Miles & Manual Settings

After completing the photo shoot earlier this month, I decided I needed to learn more about how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO work together as well as practice walking through manual adjustments for particular scenes. Today, Miles served as my puppy model for various manual setting experiments. Here we go!

Shutter Speed: “Slower Lets More Light In”

ISO: 200 | Aperture: f/4.5 | Shutter Speed: 1/320

ISO: 200 | Aperture: f/4.5 | Shutter Speed: 1/5

Conclusion: Lower shutter speeds mean slower shutter movement (and more blur)… which means more light gets in for brighter pictures.

ISO 1: “Light & Noise”

ISO: 320 | Aperture: f/5.0 | Shutter Speed: 1/50

ISO: 1250 | Aperture: f/5.0 | Shutter Speed: 1/50

Conclusion: Higher ISO lets more light in… but be careful with noise control for ISO settings higher than 800.

ISO 2: “Higher for Lighter”

ISO: 100 | Aperture: f/5.0 | Shutter Speed: 1/20

ISO: 1000 | Aperture: f/5.0 | Shutter Speed: 1/20

Conclusion: Increasing the ISO a reasonable amount increases light without noise pollution.

Adjustment Walk-Through

For this walk-through, my ISO settings for the original photo were based on the fact that I wanted to keep my ISO below 1000 if possible to reduce the potential for noise. Since my aperture was as wide as it would go, it was either make the ISO higher (and risk noise) or make my shutter speed slower (and risk blur).

Although I originally didn’t want to move the ISO any higher, I went for the higher ISO for the first adjustment so I could avoid the blur that potentially comes with slower shutter speeds. The lighting in the second version was not quite where I wanted it, and I wasn’t willing to increase the ISO even higher. There was nothing left for me to do but to further slow the shutter speed but be very steady-handed in order to reduce the blur.