portrait photography Archives - Affinity Photography's blog

New DSLR and stuck on the auto? Take control and get more from your camera!

Here’s a snippet from Affinity’s Basic DSLR classes

I love looking back on the snaps and video my parents took when I was growing up, to see the holidays and fun we had way back then as a family.

After more than 14 years as a professional photographer and seeing some of the fantastic base level cameras coming onto the market, a couple of years ago I put together a intensive but basic class for Mums and Dads to get a little bit more from their new camera.

You don’t always have a professional photographer by your side to capture these moments but you do have a cracking good camera and it’s time to learn a little more.

Today, I want to share what Camera Exposure means

The technical stuff – camera exposure is the amount of light that enters through your camera to reach the sensor. It is controlled by the ISO, aperture and shutter speed settings. If you have your camera set on ‘auto’ you are letting your camera control all this. You can take matters into your own hands and determine any or all of these to let your camera know how you like your images. The best exposure in portraits is when the skin look natural.

– Under exposed = too little light

– Over exposed = too much light

Here’s the slide I show to demonstrate this during my basic DSLR courses. The image on the left has nice exposure for the background but there is not enough light on the baby’s face which is the purpose of the picture; The middle image shows nice light on the subject which is the main focus; The image on the right doesn’t show the baby’s detail very nicely at all, very blown out!