How To Master Any Camera

This is part two of five in a new super-short series called ‘How To Take Better Photographs.’ Sixteen years and nearly one million photographs later, I’m sharing these five essential steps to taking better photographs, regardless of your camera.

There’s a common saying that goes: “the best camera you have is the one with you.” That is to say regardless of whether you’re carrying a Kodak disposable, an iPhone 6S, a Nikon D3200, or a Hasselblad 1xd, the basic elements one must have in complete control for each tool are remarkably similar.

To take a great exposure on any camera, you must master these three things, first and foremost. (1) The aperture, (2) the shutter speed, and (3) the ISO. Think of these as interactive levers—when one is pulled, another must be calibrated to regain equilibrium. A camera’s job is to transfer light from the outside world, through your lens, and onto a photosensitive surface called “the sensor.”

Below, I’ll give a brief description of each and how they work together inside your camera.

1 | The Aperture

I like to use the analogy of the human eye—after all, cameras do mimic our own biology quite remarkably. The aperture is like your pupil. This is the entrance for light from the outside world. Just how your body can adjust the size of your pupil to allow for more (wide) or less (narrow) light to enter, so too can we adjust our camera’s aperture, in steps called ‘f-stops’. The aperture also plays a crucial role in what’s called the ‘depth of field.’ Essentially, the depth of field is how in focus your entire scene is.

A shallow depth of field, created by a wide aperture (low f-stop like f/1.4), only keeps a sliver of your scene in focus. This is often a sought-after look and is what Apple’s Portrait mode attempts to imitate as shallow depths of field are often associated with better photographs.

A wide depth of field, created by a narrow aperture (high f-stop like f/22), keeps the entire scene in focus. This is why, for much of our daily lives, our pupils remain small, allowing us to keep much of our world in focus. However, when we get our pupils dilated, they become much larger, both increasing our sensitivity (not surprisingly) to light, but also vastly decreasing our depth of field (ever hold your hand really close to your face when your pupils are dilated and your fingers were in focus but nothing else?).

When shooting in low-light settings, the more your can open your aperture up (low f-stops), the more light you’ll let into your camera, thus increasing the chances of making a photograph that mimics the scene before you.

2 | The Shutter Speed

This leads us to our second key component of a camera you should absolutely know regardless of camera: the shutter speed. The human body equivalent of the shutter is your eyelid. The faster you open and close your eyes, the less light you let in, and vice versa. This works in tandem with your aperture. For example, let’s go back to our low-light situation. Imagine you’re at a dinner party and the lighting isn’t great. You set your aperture as wide as it will go, but your photos are still too dark. Now, since you’ve maxed out that variable, you can go to your shutter speed and decrease it until you are allowing the desired amount of light in.

The main caveat here is that as you decrease your shutter speed slower and slower, any shake or movement of the camera (even handheld) will be amplified—and not in a good way. This is where a handy tripod comes in. A tripod ensures that even if the shutter speed is slow, the camera still won’t move while the shutter is open.

The final variable that you can play with on any camera to master your exposure is the ISO—essentially, the sensitivity of your film. A higher ISO number means that the film or digital sensor is better equipped to capture lower light situations. That’s why you’ll often hear photographers talk about how great the low-light settings are. They’re referring to how far they can push the ISO upwards before there’s a meaningful degradation (or graininess) in the shot. A common ISO for daylight is 400. This is what many famous film stocks are aligned with. Think Portra 400 (the 400 is the sensitivity).

So next time you go out to shoot, switch your camera into Manual mode and try to mess with these three variables a bit. The more adept you are at switching between them and understanding what each unique scene requires from your camera, the better equipped you’ll be to capture that image you have in your head.

Quick tip: Download the Halide app to allow you to change these three settings on your phone.

Good luck and see you tomorrow!