How do You Use a Professional Camera?
Can you remember the first time that you saw someone use a professional DSLR ? The camera has a multitude of settings and buttons, and without understanding what they do it seems complicated to use a professional camera, but it’s actually very simple and anyone could do it! There are a few fundamentals that you have to learn in order to start your photography journey. And this article will introduce you to the first steps in learning how to use a DSLR.
Whether you want to photograph so that you can be a professional wedding photographer, portrait photographer, maternity photographer, newborn photographer, event photographer, branding expert, family photographer, corporate photographer, or advertising photographer, or you want to use a DSLR just for fun to photograph portraits of your family and friends, this article will be a great place to start so that you can learn more about this fulfilling career or hobby.
There are many things to learn before you can become a professional wedding photographer, but first you have to learn 3 basic concepts.
ISO
Aperture
Shutter Speed
The balance between these 3 elements is what a professional photographer uses to capture those wedding, maternity, event, or portraits.
The first thing to do is look at your camera manual and see how you can change these three different things in full manual mode. Then look how you can set your camera in the different priority modes, for example Aperture priority, or Shutter Priority, and how you can set ISO to auto, and manual on each of these 3 modes.
What does Priority Mode do?
Shutter Priority - You set the shutter speed, and the camera sets the aperture
Aperture Priority - you set the aperture and the camera sets the shutter speed
Manual - you set both aperture and shutter speed, and ISO can be manual or auto
Some cameras allow auto iso on all three settings, some may not allow auto iso in some settings. You don’t have to understand any of these settings yet, just learn how to set it on the 3 different modes, and what dials control these settings. Ignore all the other camera options and settings.
ISO
The next step is to understand what these 3 different words mean. But first let me explain how an image is captured in a modern digital camera. First let me explain the camera. light enters a lens, and is directed by the lens to land on a sensor roughly 1 inch squared. This light sensitive sensor is made up of many dots that individual capture 3 different colors. There are many variations, but that’s the simple answer. The camera can control how light sensitive the sensor is. Imagine you are on a white beach on a sunny day and you are blinded by all the light. In a situation where there is too much light, or plentiful light you can dull the sensitivity to light, or ISO. ISO starts at 64 or 100 and goes up to in the hundreds of thousands, but most photographers stick to 100 to 5000 ISO roughly. Each time the number doubles it is twice as sensitive to light. For example 200 ISO is twice the light of 100 ISO. So if you wanted to double the light and you were at 400 ISO, you could just go to 800 ISO. And if you wanted to half the light, and you were at 3000 ISO, you could go to 1500 ISO.
When you have artificial light, or you are outdoors you are at lower ISO’s. Usually somewhere between 100 ISO to 800 ISO. And when you are indoors you are usually 800 ISO to about 3000 or 5000 depending on your camera. The more advanced the camera, the higher ISO you can go to without sacrificing as much quality.
The second component to ISO is that provided you have sufficient light, the lower the ISO the better the quality of image. So although you can go to ISO 5000 and still capture a stunning image, the image will have more grain and imperfections than if you were at ISO 100.
Most people don’t know this, but ISO is not a real mechanical change. It is really just turning the brightness up and down, so ISO is more like a way to measure where you are on the spectrum of what your camera can do, than a true control.
For example If i see that my image is perfectly balanced, but I am at ISO 5000, I will alter my other settings so I can bring ISO down to let’s say 2500, where there will be significant improvements in image quality. Okay so now that you understand ISO, let’s really understand how a camera captures images.
Aperture
The lens will have aperture numbers. For instance it could be a 1.8 Aperture Lens, or a F1.8, or it could be a F4 Lens, or have an aperture of 4. The lower the number the wider the lens opens up, allowing more light. Think of the aperture like the pupil of your eye. when you are in a dark room the pupil opens up, and when you are outside at a beach it closes to let in less light. The lower the F stop, or the smaller the aperture, the wider it opens and it lets in more light. Light is always the limitation of cameras, lenses, and photography, and it is what you use to sculpt and create the image you imagined.
When you purchase higher end lenses, there are two things that happen. Firstly they have lower apertures, meaning they open wider and allow more light, so they will perform better. The second thing is if they are a zoom lens, the aperture stays consistent throughout the length of the zoom. For example let’s say you have a 70 to 200 mm lens. This zoom means that if you are staying about 5 feet away from someone you will only have about shoulder height at 70mm and you can zoom into just an eye at 200mm. I’ll explain the lenses further, but this will be your first exposure to it.
If you have a lower end 70 to 200 you will likely have a 4 - 6.8 or something along those lines. In other words at 70mm you are at F4, and at 200 you are at F6.8, so as you zoom in you have less light. This is very inconvenient if you use manual settings because the smallest zoom will mean that you have to change all of your settings, and as you zoom in you will lose picture quality if you have to allow for less than optimal camera settings. Higher end lenses will have a consistent aperture, it could be F2, or F2.8 or F4. Because it’s consistent through the zoom, it will make photographing easier, and allow more light.
