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Aperture (AV mode)Aperture is the opening in the lens. In photography can be altered or adjusted to control the amount of light reaching the image sensor. The aperture size, along with shutter speed will change the amount of light exposure on the photograph, a faster shutter speed will allow more light exposure, a slower shutter speed will be a lower light exposure. Aperture is measured in ‘f-stops’, moving from one f-stop to next, backwards or forwards, doubles or halves the shutter speed as well as the light.

Examples of different levels of aperture.

The aperture adds dimension to a photograph by blurring the background and bringing the fore objects in focus.

Shutter Speed (TV mode)Shutter speed is the length of time a camera shutter is open during taking a picture. Shutter speed is measured in fractions of seconds. The bigger the denominator, the faster the shutter speed. For example, 1/1000 is alot faster than 1/30. More than likely, 1/60th of a second will be used because otherwise the camera will shake, leaving the photograph blurring unless you use a tripod.

Slow Shutter Speed Fast Shutter Speed

ISO settingsThe ISO settings control how sensitive the camera is to that light. It changes the sensors ability to take in light. The bigger the ISO number, the larger the light sensitivity. If the lighting conditions are dark, the higher ISO you will need. When using a high ISO, you are at a higher risk of the photograph collecting grains of noise, which can ruin the image.

Examples of using different levels of ISO settings.

White Balance“In photography image processing, color balance is the global adjustment of the intensities of the colors (typically red, green, and blue primary colors). An important goal of this adjustment is to render specific colors – particularly neutral colors – correctly; hence, the general method is sometimes called gray balance, neutral balance, or white balance.” (wikipedia.org/color_balance)

The date collected by image sensors must be transformed from the acquired values in to the new values. Due to this being a part of colour reproduction and display, often image noise is collected. Image noise is the commonly-used term to describe a visual distortion where a random variation of brightness and colour information appears in an image.

The left half shows the photo as it came from the digital camera. The right half shows the photo adjusted to make a grey surface neutral in the same light.

Noise clearly visible in an image from a digital camera.

The photo beside is a photograph I took myself, the image noised.

The top two photographs look a lot more unwelcoming and nasty and look very cold as they both have tones off blue which is a very dark feeling colour. The bottom two photos on the other hand are more warm, welcoming colours as they both have tones of red and pink which are colours that describe feelings of warmth and cosiness as such.

White Fluorescent Light / 1600 ISO Tungsten light / 1600 ISO

Shady / 1600 ISODaylight / 1600 ISO

Original image

Cropped

Levels

Dodging and burning

Colour adjustments