Photography is light. Each time you press the shutter button there are a series of actions that take place inside your camera, and that result in an image. None of that would be possible if there was no light. Today I am going to talk about the triangle of light . It is a very important concept and if you want to get the manual and semi-manual mode and handle them with ease, you will need to understand the 3 components of this triangle well. I would say that they are the most influential factors in how the final photograph will be.
THE THREE ELEMENTS OF THE TRIANGLE OF LIGHT
The three elements that make up the famous triangle of light are ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. Most of the readers of this blog know what each of these factors is but in case you are a laggard I explain them very briefly:- ISO: is the sensitivity of the sensor to light, the higher the ISO value we choose, the more sensitive the sensor of our camera will become to light and therefore it will capture more light.
- Aperture: It is the size of the diaphragm, that is, the hole that is inside the lens or lens, and that allows light to enter. The larger the aperture, the more light will enter and be registered in the camera.
- Shutter speed (or shooting speed): This is the time during which the camera is kept open by registering the light or photo. They are usually fractions of a second, which lasts a shot, but can be more extensive. In fact, at slower shooting speeds, more light enters the camera.
HOW TO PLAY WITH THE TRIANGLE OF LIGHT
Let's see. Capturing a photograph is actually capturing the fair amount of light from what we want to photograph. Do we agree on that? Well, now I want you to imagine yourself in a room with a closed window. There is no light source other than that window that is initially closed. Also, and to make it more fun, imagine you are wearing sunglasses. Do you follow me If we wanted to light that room we would open that window, but if we wanted to have the room much brighter, we could enlarge that window, right? It is true that a larger window would give us more light. Do you know what that is in photography? It is called the opening . DOMINATE THE LIGHT TRIANGLE Now imagine that we do not want or cannot enlarge the window, but we still want light to enter. Well, we would start by opening the window, but the longer we left it open, the more light would enter (with the small difference that in the room the light is lost, it does not accumulate, but in the camera the light accumulates and it guard). Well, this is the closest thing to shutter speed. If we choose a shutter speed of 2 seconds in a SLR camera in "M" mode, twice as much light will come in as if the speed is only 1 second. Remember that you are still wearing sunglasses since we started the example. These sunglasses symbolize the ISO value, which if we have a camera low, only enough light will enter. What would happen if, with the window open, you took off your sunglasses? Simply your eyes would receive more light. The same happens when we raise the ISO to high values ??(with the small difference that, in SLR cameras, the ISO sometimes entails some noise and grains in the picture). By mastering each of these 3 factors separately you will learn to control them as a whole. If you want a little trick I always recommend for those who are taking their first steps in manual mode: use the semi-manual modes of your camera and learn from observation. The camera is wise, in the Aperture Priority mode (Mode "A" in Nikon, "Av" in Canon) what you can control is the size of the aperture. Try changing that value and see how the camera automatically changes the other factor, the shutter speed. If you put a small aperture, f / 16 for example, the camera will choose a rather slow shooting speed, if you choose a huge aperture, type f / 2.8, you will see that the shooting speed will be faster, and so on. You can also do the test with Shooting Priority mode ("S" in Nikon and "Tv" in Canon), only the other way around.SIDE EFFECTS
It should be noted that each of the 3 factors described above has side effects (sometimes that is what we are looking for). The aperture has a direct impact on the depth of field , the ISO influences the amount of grains / noises that will appear in the photo, and the firing speed influences how we capture the action or movement). And here with today's topic. You have learned something? Hope so. From now on, you should be able to challenge the light in your photographs and tame it to get the picture you want. If there are still things to clarify, ask them and I will gladly explain them to you.