Exposure for Beginners - The Exposure Triangle explained.

why my photos too dark why my photos too bright this is a question I get asked time and time again so let's try and fix it right now in this video exposure for beginners hi Paul here from photo genius now photography is the art of capturing light if you're taking photos and they're too bright they are overexposed and this simply means that you've captured too much light if your pictures are too dark they're underexposed and that means you haven't recorded or captured enough light and I want to show you how you can control light by using a camera like this one here now there's three things that affect light ISO aperture shutter collectively known as the exposure triangle now it may sound a bit crazy but taking a good photo is a bit like making a good cup of tea you've got to get the balance right between three things you need water you need just the right amount of milk and for me time I like my tea strong so I leave the teabag in a little bit longer and those three things combined make for a great cup of tea I'm from the UK so I'm a big tea drinker now taking a great photo is a balance between three things again ISO aperture and shutter speed get the balance right and you get a great photo now in Auto you don't get any say in this you don't get any control over these features so for this video I really recommend putting the camera into the manual mode now with the camera in the manual mode we get to control the camera functions like aperture shutter speed and ISO I'm going to show you how to do this first on a Canon camera then I'll show you how to do on a Nikon camera and of course in a moment I'll show you how to combine those things so we get the balance right and we get a great picture so let's start by talking about ISO which relates to the sensor and the electronics inside of the camera think of it a bit like the brightness control on a TV increase the brightness brighter picture decrease the brightness darker picture inside of these cameras there's a function called ISO if you increase the number you can effectively make your image of brighter decrease the number your picture will effectively get darker so if you're taking photos maybe in the evening when the sun's going down you may of course increase the ISO because it's darker and you want to make the image brighter but be careful with this one because ISO affects image quality if you push the ISO too high your image will start to look a bit grainy it's called digital noise and it's not really ideal so for that reason my ISO default is 200 or as I like to say where possible I so keep it low to change the ISO value on a Canon camera locate the ISO button which is on the top of this particular camera then select the option you want I'm going to go for 200 which is my default press set and you're done let's change the ISO on the nikon camera look for the eye button on the back of the camera use the multi selector to move over to the ISO function press ok and then select the ISO you want I'm going from my default ISO which is 200 press the shutter button lightly to go back to your normal screen an alternative way of changing ISO on the nikon cameras is to hold the function button down on the side of the camera and they rotate the rear dial on the back of the camera this is a much more effective way of changing the ISO so with the ISO set to 200 let's now turn our attention to aperture now a pitcher is a function of the lens and is a great and very effective way of controlling light inside your lens is an aperture which is a hole that you can adjust make the hole bigger you let more light through the lens and this of course can make your picture brighter but if you make the hole smaller you let less light through the lens and this is a way that you might want to make your picture a bit darker and if I hold this lens out and adjust the aperture hopefully you can see that there the position of the aperture is shown on the back of the camera as an F number these numbers can be a little bit confusing because they kind of work back to front when your aperture is wide open it's not a big number it's a small number typically around about 3.5 when you close the aperture down and let less light through the lens it's not a small number it's a big number and on the average lens it's about F 36 so the numbers can be confusing but of course with practice you'll soon get used to them now let me show you how easy is to change the aperture on these cameras adjusting the aperture on the Canon camera is very easy locate the aperture value button marked AV on the can hold it down and turn the dial on the top of the camera darling to the right from the bigger F number darling to the left for the small F numbers which again means the aperture is wider changing the aperture value on an icon is easy hold down the aperture button on the top of the camera turn the dial on the rear of the camera and you can change the aperture value darling to the right for the larger F numbers darling to the left for the smaller F numbers which makes the aperture wider easy so we've looked at the eyes so we've looked at the aperture now it's time to talk about the shutter now the shutter sits behind the lens think of it like a door and the moment it's closed and that means that there is no light getting into this camera until I press the shutter button on the top of the camera when I do you'll hear a noise that's the shutter opening and closing and at the moment I've got selected a very fast shutter speed now if you're taking photos outdoors maybe on a bright day that's probably what you want to be using because you want the shutter to open let light into the camera but close before you let too much light in so far shutter speeds are great on bright days but of course you might be taking a photo indoors or maybe later into the evening when the sun's going down not a problem you can slow the shutter down which means the shutter is going to be open longer and this will of course let more light