WRITTEN BY UNSCRIPTED

The Basics of ISO,

Aperture, Exposure,
& White Balance
PHOTO BY @BRITTANYBOOTE
Handing a camera over to a non-photographer friend can be a mildly
anxiety-inducing experience for them. It’s kind of like witnessing
someone who has little experience with children holding a baby. They
hold them away from their body, looking at them like a foreign
creature, nervously hoping they don’t start to cry. As with a camera,
they don’t quite know how to handle them. They’re both heavier than
they look, extremely precious, and replete with indiscernible needs.

Getting your camera to work for you requires time, attention, and
practice. Many of the newer DSLRs have about a million functions
that do a million different things, and it can feel like a long and
daunting road towards complete mastery. In fact, most people who
buy DSLRs never actually figure out how to use them properly. If you
ask us. it’s a bit of a shame having such a well-oiled machine at your
fingertips and only scratch the surface of what it’s capable of. If you’re
keen to learn how your camera works and see the world of
photography open up to you as a result, dig your teeth into this guide.
We’ll lead you through one of the most difficult phases of
photography and help you to understand the mechanics of that
beautiful piece of technology in your possession. From the basics of
exposure, aperture, and ISO, to getting colours to appear true to life
by knowing the processes behind white balance, you’ll be a
photography wizard in no time.
 EXPOSURE
Let’s start with exposure. For those of you only just emerging from
underneath the rock you’ve lived under for the past few years,
exposure is the amount of light captured by the image sensor of the
camera. It’s a measure of how bright or dark your image will be.

Technically, a correct and perfect exposure exists. There are rules

about exposing your highlights and shadows just so in order to get the
most out of the details in your photograph. Overexposure means
blown-out highlights and midtones, and underexposure causes your
shadows to be reduced to pure black, devoid of any information or
texture. But we only learn the rules to break em, right? Before you
rebels get too excited about setting rules alight, let’s get the basics
down.

To arrive at the perfect exposure,

there are three major vectors at play:
aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. The
balance we strike between these three
factors allows us the freedom to
translate our artistic genius into
imagery. If you’re reading this and
thinking, “this would be a helluva lot
better with a picture to illustrate what
you mean!” we’ve got the hookup.
Behold, the exposure triangle:
As you can see, aperture, ISO, and shutter speed make up the three
sides of the triangle. In balance, they contribute to a well-exposed
photograph. In a really rudimentary sense, it’s like making pancakes.
There’s a perfect combination of flour, egg, and milk. If you add too
much flour, you have to balance it out with more milk. Too watery?
Add another scoop of flour! With an image, if you let more light in by
widening the aperture, you have to balance it out with a quicker
shutter speed. If you modify the light sensitivity of the sensor by
increasing the ISO, you’ll have to shut down the aperture or speed up
the shutter. There are always a few different ways to arrive at the
correct exposure (and probably less ways to arrive at the ideal
pancake). We’ll be the first to admit that the analogy isn’t perfect. But
it’s a start! Just remember that in order to maintain the correct
exposure, if you adjust one variable, at least one of the others has to
be adjusted as well. Each of these variables are measured in stops.
What is a ‘stop’?

You’ve probably heard the word ‘stop’ used in a photographic

context a few times. But with aperture being referred to as ‘f-stop,’
and hearing ‘stop’ apply to ISO and shutter speed as well, it can get a
little bit confusing to keep track of it all (especially when there’s a
mountain of new stuff to learn all the time)! But basically, a stop is a
measure of exposure relating to the doubling or halving of the
amount of light. If your photo is a little dark, adding a stop, or
doubling the amount of light will brighten the image. And if the
opposite is true, where your image is a bit too bright, decreasing your
exposure by one stop (or halving the amount of light) will darken it.

The importance of light in a

photograph is undeniable, and the
creative control you exercise by
how much light you let in through
ISO, shutter speed, and aperture
determine SO many things about
how you present your subject. Do
you want your background to be
soft or in focus? Is your subject
frozen in motion or is there a blur
to their movement? There’s a
trade-off when you change one to
compensate for another. Read on
to dig a little deeper into what each
of these things do.
 APERTURE
When you look at the aperture, it’s important to consider the hole
picture. And the whole picture. Aperture refers to the size of the lens
opening. The bigger the hole, the more light hits the sensor. The
smaller the hole, the less light that hits the sensor. Depending on the
size of the hole, more or less of the image is in focus. Sick of the word
‘hole’ yet? We’re almost done.

