighting. Some have a manual or custom setting where you point the camera at a white card and let the camera figure out what setting to use to make it white.

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Buying A DSLR - What Not To Look For

1.      Don’t ask Canon or Nikon

Good photography has nothing to do with the label (brand) of your camera. Both Cannon and Nikon are market leaders and don’t be biased when someone says one is better than the other.

2.      Megapixel

A photo taken in a 0.3 MP VGA camera and same with a 5MP camera can be distinguished easily. Similarly the sharpness of a photo taken with 5MP camera and a 10 MP camera has remarkable difference, but beyond 14 MP, there is hardly any distinguishable difference unless you are printing posters or cropping too much always. Hence don’t let just the Megapixel be a decisive feature while buying a DSLR camera.

3.       Free Gift & Offers

Most of the camera stores may try to give lucrative gifts and offers to clear their inventory of obsolete models. Don’t buy a camera because you are getting some discount or free gift with it. Buying a DSLR is quite an investment and you need to do it judiciously.

4.      Costly camera will make you a great photographer

A high end camera will make your job easy with extra features, but it is not going to take photos for you. It is the photographer in you who has to do this. You will anyways need to invest time and patience to understand and be comfortable with your camera.

5.      Don’t spend much on camera body, Save for Lenses & Accessories

Gears, along with accessories play a very important role in Photography. Most of the times, it’s not the camera but the Lens which makes a great picture. If you are serious about photography, definitely you will need to buy extra lenses based on your category of interest (macro, telephoto, wide-angle). Hence, if you are on a tight budget, don’t spend much on Camera body rather save to buy lenses later.

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Buying A DSLR - What to look for

If you want to take photography as a profession or as a serious hobby, it’s recommended to own a DSLR. While you are buying your first DSLR or upgrading it, spend some time in doing research about the various options available and compare them. No doubt, it’s an investment and you have to do it wisely so that you don’t have to repent later.

There are many features of DSLR, which would be mentioned in the catalog. It is absolutely OK; if most of those jargons don’t make any sense to you. As a beginner, you don’t have to know all the features, but there are few specifications which are important and should be checked for comparing while taking the decision of buying a DSLR camera.

1.      Sensor size

Image sensor is one of the most important parts of an SLR as it converts the light rays into digital photograph. The clarity and sharpness of the photograph depends on it. The photos taken in a DSLR looks far sharper than that of a point and shoot, even if taken in auto mode because of bigger image sensor size.

Do check the size of the image sensor before you buy your camera and if you have to compare between few options, sensor size is one of the distinctive feature to compare with.

2.      Light sensitivity

Light sensitivity is used for noise control. It can be known from the range of ISO sensitivity that a camera offers more the range, better is the noise control and sharper are the pictures.

3.      Lens focal length

Entry level and semiprofessional DSLRs come with a kit lens, which is an all-purpose lens to enable amateurs click almost everything before they realize their specific interest and collect the specific lenses. More the range of the kit lens more is the learning opportunity.

Few DSLRs offer the normal kit lens of 18-55 mm focal length and few offer the 18-105 mm kit lens. If your budget permits, go for the camera which offers the higher range of kit-lens.

4.      Sensor dust-removal system

As mentioned earlier, sensor is one of the most important parts of a DSLR and it is very delicate also, not to be touched often. Accumulated dust particles will affect the picture quality and hence, do ensure that your camera has an automatic sensor dust removal system before buying.

5.      Frames per second

As a beginner, you might like to use your DSLR for occasional video recording also. Frames per second are a measure of the video quality coming out of the DSLR. More the frames per second, better is the video quality.

6.      Focusing method

There are two things which come as a part of Focusing method.

The first one is the number of Auto Focusing which the Camera points, which varies from 7 to 30 in various camera. More the number of focusing points means more option to focus on a range of subjects in the frame. So, if budget permits, go for the camera with more number of AF- points.

The second one is the availability of focusing motor in the camera. High end and semiprofessional DSLRs come with a focusing motor, in which you can use a low end lens which does not have the autofocus feature and the camera will take care of Auto Focusing. Lenses which have autofocus feature are costlier than lenses which does not have the feature and hence if you have a high end DSLR (which has the Focusing motor), you can use the low end lenses (which does not have the auto-focusing feature).

Again, the DSLRs which have the focusing motor are bit costlier than the normal DLSRs. So if you don’t have the budget for a high end camera now, you can go for a low end DSLR and later on add the high end lenses to your gear-collection.

7.      LCD & Viewfinder  size

LCD screen might not play such a significant role in deciding a camera, but definitely the view finder size is. You have to frame your photograph by looking it through the view finder only and you have to comfortable in it. So if you are comparing between available options, then go for the DSLR with a bigger viewfinder size.

8.      Memory card

You will need to click many pictures and hence would definitely need lot of space in your camera to store them. Do check the memory card size before buying your camera and if you are comparing between various options, go for the one which gives you bigger memory card (provided you have already compared other features).

Size of memory card is one of the features to be checked, but it should not be the distinctive feature to buy a camera. Even if your camera does not give you a memory card big enough, you can always buy extra memory cards, which are not very costly.

9.      Weight

You are not going to keep your DSLR in your drawing room as a piece of display, rather you have to carry it along with you to many places, not just in your bag but most of the time around your neck or in your hand. So, do check the weight of the camera before buying and while comparing, go for the lightweight one.

10.  Power

One more ‘to be checked’ feature before buying your camera. Again, if it doesn't give you enough power backup, it can be compensated by carrying extra batteries.

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