“Blinded by the Light”, the 1976 amazing hit from Manfred Mann, used to play in my head during the countless times my eyes would be blinded by the overexposure of a picture. This was when I first started developing interest in photography, when I didn’t know what all the numbers and letters were on my display. A few more adventures of hiking on nature trails, and I decided to really research that the systems on the display represented the exposure triangle. I reference the next information on the model of the Canon T6 Rebel DSLR camera to explain these systems.

When first turning the camera on, a menus will appear with the mode you are in, that can be adjusted using the dial on the top of the camera, and followed by the displays of the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO.

Shutter speed refers to how long the camera is allowing light into its sensor, or how long it takes to produce the picture. It’s represented on the display, with larger fractions being slower than the smaller ones. In which all of these fractions are in relation to 1 second, so a slow shutter speed may still not seem so slow.

Next is the aperture, which controls the size of the opening that lets light in the camera to focus on different depths of field. The smaller the number on the display, the bigger the lens is, but when the shutter speed is slow, and the aperture is low then overexposure will happen. Underexposure can happen when the shutter speed is fast and the aperture is high, leaving it darker.

However, both are of these systems are influenced directly by the ISO level, or how sensitive the camera is to light. The lower the ISO then then the sensor will be less sensitive, and when it is higher than it is more sensitive. Grain or Noise can appear when the ISO is set too high, removing from the detail of the photograph.

Now that you have understanding of the exposure triangle, then perhaps the images will not produce extreme amounts of under/over exposure. Team work makes the dream work, friends.