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Aperture (AV mode)What is it?Aperture is a name for a hole in the lens and this hole in the lens controls the depth of field in the final photograph. The bigger the hole means the more light which reaches the film or the image sensor.When you talk about depth of field, its referring to the distance at which an object becomes clear or not, so for example if you took a photo of a landscape and everything at the front of the landscape was nice and clear and then everything in the distance was blurry this is all to do with the depth of field. The main purpose?Aperture mode is responsible for controlling the depth of field on your photographs. This makes it very useful when your photographing landscapes because you can set it to a narrow aperture so you can capture all objects and details in the foreground, middle distance and the background as well. It also serves a good purpose when your taking portrait photographs because if you use a wide aperture it means that the main content of the photograph would be nice and crisp and then all the background information which is irrelevant to the portrait photograph would be out of focus, this is good because it would take away any possible distraction which might be going on in the background and put all the focus on the subject.The settingsThe aperture setting adjusts the size of the lens hole. The setting is usually a number then followed by the letter “f”. The lower the number before the letter “f” would mean the bigger the aperture opening, so this reduces the overall depth of field. Vice versa the higher the “f” number means the smaller opening so less light will reach the and resulting in an increase in the overall depth of field.Bellow you can see the ranges of settings and also the hole in the lens that it will actually make.When changing the aperture settings that camera will automatically adjust the other settings so you can get the right image.

This affect this setting has on the final photo is as you can see that the front chair appears to be more in focus than the other chairs and the background also appears to be out of focus.

This settings effects the final image, by making basically all the chairs in focus and the background and the fire extinguisher are clearly out of focus.

Finally the final photo which I took with the aperture settings, which was the f/16 setting , the effect that this has on the final photo is that everything is quite clearly in focus rather than having a few things in focus and the rest out of focus like the other two photo’s.

f/4

f/8

f/16

Shutter Speed (TV mode)What is it?Shutter speed, is what it say it is, it controls the time that it takes for the shitter to open and then close, the shutter speed can massively influence the outcome of the final image, for example if you were photographing a moving object and fast shutter speed could be used to show a still of that object but a slow shutter speed would show movement.The main purpose?The main purpose of shutter speeds is to either freeze a moving object usually a very fast moving object or show the progressof a fast moving object. A n example of a fast moving objectwhich has captured using a fast shutter speed is the bottom image on the left hand side and an example of a moving object whichhas captured using a slows shutter speed because it shows themovement of the car. Personally I find both slow and fastshutter speed images both equally interesting because imagineif the image on the top left was captured with a fast shutterspeed it wouldn’t be half as interesting because it would justbe an image of a car driving down a hill. I find fast shutter speedon images also interesting because they capture still images of fast moving objects and they are usually images of things which the human eye wouldn’t be able to capture fully, when shooting with a fast shutter speed you need to make sure there is plenty of light because obviously with a fast shutter speed the camera wont get as much exposure to light.A slow shutter speed also allows more light into an image so its good for shooting in situations which have poor lighting. One downfall of a slow shutter speed means that you can get something called camera shake, which is were the final outcome of the image appears as if someone has been shaking a lot when taking the photo.The SettingsShutter speed are often the number 1 then followed by a / and then by another figure for example “1/250 s” this means that the shutter will open and close in 250 th of a second the shutter speed usually range from 1 second to 1/1000’s if you want to take a photo were the shutter takes a few seconds to open and close it would appear as “4”” on the camera settings. The photo beneath show the difference between shutter speeds and the settings beneath.

As you can see to the left, you can see the effect on the longer shutter speeds even though this was taken a quarter of a second, the object was moving fast enough to have entered the lens and then left when the lens closed. The result shows the movement of the car and makes the object look kind of blurry.

This setting as you can see effects the outcome of the image massively to the image above, because in this one you can clearly make out that it’s a moving car whereas in the other photo it could be anything moving quickly, this setting still has some slight blur on it though.

This setting which makes the lens open and close a lot faster than what we can comprehend, has a huge influence on the outcome on the final image, because unlike the other two images there is no clear blur on this image and it basically freeze’s the object that you take a photo of, the object would have to be moving extremely quickly for the camera not to capture it as a still at this shutter speed.

1/4

1/200

1/2000

ISO settingsWhat is it?The ISO settings on a camera is, how you change how sensitive the camera is to light wether it be natural or studio lighting.

The main purpose?Basically as I have said above it controls how sensitive your camera is to light, you can use ISO settings to compensate for poor photography conditions such as if you were shooting in a very dimly lit environment, increasing the ISO settings might help you get the image that you want to get and vice versa if you were shooting in an environment where their was too much light exposure you could use a low ISO to try and stop the image from looking too bright. One downfall of ISO settings is if they are used incorrectly and the settings are put on too high of a setting for the environment the image can get something called “imagenoise” which you can see in the image to the left hand side,image noise usually becomes clear when you zoom in on a photo and will just overall make the image look unprofessional and bad. Image noise is noticeable in allphotographs in the shadows and its more easily recognisable in images which have large areas of a similarcolour for example the sea or the sky would be a good example.

The SettingsISO settings are usually changed on universal systemthe settings will typically appear as the letters “ISO” then followed by a number for example “ISO 800” the numbers on the majority of cameras will range from 100 to 6400, the settings can also appear as the letters “ASA” followed by a number in the case of the letters being “ASA” the numbers can range from 100 to 400 usually but not always it all depends on your camera.

The influence that this setting has on the camera is actually very little as when your looking at images which have used ISO settings you usually look for image noise but in the case were the lowest ISO setting has been used there is very little to no effect on the final outcome.

The 1600 setting on the camera has a little more effect on the final outcome of the image, as you can see in the photo there is a little amount of image noise, which is only that noticlble when you zoom in allot. So yes I would say that it has an effect but not a huge effect.

The 3200 ISO setting has quite a big difference on how the final image looks, for example the image to the right is the same as all the others but you can see in this image that there is a lot more clear image noise in this image than there is in any of the others.

100

1600

3200

White BalanceWhat is it?White balance is a setting on a camera which is made to basically help the camera understand what white is.

The main purposeWhite balance has an auto setting on the camera which is used in the majority of situations, but sometimes the photographer might want to change the white balance to give the photo a different “feel” to the final image. The SettingsTypically you have 8 different settings for white balance (which you can see in the table at the bottom of the page). White balance can hugely influence how your final image can look for, one way is that it can make a photo which was taken in broad daylight actually look like it was taken around the time of dusk. An image showing the different effects of white balance is beneath with the original shot and then it shows the effects of each different setting around the original photo.

White balance doesn’t really effect the quality of the overall picture in terms of how clear and the overall focus, it just effects some of the colours in the photo mainly changes how the white’s look in the photo. You can see how the different settings affect the outcome of the photos with the four photos above, for example the daylight WB seems to somewhat intensify the light from the sun and make it seem brighter, the cloudy WB does what it says in it’s title it gives the image the feel that light is kind of shaded by some clouds. I personally think that there doesn’t really appear to be that much difference between cloudy WB and shade WB apart from the shade WB just makes the photo about darker in some places like the shadows on the tree seem to be intensified. Finally the Tungsten WB is one of the settings were you can really notice a difference because the photo appears to have had a blue filter put on top of it the same look also happens with the fluorescent WB effect.

Cloudy WBDaylight WB

Tungsten WBShade WB

Original image

Cropped

Levels

Dodging and burning

Colour adjustments