The 4 Primary Elements of Photography Part III

In the last article, I talked about ISO & White balance.  For the most part, these are the 2 set & forget aspects of photography.  In any given photo shoot, these 2 items would be set and you wouldn’t change them very often.

Now, we come to the 2 items that are changed the most.

Shutter speed and fStop

Shutter speed:   As we talked about in part 1, the shutter speed is the amount of time or duration that the camera shutter is open to admit light.  It is given in seconds or fractions of a second.  

In the studio, when we are working with portrait photography, it’s important to remember this also may be a set & forget item.  In the studio, you would set your speed to the fastest sync speed of your camera.  This will reduce the affect of ambient light.  If you set the camera to a speed faster than the sync speed of the camera, you will get banding on the photo from the shutter being too fast for the strobes.

Obviously, if you’re using hot lights or shooting outdoors, this setting will change.    You should  use your camera’s built in meter for outdoors photography or hot light situations.

fStop:  This number is the amount of light allowed into the camera as well.  There is a diopter on the lens that opens wider to allow more light or closes down to reduce the light coming into the sensor.  On some lenses, this isn’t adjustable as the lens has only 1 fStop.

When you’re shooting in the studio, you would set this to the metered scene that you are shooting.  If your strobes are metered at f11 combined, then you would shoot at f11 or thereabouts depending on your tastes.