Your Guide to Understanding a DSLR

Paurush Kumar

Whenever one sees a DSLR, one feels an urge to try it at least once –  as photography is one of the most appealing visual art forms. Although challenged by upcoming smartphones, iPhone cameras, mirrorless cameras and new technology, DSLRs offer a great range of customisation. Getting a single perfect click masks the draining exercise of previous untimed photos. Photographs associate with our emotions and give us an artistic freedom of giving a story to a moment.

To capture any moment with enough light and exposure with the object being in focus, we need to consider the exposure triangle and understand the relationship between ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture. Each of them is related to the other two and control either the amount of light entering the camera or the amount of light required by the camera for a given exposure.

APERTURE

 The opening of the camera lens is termed Aperture. It acts as the primary device from which light enters the lens and directly influences the depth of field.

Large depth of field is attained using small aperture.

Shallow depth with the subject being in sharp focus.

Wide aperture is best for portraits

Narrow aperture is best for landscapes

Isolate and prioritize the subject.

SHUTTER SPEED

Shutter speed is the amount of time the shutter stays open for light to come in while clicking a picture. Fast shutter speed allows us to take still pictures thus freezing the subject.

Fast shutter speed

Slow shutter speed

ISO

ISO is referred to as the sensitivity of the camera sensor, adjusted according to amount of light falling on the object.  The ISO speed is a measure of your camera sensor's sensitivity to light.

An ‘auto-ISO’ function is being included in most of the new DSLRs, where the camera sets the ISO depending upon the amount of light, thus keeping it as low as possible.  When starting out with a camera, it helps us in determining and keeping the ISO upper limit.

High ISO

Low ISO

ALWAYS SHOOT IN RAW

RAW is a file format, and unlike JPEG, it’s not compressed and adds more information about the subject that our camera has captured. This addition of data makes the file size a lot larger than a JPEG but is much better in quality.

In the quality menu of the camera, one can change the quality to RAW in camera.

We have many more editing options – like adjusting white balance, brightness, distortions and exposure, to name a few. These give us more opportunities and space to let our creativity run riot by tweaking the light and focus in the photograph.

LOOKING FOR INSPIRATION?

Learning from other and more experienced photographers is a brilliant way to further our own skills. We can also draw inspiration from the work of others.

Surfing Flickr and Pinterest is a good way to start.

Now that you have a basic understanding of the camera, get out there and start clicking photographs! 

And let us know of your exploits in the comments section below!