Camera Settings

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is the length for which the camera's shutter is open. It affects two things, it affects the amount of light let into a picture and how much motion blur there is in the moving parts of the photo. You can change the shutter speed on your camera, using a scroller e.g. see the image below. The shutter speed will appear on the camera speed as a fraction, this is a time in seconds.

This image shows what the Shutter Speed, ISO and Aperture settings will look like on a digital camera screen.

This is an example of a picture taken with slow shutter speed. The slow shutter speed means that the movement of the water looks blurred and fast. This will have been taken with a small aperture (Large aperture value) and/or a lower ISO value so that the image doesn't get over exposed.

This photo was taken with a very high shutter speed, the high speed means that you can see a bubble that is part way through bursting. It was also taken with a large aperture (Small aperture value) to keep the photo from being dark, you can this because the back ground is blurry.

Aperture

Aperture is the size of the hole in the lens that allows light into the sensor of the camera. It affects the exposure of a picture and the how are the depth of field is. Aperture is measured in f stops, the bigger the f stop (e.g.f22) is the smaller the aperture is. It also affects the depth of field so as the aperture increases the depth of field decreases.

This is an example of a photo with a large aperture, this means it allows lot of light it but the depth of field is very small which leads to the background being very out of focus. 

In this photo, a small aperture is used. This means that the depth of field is large so everything in the photo is in focus, also the photo will be darker except that a slower shutter speed and higher ISO will cancel this out.

ISO

ISO is how sensitive your camera is to light. The lowest ISO number will be the highest quality photo your camera can take and if the ISO number is too high it can make your photo grainy or noisy. The higher ISO you use, the lower the light conditions can be without having to use a flash. Every camera has a 'base ISO' and this is the ISO you should aim to use when possible as it will lead to the best quality photographs, the base is often 100 or 200. An ISO of 400 is double the sensitivity of ISO 200 and therefore needs half to the time to capture.

This is an example of a photo with a high ISO, as you can see the picture has become grainy.