I mentioned earlier that I would do a little thread to explain the very basics of photography, so here we go...

Firstly, this is Twitter, so some things won't work as well as when it is face to face. This little thread will be to cover the very basics of photography in a simple and (hopefully) easy way to understand

It's not going to cover particular techniques and it will be as simple as possible for people to understand, in simple terms. Once people understand the very basics they can then learn more and get familiar with "proper" terms etc

I am sure some keen amateurs will jump in and say I've left something out, or something doesn't make sense, but hey, that's what the block button is for ;-)

The "story" behind this basic photography lesson is... A while ago at work I was asked to train a team of special forces guys, they had completed "proper" photo training but a senior officer (who is a keen photographer) had spent some time with me teaching him

and said that I explained things in a much easier way to understand, so would I take some time to go through things with the SF guys to smooth out some problems they were having

After a quick chat with the guys it became apparent it was an understanding of the basics, and the effects they had for the outcome of the photos. I only had an hour with the guys so hastily came up with simple simple things for them to remember

Since then, this little one hour package has been given to a lot of people and (fingers crossed) seems to sink in well :-)

The first thing to remember when you are learning photography is to keep it simple, learn one thing at a time, it's not rocket science, despite how some photographers try and make it sound

So.... on to the "lesson"...

The Camera has a "magic opening" that opens and closes to let light in to the sensor, that then records your image. We can control how big the opening opens, and how long it stays open for

The size of the "magic opening" is called the Aperture, it can be big or small, and is given names that start with F(number)

The amount of time the "magic opening" is open for is called the Shutter Speed, this can be fast or slow. It's given names that are amounts of time in seconds or fractions of seconds

Think of it like a hole in the bottom of a bucket of water. if it's a small hole it will take ages for the water to go through. A bigger hole will let the water through a lot quicker, the water is our "light" and we need to get all of it through the hole

Imagine holding this bucket at arms length, the longer you have to hold it the more likely that your arms will shake and ache, and you will need some help with supporting it.

So, a small hole will take a long time for the water (light) to go through. A big hole will be far quicker, but both will get all the water (light) through

This brings us to Shutter Speeds, They can be fast or slow depending on what you want to achieve. A fast shutter speed will freeze movement, a slow shutter speed will enhance (show more) movement

There is no right or wrong, it is down to the look you want to achieve. whether you want to freeze movement, or enhance it.

The faster you set the shutter speed the more it will freeze the movement in time, the lower you set the shutter speed the more "blurry" the movement will appear

Holding your camera properly is important, especially when using slow shutter speeds

When you use a longer lens, holding the camera properly is even more important. Imagine holding a broom from one end, how much would the end furthest from you wobble about, This is called camera shake

The unwritten rule is that the "number" of the length of lens you are using should be higher than the "number" of the shutter speed you are using, this will generally stop you from getting camera shake (if you are holding the camera properly)

This brings us to Aperture (the size of the magic opening). When you focus on a subject the Aperture will affect the amount of depth for what else will be in focus. The smaller the number, the smaller the amount of depth that will be in focus

A small number Aperture will give you a small amount of depth of what will be in focus. this will make your subject stand out from it's background (Note, this varies on the length of lens you are using)

A large Aperture number will give you a bigger depth of what is in focus (I just like this Gif)

Quick recap...

Shutter controls movement and the enhancement or elimination of it
Aperture controls the amount of depth you will get from your subject

Next we have ISO, something that seems confuse many people. Think of ISO as setting the speed that your sensor will work at. A low number will mean it works slowly, a high number means it will work quickly

The higher you set the number the more you get an appearance of "grain" or "noise". The original digital cameras were very bad at working at higher ISOs and so word spread to always keep the ISO as low as possible

Modern digital cameras have amazing ISO and you should not be affraid to use higher settings when you want to record light quicker. Here is an example of what ISO looks like in a huge magnification of the wheel of this car

So why would you need a sensor to work quicker or slower? Usually it is when there isn't enough light available for the camera to record an image in a fast enough time that you can hold a camera still.

