Easy Way To Understand ISO and shutter speed In Photography

As you know there are lots of modes and features available on every single DSLR camera, and not everyone knows every single feature of their DSLR.

but what if you know the most important and needed features of your DSLR camera?

like ISO and shutter speed, which are basically used to capture more sharp and beautiful photographs without doing so many things.

when I was learning photography I don’t know how to shoot with manual mode.

I just use ISO, shutter speed, rule of thirds, and aperture with some different modes to capture photographs, but 8/10 times I can’t get the expected result.

Do you know why ?? because I don’t know the manual guide of “how to use DSLR camera…”, then I learn some basic features or modes of my DSLR?

theories are always boring, I don’t like theories and I know you also don’t like theories.

like me, you’re looking for some practical knowledge related to ISO and shutter speed and that matters a lot to capture best photographs that’s we know.

so in this article, I am sharing some important tips and will answer your questions like how to understand iso aperture and shutter speed.

if you are one of them who don’t like theories or want some real practical knowledge related to ISO and shutter speed than this article helps you.

you just need to understand some basic points and you are good to go.

after reading this article you can deal with ISO and shutter speed very easily and you can also able to capture photographs in any situation.

Easy Way To Understand ISO and shutter speed

now the first question you are asking me right now is…..

What is ISO In Photography ??

So if you love theory then the definition of ISO is down below for you.

ISO determines how sensitive the image sensor is to light.

didn’t get it ?? that’s fine, let me tell you this definition in our simple language.

So ISO means when your DSLR captures something at that time the sensor of your DSLR gets some lights.

so if your ISO is too high then the sensor gets very good amount of lights in and when you decrease ISO then the sensor gets fewer amount of lights.

Normally in every entry-level DSLR camera, the maximum ISO is around 3200 and the minimum ISO is 0.

when the sensor senses too much then your photograph contains more brightness, and if your sensor senses too less then your photograph contains more darkness.

so now if I ask you that when you’re capturing images at night then you should increase your ISO or decrease ??.

yeah, you are right you need to increase your ISO because at that time your camera sensors must need to sense too much.

and if there is more light then you must need to decrease the ISO.

An important tip while playing with ISO

800 ISO is the default and best option to capture sharper images.

Why ISO is so important to ME ??

When I don’t know anything about ISO at that time I set ISO to Auto and my camera can’t able to sense when I capture photographs at night so I can’t get a good quality of photographs.

so after understanding ISO, I can able to capture more sharp and good images in any situation.

important tips while you use ISO

increasing the ISO also reduces the quality of your images.

When ISO is too high !!

it makes your photographs more grainy and that’s not good for you.

When to use ISO In Photography?

if the sky is overcast or it is evening time, then use an ISO within the range of 400 to 800.
at night use ISO 1600 or more than 1600.

that’s all about ISO.

if you do enough practice then you can capture really sharp images with your DSLR camera, and no matter there is day or night you can capture lots of images without any problem.

now let’s talk about shutter speed.

so the first question…

what is shutter speed in Photography?

again if you love theory then the pure definition of shutter speed is here.

The shutter allows light to shine onto the image sensor when you turn on the shutter.

understood ?? no ?? haha, so the basic meaning or definition of shutter speed is here.

what is shutter ???: when you click any photograph at that time the shutter turn on and off in frames of seconds, that’s called the shutter, if your shutter speed is too high then the process of shutter on-off done too quickly, that’s why we can able to capture any fast-moving object using shutter speed.

You can use any modes to capture long exposures kind of images, sometimes I use manual mode but I am also a big fan of shutter-priority.

when you turn on this mode and let’s assume you select a shutter of 8 seconds then your camera shutter is open for 8 seconds to expose light to the camera sensor.

that means what happens in the next 8 seconds in front of your DSLR camera that senses by your DSLR camera.

and then it captures that 8-second moment in one single image.

see this example to understand what I explained.

shutter-speed: 16 sec

I hope now you know the true meaning of shutter speed.

if you buy an entry-level DSLR camera like canon 1300D or Nikon D3300 then you got a Maximum shutter speed up to 30 sec and then bulb.

what is the bulb ?? só using a bulb you can extend the time limit to more than 30 sec to capture great exposure photographs but for this, you just need to keep that capture button pressed, so you can use a remote for that thing?

Now I hope you assume like ISO, shutter-speed works the same but don’t confuse between ISO and shutter speed.

while you use shutter-speed just remember about “shutter”.

the more second your camera sense the lighter is gathered, and it gives you much brighter images.

ISO and shutter speed matters a lot, you know why ?? because using these two features you can able to capture awesome images no matter what type of situation you face.

no matter there is day or night using ISO and shutter speed you can able to capture interesting images.

if your shutter speed is too high like 1/4000 then your camera capture the image in 1/4000 sec.

so you can able to capture any fast object like car, plan, etc and also capture some interesting photographs of lights with low shutter-speed.

shutter speed: 1/4000 sec

you already saw that example which is captured using low shutter-speed.

If you want to learn manual mode then these two features ISO and shutter speed are the most important for you.

for more control over your DSLR camera’s manual mode, you can learn or understand the exposure triangle.

basically, the exposure triangle is the combination of ISO, shutter speed, and aperture.

as you know in this article I am sharing the most important and WHY types of points of ISO and shutter speed so I am not going deeper with this exposure triangle.

if you know a little bit about exposure then I can say that the exposure triangle is used to decide how to adjust exposure, and at the end get better photographs.

if you want to dive deeper and don’t know anything about the exposure/exposure triangle then you can read all about the exposure triangle here.

learn Exposure Triangle in Depth

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thanks for reading this article on ‘ISO and shutter speed’ hope you enjoy this article and learn something new, thank you.

About Author

Manthan

Hi, I'm Manthan I'm a professional photographer and founder of photographywith.com. this site hosts all of my writing on photography stuff like blogs, reviews, editing, and much more. whatever I learn new, I publish here as a blog with some good and easy examples. Cheers, Manthan

photographywithdc@gmail.com

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