Tips On Controlling Your Exposure

Since you are into photography, you ought to know how important exposure is to your pictures. What is exposure then?

Exposure is simply the total amount of light that falls on the image sensor (or film in film camera) when you are taking a picture. There are 2 ways for you to get the right exposure for your picture.

1. Set your digital camera to auto and let it works its magic or

2. You manually control the aperture or f-stop (to control the brightness) and shutter speed (to control the duration of light entering the camera link shutter speed)

Another thing you need to know about exposure in photography is that it is determined by the sensitivity of the medium you use and this sensitivity is measured by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Surely you can still remember the different film you bought for different occasion during film photography time and that different speed of film is the ISO for film photography. Since we are in digital photography, we can now select the ISO from the camera with ease. Thank you technology. :-)

Do remember that aperture and shutter speed work hand in hand to give you the right exposure to your picture. Imagine that you are taking a picture during a sunny day when light is not an issue. So, the picture you get by having a normal aperture and shutter speed will be similar to the picture you get when you set your camera to the auto mode.

Then, what if you are taking picture in a dim environment? If you continue with the auto mode, you might underexpose your picture. That is the time you need to adjust aperture to make it bigger (smaller f-stop) so that more light can go into the camera. Remember that shutter speed and aperture work together? In this case, you will want to slow down the shutter speed to have more light going into the camera too.

One word of caution is that when you slow down the shutter speed, your camera is more sensitive to movement. A gentle handshake can result in a blurred image. Imagine that is a once in a lifetime shot. Wouldn't it be a frustration to have missed it? Some said that you can counter it with flash or with the anti-handshake feature for some compact digital camera but if you have seen the end result of these pictures, they usually don't look better than having a tripod. If you can't find a tripod, stack something like books to stabilize your camera so that you get the best out of your picture.

Now, I know that a lot of you are using compact digital camera and you can't control your aperture and shutter speed. What you can do is to look into your camera pre-program mode and select the most appropriate mode for the scene. Let's say you are in a dim environment, probably you can use the "birthday" or "party" mode. If you are trying to capture an athlete in action that is the time you use the "sport" mode.

However, some compact digital cameras do allow you to manipulate the exposure with an exposure meter so that you can over or underexpose your picture when you want to. This feature is resemblance to adjusting the aperture and shutter speed just that it is done by the camera itself.

You can also look into the setting of your camera and for some compact digital cameras you will find the "shutter priority" so that you can control the shutter speed while the camera controls the aperture and other settings. Once you got that, take some pictures with different shutter speed and you will get the feel of how different exposure can affect your pictures. :-)

Have fun photographing,

Michael Wong. :-)