Workin The Camera - Part 1

Here's the latest progress on figuring out my camera. I went online and read about three features: ISO, Aperture (F), and Shutter Speed.

On one Yahoo post, it says to "Think of ISO as a bucket that carries 'light'. The higher the ISO the bigger the bucket. Think of Shutter speed as how fast you can dump that bucket of light to illuminate the subject you want to take a picture of. Think of Aperture as the hose that fills that bucket." It doesn't matter to the bucket how fast you fill it - it's always going to need that same amount of 'light' to be full.

I learned that the higher ISO will capture fainter light signals, but also fainter "noise" as well. This means that I'll want to use the lowest ISO setting possible to get the clearest images and use a tripod whenever possible in low light settings. ISO 100 is a typical "normal" setting to get the crisper images. You can see the first set of results here; in the first photo, my ISO was pretty high, and captured a bit of noise.


I tried again reducing the ISO - (which added better drama) and reduced the noise level. I only wish I could find my tripod with all our baby stuff and construction going on!

Then I started gaming around with the aperture and shutter speeds. If you think of the hose example above, we want the aperture to be larger - which oddly enough is denoted by the smallest number on the camera. Mine can get 'up' to a f/2.8. The f/2.8 would create those blurry-background images more so than the f/5 or f/8 - which are normally clearer.

For shutter speeds, the longer shutter speeds are better for lower light (lower speeds takes longer to fill that bucket with the little amount of light that exists).

And that's what I know so far. My mind is working overtime on remembering the bucket analogy!