What is Exposure in Photography?
A Beginner’s Guide to Taking Control of Your Photography
Photography is all about light, and the light we capture with our cameras is known as an exposure. What goes into making an exposure, you may ask? And what constitutes a good or proper exposure? We’ve got you covered. We’ve put together the ultimate guide to teach you the basics, from the three pillars of exposure to how we can manipulate it to achieve our artistic vision.
Getting Started
Just what is exposure in photography? To put it simply, it is the amount of light that reaches your camera’s imaging sensor or light sensitive surface, like film. A good exposure will look accurate to life or the photographer's creative vision. It will maximize an image's quality and capture details in both the brightest highlights and darkest shadows.
Let’s Explore How It Works!
Exposure is controlled by three settings, and by manipulating these settings, you control how bright or dark an image is and even whether you freeze or blur a moving subject.
The Exposure Triangle
The three individual settings responsible for shaping our exposure are aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Together, these settings are known most commonly as the exposure triangle. The balance of these three settings allows you to create the best exposure for the scene at hand, and to do so while expressing your artistic intent.
Aperture
The size of the opening in the rear of the lens. Controls how much light reaches our imaging sensor and the area of apparent focus in our image, known as depth of field.
Shutter Speed
Controls the duration of our exposure, with faster speeds freezing action, and slower speeds blurring motion.
ISO
The camera sensors sensitivity to light. A lower value yields cleaner files, where higher values introduce grain or digital noise to our images.
Take Control
Once we’ve gained an understanding of the basics, we can take that knowledge and better our understanding of the camera and how it works. From exposure modes to master how our camera reads light to suggest the settings it does, let’s take the helm and control our exposures.
Exposure Modes Explored
One of the most wonderful things that modern electronic digital cameras give you is many high-tech options for your image making. This can also be one of the most horrible aspects, as sometimes, confusion ensues. And, very often, confusion starts with the camera’s modes.
Program Mode (P)
Camera pairs aperture and shutter speed but you can alter settings
Aperture Priority (A, Av)
You set the aperture, and the camera sets the shutter speed
Shutter Priority (S, Tv)
You set the shutter speed, and the camera sets the aperture
Manual Mode (M)
You set shutter speed, aperture, and ISO
Taking a look at any modern mirrorless or DSLR camera, you’ll notice a slew of controls, buttons, and dials. Atop nearly all cameras sits a large dial labeled with many letters and icons. This is our mode dial. It is how we control the level of power we give to our camera or take for ourselves.
Exposure Tools
As we experiment with various exposure modes, we’ll face some challenges, from how the camera selects settings in auto modes to how to adjust the brightness of our image when we just don’t know which specific settings to tweak. The following tools are there to aid us in overcoming the aforementioned issues and to help us nail the shot every time.
All light comes with a certain color cast or temperature. Think fluorescent versus incandescent, or how warm and soft the light appears just before the sun dips below the horizon. White balance is the process of controlling these color casts in our images, ensuring accurate, natural colors throughout the photograph. While auto white balance can work well, it isn’t perfect, so knowing how to use it is an essential skill to master your exposures.
Get Creative
Once we understand how to take greater control of our camera’s exposure and how it alters our images, we can begin experimenting. There are many ways in which we can create expressive and unique photographs in camera using settings like aperture to control depth of field, or shutter speed to intentionally blur our images.
Using our shutter speeds, and some additional tools, we can extend the duration of our exposures to capture movement in dramatic effect. This long exposure technique is used to capture stunning landscapes with movement of water, light, or even the stars. Just make sure you have a tripod and remote trigger.
Sometimes, a bright or dark exposure is just what the doctor ordered, so long as the entire image isn’t too bright or dark to see. This style of image, where highlights and shadows make up the majority of the scene are known as high-key and low-key photography respectively.
Learning More
With a greater understanding of exposure and how each individual setting affects the final image, we can better approach specific genres and subject types. From portraits to landscapes, and sports to wildlife, there are similarities and there are differences in the settings we need to achieve our creative vision. These guides cover the settings themselves, creative possibilities and beyond!
Exposure is the heart and soul of photography, but it isn’t the only technical skill we need to learn in order to master our craft. To learn more about photography and the tips and techniques required to become a pro, consider checking out our other articles and videos on the B&H Explora site.