into the camera I've selected a shutter speed here of one tenth of a second and you'll clearly hear there two clicks which is the shutter opening and closing now of course eventually the Sun Goes Down it's now nighttime there's less light available again not a problem you can slow the shutter down even more so I'm now selecting a one second exposure and this will allow more light into the camera the great thing about the shutter is there is such a huge range of shutter speeds available that you've got something for the brightest of days but equally dull afternoons and then nighttime from the fastest shutter speeds to the slowest shutter speeds definitely shutter is the most effective way of controlling light and I'm going to show you how to do it on these cameras to adjust the shutter speed on a canon camera you locate the dial on the top of the camera darling to the right will increase the shutter speed and of course dialing to the left will slow the shutter down so the shutter will be opened longer changing the shutter speed on a nikon camera is as easy as turning the doll dial to the right for the faster shutter speeds dial to the left for the slower shutter speeds so now we know what the eye is so aperture and shutter can do and we also know how to adjust them but how do you get the balance right how do you know when you're taking a photo what shutter aperture ISO combination to use well you could go and buy a light meter like this one and you can use this to measure light but the good news is you don't need to because there's alike meter built into these cameras and when you know how to use it you can pretty much now your exposure every single time it's super easy to use and I'm going to start with the Canon camera first looking at the back of the camera our ISO is 200 remember ISO keep it low the F 3.5 tells us the aperture is wide open and the shutter speed at the moment is pretty quick at one one thousandth of a second now below the numbers we find our light meter you will see there is a zero marker in the middle and then we have a plus one two and three and a minus one two and three the plus side is over exposure the minus is under exposure and we want to aim for the zero but at the moment the meter is asleep to wake the meter up we simply press the shutter button lightly and you'll see a marker appear which at the moment is sitting below the minus three this tells us our picture if we take it will be underexposed let's wake the meter up again notice it's an arrow pointing to the left indicating we are seriously underexposed in this image so that means we need to get more light into the camera now the main reason for the under exposure is this shutter speed is too high so what we're going to do is slow the shutter down by waking up the meter and dialing to the left now what you'll see is the shutter speed is slowing down and the marker starts to move to the middle now once the marker has hit the middle spot we should get a decent exposure and there's our picture now if I turn our light source down and take another light meter reading will see that no surprises we are now under exposing where we can compensate for this by just slowing the shutter down a bit more the markers back to the middle and again we will get a decent exposure to the nikon camera we've got our solo here at 200 our aperture wide open at 3.5 and the shutter speed at the moment is quite slow at 115 for a second now if we take a look at the meter you'll see a minus to the left a plus to the right and a zero marker in the middle and underneath the meter here a series of dotted lines and an arrow pointing to the right indicating that we will over expose if we take the picture now to reduce the overexposure all we've got to do is increase the shutter speed so we dealt to the right with the dial the shutter speed increases and the markers start to move to the middle once they're in the middle we should get a decent exposure and there's our picture now once again we're going to reduce the light levels in the room you will see the markers react on the light meter because there's less light available so to fix the under exposure this time we're going to slow the shutter down once the markers are in the middle we take the picture and there's our next photo now it's important to note that the line meter is affected by any change in the shutter aperture or ISO if I adjust the shutter speed you will see this affects the exposure and it's shown by the light meter and likewise if I change the aperture you will also see this affects the light meter and equally if I make a change to the ISO then the meter responds accordingly as I said at the beginning of the video a well exposed image is getting the balance right between the three things that make up the exposure triangle now shooting in the manual mode as we've been doing in this video is very different to shooting in the auto mode you get more control over the camera you also get to be more creative with the cameras and this is really the way these cameras are designed to be used but to help you I've put together some tip sheets there on the photo genius website I'll put some links in the description below the video so I really hope you've enjoyed this video and picked up some great tips if you did please give us a thumbs up consider subscribing to the channel so you don't miss out on future videos and of course you can leave your comments questions and suggestions down below I hope see you again sometime soon see ya

Channel: Photo Genius

Views: 174,656

Keywords: exposure triangle, exposure compensation, photography tutorials for beginners, photography for beginners, aperture shutter speed and ISO tutorial, aperture explained, shutter speed explained, what is ISO, iso explained, dslr cameras, nikon, canon, canon eos, nikon d3500, nikon d3400, how to take great photos, photography tips for beginners, photography, dslr, how to use a camera, what is the exposure triangle

Id: 6CEH_31K6YU

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2019