Imagine you are out at night and do not have a tripod, turning the ISO to a higher setting means it will record the light that is there quicker, this means you don't have to hold the camera still for as long an the image will come out sharper

Or if you are in a dark room with no flash, a higher ISO means you can capture the image without flash or a tripod.

On the other hand, if you are in the Maldives and the weather is amazing, there is so much light about that you will need to set the ISO much lower, as there is too much light around

Back to the Bucket. We need all the Water (light) to go into the bucket below, all of it, just the right amount, not more than is in the top bucket and not less than is in it, we need the exact amount

When there is too much light (water) or not enough, our bucket won't have the correct amount in it, this won't work, so we need to change the ISO to help the magic hole get the correct amount of light (water) in the time we want

The trick to Photography is balancing the size of the magic hole with the amount of time it is open for to get the right amount of light to the sensor.

Sometimes to do this we need to make the sensor work quicker or slower. Don't be affraid of high ISO settings!
Here is an example of an unedited picture taken at 25,600 ISO, with a huge crop to show ISO (bottom right)

Does the "Noise/Grain" make this look bad?

Here are all those things together... Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO with the effects they have

Loo break! (I know you didn't need to know that) ;-)

Quick recap...

So we have 3 things we need to remember...
1 Shutter speed (how long the magic hole is open for)
2 Aperture (how big or small the magic hole will be)
3 ISO How quickly we want the sensor to work for us

Each of these 3 things have several variables but to simplfy it will will call them Fast and Slow, Big and Small and High and Low.

So we have 6 things to remember!

We have...

1 Slow shutter speed (movement blur)
2 fast shutter speed (frozen in time)
3 Big Aperture number (loads of depth)
4 Small Aperture number (hardly any depth)
5 Low ISO (Nice and smooth, sensor works slowly)
6 High ISO (Bit grainy, sensor working quickly)

Now to the tricky bit! ;-)

Camera Modes! for the moment forget the automatic modes, you won't learn much from using them, but they can be a backup to if you gorget something and want a photo

There are 4 Camera Modes...

P = Program (fully automatic)
M = Manual (You have to set everything)
S = Shutter priority (Automatic with a bias towards shutter speed that you set)
A = Aperture priority (Automatic with bias towards aperture you set)

Top Tip... Camera manufacturers spend bazillions making cameras that can do everything for us. That's great but the camera doesn't know what you are pointing it at and the effect you want to achieve

When I joined the RAF as a photographer my Sgt, Good ol' La Bennett told me something that I still use at work to this day... Make the camera do as much work to help you as you can, it gives you time to concentrate on the subject

So what mode should you use (Forgot to attach the "mode" pic before) M? P? A? S?

Which one?

If you use P, the camera will do everything for you, you won't learn anything and the bias for the 6 things we need to remember tend to be in the middle somewhere

If we use M then we have to input all 3 things, Shutter speed, Apertrue and ISO to get the right amount of water into our bucket ;-)

This can be slow, it's a lot to think about and you will often miss what you wanted to take a photo of because you were thinking of settings

So that leaves us with S (shutter priority) and A (aperture priority). So which one do we use for what?

Well, to keep it simple, which is the whole point of this thread, we need to make a decision before we choose the mode and take the photo... and that decision is what do we want to achieve? which one of those 6 things to remember do we want to make work?

Do we want our subject to stand out from the background, so we want blurry waterfalls, do we want pin sharp action photos? there are millions of things to photograph, but which one of the 6 variables do we want to be more important?

There is no right or wrong at this stage, it is what you want the image to look like. 6 things to remember, fast or slow, big or small, high or low. Forget the ISO for a second... so 4 things, Fast or Slow, Big or Small... what do you want?

If it's Fast or Slow you put the camera in S mode to control that speed
If it's Big or Small you put the camera in A mode to control the depth