Chasin’ that dreamy, glowy, soft focus kind of portrait? Open up the
aperture to f/2.8. Shooting in a landscape where you want to show as
much of the beautiful background as possible? Close the aperture
down a bit, shoot at f/22. Aperture is essential in controlling depth of
field. Depth of field is the distance between the points in the
foreground and the background, and determines how much of the
image is in focus.

With aperture, it's opposite day everyday.

F-stop numbers are smaller for larger openings (i.e. f/1.4) and larger for
smaller openings (i.e. f/22). The smaller the opening, the less light that
hits the sensor but the more that is in focus, the deeper the depth-of-
field. The larger the opening, the more light that hits the sensor, but the
less that is in focus, and the shallower your depth of field.
For ages, we were confused about where these numbers came from.
1.4 and 2.8 at one side of the scale, and 22 on the other? Who made
this stuff up? It seems so random and mathematical, and when we did
a little sleuthing, we figured it out. An f-stop is the ratio correlated
with the size of the opening of the lens, it’s equal to the focal length of
the lens divided by the diameter of the lens. The reason aperture is a
bit more confusing than ISO and shutter speed is because it works in
what seems to be arbitrary fractions. But these fractions were created
in order to make sure each ‘stop’ of light was in keeping with the
‘stops’ of light that ISO and shutter speed afford.

To get your head around why large f-stop numbers represent tiny little
openings and small f-stop numbers refer to large openings, you have
to get into the nitty gritty of dividing the focal length by the diameter,
or the focal length by the f-stop. An aperture opening is a fraction of
the focal length of your lens. For example, on a 100mm lens, f/4
means that the aperture opening is 1/4th of 100mm. But before we
make your brains explode, it’s probably just easiest at this stage to
remember that if you divide the focal length by a small f-stop number,
you get a large diameter (which means a bigger area and therefore
more light passing through the opening). And if you divide a given
focal length by a large f-stop number, the result is a small diameter,
letting less light into the camera.
 ISO
Film photographers out there, feel free to skim this section! Chances
are, you’re already all over it. When shooting film, the first variable you
decide on before approaching the other two sides of the exposure
triangle is ISO. For those of us more wed to the digital age, here’s a
little refresher. Back in the old film touting days, ISO was a measure
of how light-sensitive the emulsion on the film was. Today we use the
same numbers, but instead of referring to film, we refer to the
sensitivity of your light sensor.

The normal range of a digital camera’s ISO is about 100 to 3200. And
to risk sounding like your luddite crazy uncle, it’s so hard to keep up
with the pace of technological change these days that by the time this
guide is published, we wouldn’t be surprised if a new camera was
released that could go as low as 25 or as high as a few million.
Lower ISO numbers (i.e. 100) are best for brighter lighting scenarios.
The lower number connotes a slower ‘film speed,’ and means the
sensor is gathering less light data. Higher ISO numbers (i.e. 3200)
help to add brightness when shooting in low-light conditions. The
higher number connotes a faster ‘film speed’ and means the sensor is
gathering more light data to create the exposure. Lower ISOs equate
to a finer grain, or smaller pixelation while higher ISOs have a larger
grain or heavier visible pixelation (also known as noise).

In an ideal world, we’d just be able to adjust the ISO according to each
lighting situation and not have to lug around tripods or flashes or work
with anything but natural lighting. But raising your ISO has
unfortunate trade-offs. Sometimes it’s necessary, when the other two
sides of the exposure triangle are absolutely pushed (your depth of
field is as shallow as you’d like it, and the shutter speed can’t be any
slower without creating undue blur), but sometimes just pushing your
ISO to give you more latitude can render a lot of grain and won’t be
usable as anything larger than a thumbnail.

The rule of thumb here is to always shoot at the lowest ISO possible.
At the lowest ISO setting, your images will come out with less noise,
more dynamic range, and in better definition. The art of the exposure
triangle lies in the way you balance all three variables to get you the
shot you want. Sometimes a high ISO is necessary to fight against
motion blur, and sometimes you’ll be faced with the challenge of
deciding between a sharp photo at a high ISO and a blurry photo at a
low ISO. Plagued with indecision at the best of times? Don’t worry,
the subjects in front of your lens will give you clues about which
choices to make.
If you’re shooting in the sun, but want to capture people frozen in
motion (maybe they’re mid-stride, gearing up for a jump into the
sunset, or maybe you want to capture that exact moment as the cork
flies out of the champagne bottle), you’ll want to have your ISO at a
higher value (around 400) so that you can avail of the faster shutter
speeds without your image getting too dark. Different situations call
for different balances of ISO, shutter speed, and aperture.

