Controlling Light in Photography

Video Transcript

"Now we're going to talk about controlling the light. Light is very important in any photograph, and you need to know how to control it in order to produce the photographs that you want. If you don't know how to control the light, the camera, and/or the surroundings of image that you're taking, it's really going to determine your photograph. As a professional, you want to have full control over what's going on. There's four major ways to add more light to an image if you're in a low light situation. The first is to use a slower shutter speed. Slowing the shutter down means that it's open for a longer amount of time, which is going to allow more light to come into the camera. It's very helpful in a low light situation. Now, if you're in a low light situation, but you're shooting a lot of action, you can't really leave the camera eye open for too long or else your subjects are going to be blurry. So the other options include using a different appature setting, which will basically, you will open the eye of the camera a little bit larger, thus allowing more light into the image. The third thing you can do is change your ISO setting. With film cameras, you buy a specific film with an ISO setting, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, depending whether you're shooting indoors or outdoors. Bright light situations, outside, you're going to want to use a higher ISO like 800. Low light situation, shooting indoors, 100, 200 is going to be an ideal ISO. But you've got to remember when it comes to digital, you have to actually set the ISO yourself cause you're not using film. So every camera has a different ISO operation but I encourage you to get into your manual and figure out how to adjust your ISO settings, that way you'll have greater control over a photograph that you take. Of course, the fourth way to control light is by using artificial light. You can use continuous lights or strobes. As you see here behind me is a couple of examples. This here is a continuous light source that can be used to just light up the image that you're taking a photograph of. The light directly behind me is a strobe light. It can be used to create a flash of light when you're taking an image. And of course, the other option is a hand held flash that you can attach to your camera or hold off to the side. Then again, many cameras have built in flashes that will supply you with more light. So first you have to understand the light, then you can control it. Combinations of appature, shutter speed, ISO, and then artificial and/or natural light will really help you control the light and get the most out of your image."