“To me, photography is an art of observation... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

Since we are done covering photography basics of composition as well as some pointers, we’ll now look into some of the technical terms of the camera and how to control them for a better result.

Switch your camera to the manual mode and start experimenting. By taking photos of the same area, environment or object with multiple changes in settings you can get a fair understanding of how each affects your photography.

First, here are some of the technical terms you will be required to play with on manual mode.

-Aperture

-Shutter speed

-ISO

Aperture value is how far you want your lens to open up. The wider the aperture is, the more light travels inside your lens. However, you might get confused over your aperture values on the camera. The smaller the aperture value appears on your camera, the wider your aperture is open. Portraits mainly use a fully open aperture (smaller value on the camera) as it take the background settings out of focus and emphases on the face in front. Landscapes call for a smaller aperture (higher value on the camera), as it sharpens the background details, too.

Shutter speed is the time limit for which you allow the light to enter the aperture. If you opt for slower shutter speed with a hand held camera, then your pictures may come out blurry because of the hand shake. Use a tripod for slower shutter speeds. Slower shutter speed mostly go with smaller apertures as it increases the time for the light from a small aperture to enter.

ISO is your camera’s light sensitivity. You might need to alter that with any change in the surrounding light. In sharp sunlight, your ISO values may vary from 100-200. Filtered light calls for slightly higher ISO values approximately 400-800. While indoors your ISO values can go up to 3000. Extremely high ISO values can also cause your pictures to become grainy.

It should be noted that these are the settings that worked for me, in my experimentation methods, and they may vary for someone else. But only experimentation can get you your set of values as well as strengthen your hold on your camera.

-Momina.