Photographs That Sell

If you want to take better photographs, you need to understand the three main elements that make up a photo.

Digital SLR cameras have three main controls that affect an image; shutter speed, aperture and ISO. These three work together to optimize the final image and control the light permitted into the lens and the image sensor.

Shutter speed is an important setting, especially if you are taking photographs of moving subjects. The faster the shutter speed the less light is allowed into your image sensor. For moving subjects, you should start with a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second or faster.

For hand held cameras, 1/60th of a second is as slow as you can go without introducing blur into images, if you need a slower shutter than this, use a tripod.

Aperture works together with shutter speed, to allow more or less light into the image sensor. The faster your shutter speed, the larger aperture you will need to balance the light level in your photographs.

If the ambient light levels don’t allow you to balance the light for your image using shutter and aperture, then you will need to increase your ISO which adjusts the sensitivity of the image sensor in the same way as different ISO film used to in the good old days.

The higher your ISO number, the lighter your image, but the more noise your photographs will have.