Start ‘em young

It was a sunny day on Deepavali, when me and my son had a chance to go to the park with my camera. I decided to teach him “photography” I know to the fact that someday “very soon” he will be my assistant/co-photographer or maybe even videographer.

To headstart, I taught him the 3 elements of taking the light out of the camera, the Shutter, the Aperture and the ISO. Well for the sake of my friends who wish to learn photography or asking me to share some insight how to start taking a bit better photos. This is for you guys.

First stop, the Shutter, well shutter is for the motion blur, the higher number the higher the speed you can freeze, for example if you want to capture a fast car, depending on the car speed, you can freeze it around 1/1000th, taking consideration of the ambiant light, the brighter the better so you can use higher shutter with lesser ISO. Shutter speed also control the amount of ambiant light you want to capture. Below is the diagram what shutter speed you may want for each type of subject.

Portrait Photos: 1/125th

Speeding Car: 1/500th and higher

Kids playing/runnin: 1/250th

Landscape morning: 1/200 and higher

Landscape evening with tripod: 10” to 50”

Group photo: 1/160th

Event photography: 1/160th to 1/200th

If your lens have the Image Stabilisation you can lower the stops depending on expected output, one more thing to consider is to multiply your focal lenght by 2 to determine the correct shutter speed you can use. If you are shooting at 85mm multiple it by 2, you will need atleast 160th and above to capture a sharper photos out of this lens with handheld shots. For 18mm you can use 1/50th or 1/60th shutter speed.

This is just a quick guide, it is not cast in stone, depending on your style you can freely play around with your shutter speed.