How To Take Better Photographs

If you have ever tried photography using a fully manual camera then you will in all likelihood know the difficulties and frustrations associated with taking the perfect picture.

There are four elements to consider and each of then require a different setting depending on what your subject matter is doing, how well it is lit and what effects you want your image to have.

You need to adjust your shutter speed, your aperture, your ISO and finally your image focus.

Most experienced photographers begin with either the aperture setting or the shutter speed depending on whether its an action shot or if they want depth of field in the image.

Each setting you use will limit or permit more light into the camera, meaning that one of the other settings will need to compensate in order to achieve the ideal exposure.

Shutter speed is a great example of this, you want a very fast shutter speed to ‘freeze’ a moving object, person, vehicle etc, but the faster you set the shutter, the less light will be allowed into the camers, darkening the image.

This can be balanced by increasing the size of the aperture (reducing the aperture number – small numbers equate to larger ap), but doing this can also affect your depth of field which for some action shots is less than ideal.

The solution is to increase your ISO from 100 up in steps until the light is balanced and your image looks good.

The final stage in photography is to bring your image into focus. Depending on where you have set your aperture you may have a degree of depth of field so you will need to adjust your focus manually until your desired subject matter is crisp and sharp.