Okay so now you control the F-stop, or the aperture. The smaller the number the more light you let in. So why not just keep it at the lowest F-stop and allow the most amount of light? Well you know those images that have the background all blurry, or the images where the eyes is in focus, but the eyebrows are already blurry? The lower the F stop, or aperture, the smallest amount will be in focus. So if you want to have a large group of people in focus, or you want to see the scenery behind in focus, or you want someone’s face to be completely in focus, you will have to raise the F stop and let less light in. Your eyes work the same way, when you are focused on things in the distance squinting helps you see better because of how it bends light. This is the same concept. Just like ISO doubling or halve the number will let in half or double the light. For example let’s say you are at F4 and you want to double the light, then if you go to f2 you will double the light. If you want half the light, you will go to f8 from f4. This will be important later.
Shutter Speed
So in other words unless you want more in focus, you want the F stop to be the lowest your lens allows, so that you let in the most light, and you want the lowest iso setting that the other setting will allow. The next one is shutter speed. Shutter speed is how fast the lens opens to allow light to go through the lens and land on the sensor. Cameras can do a wide range, but anywhere from open for 30” or seconds to 1/8000 of a second or faster. in other words 1/2 is half a second, or 1/500 is one five hundredth of a second. the smaller the fraction, the faster the shutter speed.
If the subject is moving 1/60 of a second will surely end up in a blurry picture. And if a child is running, you might want at least 1/320 of a second to freeze the motion. If you have something even faster like a car or a rocket, you might want even faster. Usually most photographers are in the 1/60 for stationary objects, to 1/320 for people. I like to be at 1/500 and up because even at 1/320 you can end up with subject blur.
But the faster it opens and closes, the less light you let in. So What will happen is something like this.
Indoors: you are at ISO 2000, and you are at F4, and you notice that if you are at a shutter speed of 1/100 you have a well lit image, but your kids are blurry when they move even a little, or if your hand moves a little. So you could do a few things, you could double the light by going to f2, which means that now you can double the shutter speed to 1/200 of a second which will help reduce blur, or you can go to ISO 4000.
In this case if you went to iso 4000 you will reduce image quality, because the higher the ISO the lower the image quality overall. So unless you needed more in focus, going to a lower F stop is the right strategy.
Let’s say that then you step outside. and now you go to ISO 1000. and your shutter speed is 1/8000 of a second which is the fastest your camera can do (some can do more) but it’s still too bright, and you are at F2. you could half the light by going to f4, or you could half the light by going to iso 500, remember that you want to keep iso as low as you can, but still allow yourself room so that you can alter other settings.
So let’s say that you went to iso 100 because you want the best quality, and now it’s too dark. you could lower the shutter speed 2 times more light by going from 1/8000 to 1/4000, which doubled the light one time, and then to 1/2000 which doubled the light again. So now you have a low iso and a fast shutter speed to capture motion, and a low aperture to get those bokeh (blurry background) shots.
That’s basically the bread and butter of how a photographer makes decisions on how to use the camera. It might sound a little confusing at first, but I promise it’s super easy and anyone can do it. It just take time to practice and you will improve rapidly.
Conclusion
Now that you understand what the 3 components are the best way to learn is choose one of the priority modes, like aperture priority, or shutter priority, so that you can focus on one, and the camera focuses on the other, this way you can learn for instance what a low F stop does versus a high one, or what shutter speeds you need to be at to capture clear images of still versus moving subjects. As you learn one, use another, then try to stay off auto iso because it will make worse decisions than what you will make since you know what shutter speeds are acceptable. Then go to full manual and learn how to keep track of doubling the numbers and halving them so that you can easily switch between settings.
Some photographers will use shutter priority during weddings or events to help them with the constantly changing scenarios, because even a cloud moving across the sky will affect lighting dramatically so you’ll have to be adjusting the settings constantly, and the priority modes are almost like half auto modes. However once you learn the settings the camera will always pick settings that will worsen image quality. You will make the better decision because your brain is more powerful than a small micro chip. Even the inclusion of AI will struggle to catch up to how a human decides the best use of the settings. That day will one day come, but its at least 10 to 15 years away. And even then AI will not understand the creative look you are going for.
As you practice you learn what settings give you the best result by using software to look at the settings you had at the time. You will realize things like AHHH why was I at ISO 1000 but a shutter speed of 1/200 because this was blurry, I could have been at ISO 2000 which is negligible loss for my camera, and had 1/400 shutter speed. As you learn your camera settings, camera, lenses, and learn post processing, you will begin to better understand optimal settings.
Everyone started where you are right now, and in a few days you’ll start to get the hang of it! This should keep you busy for a few days or weeks. Once you play around with understanding ISO, Shutter Speed, Aperture, and Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Manual as well as Auto ISO and Manual ISO, then come back and read another article that will help you along your photography Journey!
