Frankie Smith HNC Media Production: Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO

The effects of Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO

ISO

A camera's ISO is basically how sensitive it is to the light. The ISO setting is to give you an idea of how much light the sensor in the camera needs to register an image.
Low ISO settings (such as ISO 100) allow you to use a higher aperture setting or longer exposure time in bright light. Image quality is generally considered to be better when using a lower ISO, as less noise/grain is introduced into the image. Noise is basically random patterns of pixels/groups of pixels in which the colours are not based on light from the image.

Aperture

Aperture is the lens opening and gives you control of depth of field. It controls the amount of light passing through the lens of the camera and is measured in f/stops. The maximum aperture is where the opening is at its widest, allowing the most amount of light in, such as f/2. Depth of field is important to consider when filming, as it controls what feature of the image is sharply focused, and what is blurred or out of focus.

This is a good example of shallow
depth of field. The daisy in the foreground
is crisp and sharply in focus, whereas the daisies
in the background are blurred and out of focus,
we can only make out the basic shapes and colours
of them.

This is an example of a wide depth of field,
where the foreground, mid ground and
background is in focus.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is how fast the shutter of the camera closes when taking an image. It affects how sharp an image is when it is moving. A fast shutter speed freezes motion, whereas a slow shutter speed would create motion blur, where the path of movement from the object is visible.