Microsoft 702 manual Exposure

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Chapter 2: Making the Most of Your Camera

For serious camera users, the manual SLR cameras were usually the best option, since they offered so much control. The creative process was not left to the automatic settings of a camera. Automatic point-and-shoot cameras were good for novice photographers who didn’t want to worry about setting the camera controls. Many automatic cameras could produce adequate or even excellent photos without requiring knowledge of advanced photography concepts.

While you can still find fully automatic and fully manual cameras, many of today’s cameras offer different modes for different degrees of automatic and manual control. For example, some SLR film cameras let you switch to an automatic mode where the camera determines everything from focusing to setting the aperture. Many compact digital cameras are designed to be used primarily in automatic mode, but also allow you to switch to program and manual modes to control exposure settings, like shutter speed and aperture.

With digital cameras, the adjustments that you make are often digital approxi- mations of the equivalent function in film cameras, as with shutter speed or ISO. But the photographic result is the same. The following sections provide an overview of the most important manual camera settings and concepts.

Exposure

Exposure describes the amount of light that comes into your camera when you take a photo. Setting the camera to the correct exposure is crucial to getting the proper tones and colors in your photos. Overexposure occurs when too much light has reached the image sensor (or film in a film camera), which decreases detail and causes the photo to look washed out. Underexposure occurs when insuffi- cient light has been let into the camera, and the photo looks dim and murky.

Exposure is controlled by three factors: the aperture, the shutter speed, and the ISO rating. Aperture is the size of the opening that lets light into the camera. Shutter speed is how long light is allowed into the camera. ISO rating (the film speed in a film camera) is the sensor or film’s sensitivity to light.

Microsoft Picture It! Companion Guide