Photography Tutorial: Exposure

Welcome to this new section of the Photography Masterclass. In this section, you're going to learn all about exposure. What it is? how to use your camera to properly expose? and even some advanced exposure concepts. First, what is exposure? Photography exposure is basically how bright or dark your image is, we call a photo that is too dark underexposed, a photo that is too bright is overexposed, a photo where your subject is not too dark and not too bright but it looks natural is properly exposed. And your subject could be anything from a person to a mountain in the distance. depending on your photos composition and your situation, not everything will be properly exposed. Sometimes your background will be too bright or sometimes one side of your photo will be too dark. The important thing we want you to remember with proper exposure, is that it's partly up to you as the artist, you may want your photo to be a little dark or to be a little bright, that can create some interesting and creative shots. As a beginner it's good to learn how to properly expose, so that the viewer can easily see what's in your photo. Now, how do we change our camera settings to expose properly? This is done with a few key settings aperture, shutter speed and ISO. With most DSLR mirrorless and point-and-shoot cameras and even mobile phones, you'll be able to adjust these settings manually and that's what this course is all about. Dropping Auto and understanding how to photograph with your manual settings, even if you use Auto settings in the future, which is sometimes a good idea knowing how your camera works, is so important to understanding how to take great photos. These three settings aperture, shutter speed and ISO, make up what's called the exposure triangle. Each setting can make your photo brighter or darker and each setting also affects different aspects of your photo, like the depth of field and motion blur, things we'll cover in future lessons. There's also one other thing that dramatically changes how bright or dark our photos might be. Can you guess what that is? Lighting. Photographing in bright sunlight, is a lot different than photographing a candle lit seen. Properly exposing is a balance of the settings in the exposure triangle and understanding how light works. So let's get started with aperture.