HOW TO CHOOSE THE CORRECT

APERTURE, SHUTTER SPEED AND

ISO
BY JOHN SLAYTOR
The previous article in this four part series about moving beyond the P Mode on your DSLR
explained what your camera assumes about the quantity of light when being used in P or
Program mode and that combinations of shutter speed and different apertures can result in the
same amount of light reaching your DSLRs sensor. This article explains how to choose the ideal
combination of shutter speed and aperture. It also introduces ISO which allows you to vary the
sensitivity of your DSLRs sensor.
Imagine two very different scenes you want to photograph: your son standing resolutely in the
mountains, a backdrop of glorious scenery and your daughter dancing at a party, a distracting
background of chairs and tables behind her.
In the photo of your son, the mountains behind are sharp whilst in the photo of your daughter,
the distracting background are a blur.
What is your camera assuming about the importance of the background in P Mode so it can
decide whether or not to blur the background? Your camera generally has no idea about whats in
the background. Depending on the model, a camera may have thousands of images of scenes, and
the ideal shutter speed and aperture for each of those scenes, stored in its memory and will try to
match your scene with its memory so it can then impose the ideal shutter speed and aperture.
This memory approach can never match what you know about the scene. So once you have
decided whether or not you want the background, how do you communicate this to your camera?
You control how much of the background will be in focus by changing the aperture of your
camera. The larger the aperture (e.g. f5.6 instead of f11), the more the background will be
blurred. In the two photos imagined above, your sons photo has an aperture of f16 whilst your
daughters photo has an aperture of f4.
Why does your camera give you so many apertures when you only need f4 and f16? The answer is
complex aperture essentially affects the plane of focus or how much is in focus in front of and
behind your subject and different lens lengths and your distance from the subject will affect the
plane of focus. For the purpose of this article, which is written for anyone seeking to move
beyond the P mode, use the largest aperture possible when wanting to blur the background and
use either f11 or f116 when wanting to preserve details of the background.
But how do you change the aperture on your camera? The answer is to change your DSLRs
command dial from P to A A stands for Aperture priority and once you have done this, you
simply dial in the aperture you want and the camera will automatically select the appropriate
shutter speed. This sounds so easy and it would be if we didnt have to worry about shutter speed.
With a very small aperture, only a tiny amount of light is able to register on your cameras sensor
which means you have to keep the shutter open for longer than you would if you had used a very
large aperture. In the two photos imagined above, the boy is stationery so the actual shutter speed
of 1/180th sec is not a problem but the girl is dancing and had I used a shutter speed of 1/180th
second, she would have been blurred; in actuality I used a shutter speed of 1/1500th sec. So what
shutter speeds will give you the best results?
If you are photographing a landscape, your shutter speed should be 1/60th of a second or faster
(e.g. 1/250th of a second). If you are photographing a stationery person in a landscape then your
shutter speed should be at least 1/180th of a second or faster. If you are photographing a dancing
girl in a landscape then your shutter speed should be 1/500th of a second or faster. If you want to
be artistic when photographing a running girl and want her to be blurred, you should ensure the
shutter speed is about 1/15th of a second.
Say you want to take a photo of your daughter dancing in the mountains. In Aperture mode, you
select a very small aperture, say f11, to make sure the mountains behind her arent a blur but
disaster, your cameras read out indicates the camera has selected a shutter speed of 1/125th of a
second which is no where near fast enough since it is 1/3 as fast as what you need (1/500th of
second is twice as fast as 1/250th second which is twice as fast as 1/125th of a second) so what to
do? You could increase your aperture to f5.6 (remember from the rst article that f11 lets in half
the amount of light that f8 does which in turn lets in half the amount of light that f5.6 does).
But a f5.6 aperture would make the mountains blurred so what to do? Ask your daughter to stop
moving and somehow make her dance in Photoshop when you get home? No, what you need to
do is make your cameras sensor more sensitive to light if you make it three times as sensitive,
then at f11, your shutter speed will be what you want, 1/500th of a second.
But how to make your cameras sensor more sensitive? In the dark era before digital DSLRs, you
would use a faster lm in your camera. Films were rated on their sensitivity to light with an 800
ISO (ISO is also known as ASA) lm being twice as sensitive as a 400 ISO lm which in turn was
twice as sensitive as a 200 ISO lm. This meant that an 800 ISO lm required only 1/3 of the light
required by a 200 ISO lm to register the same amount of light information on the lm.
So why is this relevant in the digital era? Because you can easily change the sensitivity of your
DSLRs sensor mid roll so to speak. Going back to wanting to photograph your dancing daughter
on the hillside, if your cameras ISO was 200 when you found out the camera selected 1/125th
second when you selected f11, all you have to do is increase the ISO from 200 to ISO 800 and
your daughter will be beautifully sharp as will be the mountains behind her.
So why dont cameras use a very high ISO all the time? The faster the cameras ISO, the more
noise there is little dots start appearing in the darker or shadow areas of the picture where
there shouldnt be any dots and this isnt aesthetically desirable. Furthermore, sometimes you
want a combination of slow shutter speed and small aperture.
In summary, for a given ISO, a large aperture will blur the background and require less light than
a small aperture which will preserve detail in the background but require more light. Increasing
the ISO will make your DSLRs sensor more sensitive to light which will then allow you to use an
appropriate shutter speed for a desired aperture.
The next article will explain how your camera focusses in P mode and what you need to know to
ensure your subject is perfectly in focus.