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I have to ask: why are you asking such a basic question when on your web site you are promoting yourself as a professional photographer and activley seeking jobs as an event photographer?



David,
good question. I guess we "old-timers" forget that over the past 20 years, cameras have gotten so sophisticated in terms of auto-exposure and auto-focus that even good photographers don't really have to know the fundamentals of creating photographic images i.e. the relationship between aperture and shutter speed.

Before cameras chose exposure values for us, we hand-metered a scene and then set the aperture and shutter speed manually. We learned that when we opened up a stop or two, we got less depth of field. When we closed down a stop or two, we got more.

When we wanted to freeze the action, we set a high shutter speed. But that, too, required that we open up the aperture. We had limited choices in terms of film speed and we couldn't change ISO from image-to-image.

In today's world, the cameras take out the mental process which allows us to concentrate on framing, composition and the peak moment. On the other hand, I'd not be all that comfortable with the camera knowing more about how to take a picture than I do.

Diane, I commend you for trying to learn the fundamentals. But I don't understand why you don't just set your camera manually and see what happens when you change aperture and/or shutter speed. Seeing the results is easy and fast if you're shooting digital and it's a lot easier than reading about imaging theory.

Jim

Jim Garvie
www.jagphoto.biz