Lots of Newbie question..

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Kay I tried to read as much as I could before asking the forum, I figured you guys can help me clear some things up... Questions involves aperture and shutter settings.

I read from dpreview.com that the faster/higher the shutter speed setting is, the better you could take pictures of fast moving objects, BUT you'll need more/better light than your usual/slower shutter speed setting, did I get this correctly?

Now the aperture, this is where I get a tad bit confuse.. What exactly is it for.... And when do I want to use/change it? I noticed that if higher you set your aperture, the darker the picture gets and this is true with whatever settings for shutter. Is Aperture only good for Fields of Depth?

[polak187]

In the conventional 35mm camera (and digital as well) shutter speed is the amount of time that shutter blades will stay open and let given amount of light in. Aperture is an opening in the lens that regulates the strength of light getting in. Aperture blades form a circle that increases in size (more light gets in) when the f-stop goes down. So if aperture is intensity and shutter speed in the time than the correct exposure is amount of time that the film (ccd chip) will be exposed to certain intensity (amount) of light.

For action shots you want to use high shutter speeds in order to capture the movement. Yes you need more intense light to work with higher shutter speeds. You may also open you lens a bit (lower your f-stop) to let more light in.

Well aperture comes very handy when you work with depth of field. Smaller the opening (high f-stop) longer the shutter speed will be. That means that the light from the far away will have enough time to "burn" image better and sharper. For portraits or macro work sometimes people open their lenses to make the background fuzzy.

Aperture also can be used as guidance for sport shooting. Like you know high shutter speeds will produce crisp action shots. Sometimes the available light is not enough for your favorite shutter speed. The way to deal with it is to set the camera to AV mode (aperture priority) and open the lens all way up (low f-stop). Camera automatically than will select the highest shutter available for that setting giving you the best possible shot at this moment.

Sometime people will choose the f-stop that is right in the middle (5.6) and when shooting action they will pan with the moving subject. Such technique allows them to get the subject sharp and give the background motion blur.

When you shoot at night, longer shutter speeds are required, which usually requires a tripod. Opening the lens (low f-stop) and letting more light in will sometime increase the shutter speed enough to let you shoot handheld.

A quick word on the ISO settings. Faster the speed of the film less light is required to achieve the same results but the penalty for cheating is grain and noise in the picture. If you can't achieve shutter speed that you want or images come out blurry due to the lack of light use higher rating on your iso control in order to achieve sharp images. You will deal with the noise later on in Photoshop.

Heh certainly what I wrote above is not it. Read on and I'm sure many good lads in this forum will have their two cents to throw in. Good luck.


Matt Jachyra

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Thanks a lot for the tip Polak, I truly appreciate it