Take the Shot: What We Learned In This Section

During the last lesson, we focused our attention on answering the riddle that is shooting in low light. Light is the heart of photography and without it, shooting is just impossible.

To shoot better photos in low light situations, we must understand that light isn’t truly lost but only diminished. There will always be light and shooting in dark situations only means that you have to find a way to extract all of the light you can.

In order to do that, you would need to manipulate your exposure triangle which contains the elements of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. By widening your aperture, you are giving way for more light to enter your camera. On the other hand, a slower shutter speed will give more time for light to come in while your ISO is responsible for the sensitivity of your sensors to light.

With that, this section is finally coming to a close. To reach a better closure for this section, however, we will devote this article to reviewing what we learned throughout our lessons.

Let’s start!

Focusing

The first thing we discussed in this section is focusing. Focusing, as we mentioned, is a straightforward act in photography that can be turned to a useful creative skill with the right amount of practice.

We learned the different mechanisms of focusing which are the Automatic (AF) and Manual (MF) Focusing. Each type for mechanisms its own advantage over the other.

The Automatic Focusing is much more convenient and much faster to use as its manual counterpart. AF is the better option if you are shooting fast objects. On the other hand, MF is better for creative shots where you have to manually manipulate your depth of field.

Apart from AF and MF, we also discussed one of the necessary knowledge that is concerned with focusing like adjusting the focus dial to better suit your vision.

Depth of Field

Next thing we learned in this section is the depth of field. The depth of field or DOF is one of the most important concepts you need to learn in photography DOF pertains to the distance of your farthest object from the nearest one you are seeing in your viewfinder.

We mentioned that the DOF is affected by two things: the aperture and the focal length. The aperture pertains to the opening of your camera where the wider it is, the narrower your focus point gets. If you want your subject stand out on a blurry background (bokeh), then opening up your aperture is the way to go.

Meanwhile, the focal length is another element that affects your depth of field. As you get closer to your subject increasing your focal length or zoom, you will notice that you are able to focus on the subject more to the point that your background isn’t recognizable at all anymore.

The depth of field takes some practice to master so we also tried to create some exercises for you during the lesson.

Shooting Fast Objects

After learning how to focus and manipulate depth of field, we dived into shooting in different scenarios. These shooting scenarios are considered to be basic riddles in photography that you can solve if you have the right amount of experience.

Shooting fast objects is tricky. The obvious thing that you need to do in order to capture a fast object is to increase your shutter speed. By increasing your shutter speed, you are shortening your shooting time frame.

Things can get interesting when you are shooting in venues with less light. By increasing the shutter speed, you are also allowing lesser light to come in since your exposure time is faster. However, if you lessen your shutter speed to let in more light, you are risking motion blur since your subject may move faster than your shutter already.

To address this, you need to use the other elements such as your aperture and your ISO.

Shooting in Low Light

Speaking of shutter speed, ISO, and aperture, shooting in low light is very much concerned with the same elements. When shooting in low light, the first thing that you need to understand is that light will always be present but you need to find a way to siphon them.

The elements inside the exposure triangle all work interdependently which means that they have their own effects and adjustments, but at the same time they can compensate for each other.

If you are shooting in low light, the first thing you want to do is to open up your aperture to let in more light. However, if you don’t want your depth of field to be deeper, you can stop down and slow down your shutter a bit to compensate for the lost light.

On the other hand, your ISO can be your last line of adjustment to help you shoot in a given situation with proper lighting.

So that’s really it for this section. We hope you learned a lot today and we  hope that you keep practicing to improve your skill. Also, be sure to keep on sharing these lessons to your peers to help them grow up in photography as well.