Get to grips with exposure

FIND OUT HOW SHUTTER SPEED, APERTURE AND ISO WORK TOGETHER

When you’re exposing for a particular scene, you’re actually carrying out a balancing act. The aim is to get just the right amount of light coming through the lens to hit the camera’s sensor, by adjusting three core variables: aperture, shutter speed and

ISO. If you’ve only ever used Auto and semi-automatic modes before, you might not have noticed that when you change a setting, the camera is automatically changing the other variables to create a balanced shot. Close the aperture and the camera will need to extend the shutter speed to let in more light, or boost the ISO to make the sensor more sensitive to light; and so on.

There’s always a bit of a compromise to be made, so to get the best creative results you want from your camera, refer to our exposure triangle (opposite) to see which variable you should change in any given circumstance.

You don’t always have to go into Manual mode to take back control. If you prefer to stay in the semi-automatic modes but are noticing your images are coming out a little brighter or darker than expected, you can make adjustments using exposure compensation. This allows you to force the camera to under- or overexpose the image by a certain number of f-stops for a particular scene. Just be sure to return the exposure compensation setting back to zero when you’re finished shooting, so the exposures aren’t affected in your subsequent images.