The Exposure Triangle
The exposure triangle consists of the three elements ISO, shutter speed and aperture. All three of these are adjusted to get a desired photograph. The three things make a bigger difference than you may think. You can see my examples of how ISO, shutter speed and aperture can change the photograph below.
ISO- ISO measures the sensitivity of the image sensor. The lower the number, the less sensitive your camera is to light which means the finer the grain. Higher ISO settings are generally used in darker situations to get faster shutter speeds
Aperture- Aperture is the size of the opening of the lens when a photograph is captured. By changing your aperture it can help you to get photographs with depth of field and more blurred and focussed areas in the photograph.
Shutter Speed- Shutter speed is the amount of time that the shutter is open. If there is a fast moving object and you want to capture it still then it is a good idea to change your shutter speed to around 1/1000 (a thousandth of second) the change of the setting will mean the photograph will be captured in 1/1000, however, if the shutter speed is 1 second then the moving object would be blurred or gone!
ISO- ISO measures the sensitivity of the image sensor. The lower the number, the less sensitive your camera is to light which means the finer the grain. Higher ISO settings are generally used in darker situations to get faster shutter speeds
Aperture- Aperture is the size of the opening of the lens when a photograph is captured. By changing your aperture it can help you to get photographs with depth of field and more blurred and focussed areas in the photograph.
Shutter Speed- Shutter speed is the amount of time that the shutter is open. If there is a fast moving object and you want to capture it still then it is a good idea to change your shutter speed to around 1/1000 (a thousandth of second) the change of the setting will mean the photograph will be captured in 1/1000, however, if the shutter speed is 1 second then the moving object would be blurred or gone!
Below are my examples of how the elements in the exposure triangle effect the photograph, in the experiments I did not change any other element except the one mentioned
ISO:
These examples show the change in ISO starting with 6400 ISO on the left, ending with 100 ISO on the right. As you can see the image on the left has slightly more noise and grain, however on the right image it is very dark, also known an underexposed. During these experiments I did not change the aperture and shutter speed, I only changed the ISO.
Shutter Speed:
These images show the change in shutter speed. Someone is swinging their legs in all of these images, this will help us see how the shutter speed settings let us capture the movement as still. The image on the left has a good exposure. The shutter speed used to capture the photograph is 1 second, this means the shutter will open for one second- this is quite a long time therefore the moving object will become blurry as there is lots of movement. Whereas, on the image on the right the shutter speed is 1/1000 which means the shutter will open for a short amount of time. This means the image will be more still. As I did not change the ISO and aperture the image is dark, like previously mentioned all three elements should be changed to get a desired result.
Aperture:
These examples show the change in aperture, the focal point in all of the images intend to be the sunflower. The image on the left clearly shows the sunflower as the selected focal point and the image has good exposure; also the depth of field is very evident. In the image I used f/3 which means the shutter was more open and more light was let in. However, on the image on the right the aperture was f/22 which means the shutter was more closed so the image is more underexposed. The subject does not stand out on the image on the right as there is not a clear depth of field. So what is the photographer supposed to do as the images are underexposed? The answer is they have to change the ISO and shutter speed to get a desired photo. When experimenting, the aperture increased from left to right and I also did not change the shutter speed and ISO in tis experiment.