Three Important Digital Photography Settings for Beginners

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Ashwin_J]Ashwin J
This article aims to help beginners understand the correlation of three most important factors in digital photography. Aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings are the three most important factors that make a great shot.
Aperture is the size of the opening of the lens through which light enters to expose the shot
Shutter speed is the amount of time for which light is allowed to enter through the lens for exposure
ISO is the amount of sensitivity towards the light entering into the lens. Higher the ISO setting on your camera, higher the sensitivity will be. Lower the ISO setting on your camera, lower will be the sensitivity. Too much ISO sensitivity causes the photo to be grainy & washed out and lower ISO causes it to be very dark or the colors to look very faded. (ISO stands for 'International Organization for Standardization' which is an organization that standardized a system to measure sensitivity of film rolls. This has been adapted into digital cameras without much change.)
The user needs to find a balance between these three factors in order to get a shot which has perfect brightness and colors. The quantity & intensity of light coupled with the amount of time for which light is allowed to enter make or break a great photograph.
A good analogy that helped me understand how these factors work with each other is that of coffee and milk. Think of light as milk in your morning coffee, aperture as the size of the opening in your milk jug, shutter speed as the time for which you allow milk to flow into your coffee and ISO as the strength of the black coffee in your mug.
The bigger the opening of your milk jug, the more milk flows out of it (aperture). The more time you allow milk to flow, the more milk flows out of it (shutter speed). If you couldn't control the flow of milk and wanted your coffee darker, you'd make your concoction itself stronger (a low ISO sensitivity setting, for fixed amount of light coming through).
Choose an object (or person) as a subject and start experimenting with these settings. Make sure the subject has adequate light falling on it. Once you get a feel of these settings and their resultant photographs, go ahead and try shooting the same subject in different lighting conditions. A step further would be to try capturing moving objects - try a lower ISO and higher shutter speed as a starting point for moving shots.
Most Point and shoot Digital cameras like the Nikon L120 take care of these settings automatically for the user. But they also allow you to adjust these settings manually. It is important for a beginner who is serious about getting into photography to learn the essence of these three factors and begin to experiment by changing these settings. It is recommended to use auto focus while learning this so that the user can concentrate solely on mastering these three settings.
Ashwin J is an amateur photographer who currently owns a Nikon L120. Read more about the [http://www.nikonl120.in]Nikon L120.
Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Three-Important-Digital-Photography-Settings-for-Beginners&id=6632906] Three Important Digital Photography Settings for Beginners