Abbie Goddard AS Media Studies: Introduction to the DSLR

Introduction to the DSLR

DSLR stands for Digital Single Lens Reflex.
It basically means a camera with on lens and a mirror which reflects the light, where pictures are recorded on a digital card instead of film.

To get started, it's best to use the automatic settings to get accustomed to the camera:

set the dial to the green automatic mode.
make sure the lens is set to AF (autofocus) and not MF (manual focus).
push the shutter button down halfway- the camera will automatically focus on the subject.
push the button down the rest of the way to take the picture.

a great online tool that lets you play around with a virtual DSLR and the three primary camera settings: ISO, shutter speed and aperture.

exposure is the amount of light a digital camera's sensor captures when a photo is taken.
too much light results in a washed out photo (overexposed).
too little light and the photo will be too dark (underexposed).
a camera's aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings directly affect exposure, but more importantly, they allow you to control how each photo will look.

the aperture settings control the size of the lens opening that allows light into your camera.
you can blur the foreground and background that bracket your subject (known as shallow depth of field) by opening up the aperture with a low f-stop number.

the shutter speed setting controls how long the shutter opens to expose the image sensor to that light.
open it for just a millisecond and you can freeze a fast moving subject.
alternatively, you can show the movement of a fast moving subject by keeping iy open longer with a slow shutter speed.

the ISO is how sensitive your image sensor is to light.
with the ISO setting, a camera's image sensor can be adjusted to detect more, or less light as needed for a good exposure.
the higher the ISO, the more sensitive the sensor will be, and the brighter the image will be.
the lower the ISO, the less light it's going to bring in, and the darker the image is going to be.
if you're shooting in low-light, you will want to boost your ISO so that the image will be brigher.
if you're shooting in a bright, sunny place, you'll want to lower your ISO, or the image will be overly-bright.
high ISO will cause graininess so as a rule, use the lowest ISO possible.

Abbie Goddard AS Media Studies