12 Weeks To Better Photos: Week 2

This week's lesson talked about ISO and shutter speed. The ISO number you choose depends on how much light is available where you're shooting. In low light conditions (such as indoors or outside in the evening), you'd choose a high number (800 or 1600), but in bright sunlight you'd choose a low number (100 or 200). When outside on an overcast day or inside with lots of light you'd choose a medium number like 400. The shutter speed is just how fast the picture is taken (how fast the shutter opens and closes). If you're shooting something in action, you'd choose a fast shutter speed.  If you're shooting a stationary object you can use a slow shutter speed. A slow shutter speed can also be used to shoot something in action if you want your photo to show movement.

The homework for this week was called the "kitchen sink test". We took three pictures of water coming out of the faucet and hitting an object underneath.

In the first picture we used a shutter speed of 1/80th of a second. This isn't super slow or super fast.

  

 The next picture was taken with a faster shutter speed, 1/800th of a second. You can see that it freezes the motion of the water a little bit more.

 The last picture was taken with a pretty slow shutter speed of 1 second. You can see that the flow of the water is really smooth.