But don’t let choice paralysis stop you from getting out there and
shooting your little heart out! We’ve got a nifty little camera settings
guide embedded in the app that gives you an at-a-glance tool to help
you navigate even the trickiest of lighting scenarios.
 SHUTTER SPEED

Let’s have a little breather, shall we? Shutter speed is probably one of
the easiest components of exposure to explain. There’s a little panel,
or shutter, in your camera that opens and closes in order to expose
the sensor to the light bouncing into your lens. The length of time that
this shutter is open is called the shutter speed. No surprises there!
And after the labyrinth that is beginning to understand the nuance of
aperture, we’ll take all of the straight and easy answers we can get.
Basically, the meat and potatoes of what you need to know is this:

Faster shutter speeds freeze action in a photo, and slower shutter

speeds blur moving objects.

Once you get all that down, you can start to do tricky things like
panning the camera with the movement of your subject at a slower
shutter speed so that your subject stays in focus and the background
motion blurs. Or get your subjects to stand really still in front of a
waterfall and let the movement of the water smooth into a blur behind
them while they stay in focus.
SHUTTER SPEED EXAMPLE

Photo by @elsas_wholsomelife
Kelvin:

You may have noticed, nestled somewhere amongst the other

standardised settings in the White Balance section of your camera, a
little ‘K,’ just sitting pretty. Maybe you’ve dialled into it and been
intimidated by the strange square rainbow that pops up onto your
screen. We’re here to encourage you not to be intimidated! That ‘K’
is the key to owning the world of colour control.

K stands for Kelvin. In science, Kelvin is a standard of measurement

that relates to temperature, directly correlated with the colour of
burning carbon. In photography (a strange science in its own right),
Kelvin is correlated with the temperature of light. When you shoot in
Kelvin you’re taking an active role in dictating the camera’s white
balance.

Adjusting kelvins helps your DSLR to do what your brain does

automatically. And all you have to do is check our Camera Settings
Guide to help you know how to set it.

Generally, warmer light temperatures (like candle-lit rooms or

golden hour) correlate to a low-temperature heat (~2000 K to
~4500 K), and cooler light temperatures correlate to a high-
temperature heat (~6000 K to ~9000 K).

Once you get a feel for it, you’ll be able to fine-tune your settings by
eye. Go into your camera settings, and set the temperature based
on what you know or see. Experiment, have a little play!
 WHITE BALANCE
Here’s a Kelvin scale, just to get you started:

You’ve probably had a little poke around the various preset white
balances, and they’re great because they help you find the correct
colour temperature depending on the lighting. As with most
automated things though, they require a little bit of supervision from
the discerning human eye to really function properly.
 Maybe your camera has a screen that looks a little bit like this:

The first three on the list allow for a range of colour temperatures,
and as handy as AWB can be, it’s still not quite as honed as our eyes,
and sometimes falls short. Everything from Tungsten down is
arranged in order of increasing colour temperatures, and is best used
as a rough and quick guide to help you get as close as possible to real
life. Remember to shoot in RAW so you have a bit more room to play
in the post-processing suite.

The best thing about it is there is no true ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ What tones
and temperatures would you like to bring out in your photograph?
Play and curiosity will help lead you to a real mastery of the weird
world of White Balance.
Once you’ve gotten the hang of these basic camera settings, a
whole world of creative control will open up to you. The exposure
triangle is your friend! And don’t stress if it feels a little clunky at
first. With enough practice you’ll be whizzing through all the bells
and whistles of that fancy DSLR in no time, confidently creating
great images regardless of any lighting challenges that may
emerge!

LET'S RECAP
1. Set your ISO to the lowest value possible.
2. Select the aperture setting that will provide your desired
depth of field.
3. Tip: To maintain focus on multiple subjects a great
aperture tip is: Min 2.0 for 2 ppl, 3.0 for 3ppl, 4.0 for
4ppl
4. Faster shutter speeds freeze, and slower shutter speeds
blur.
5. The bigger the aperture number, the smaller the diameter
of the lens.

Let us know how you go with these suggestions and

share your work with us on our facebook group or tag us
@unscriptedposingapp on instagram