The Exposure Triangle

Contrary to many Instagram photographers’ beliefs, there is so much more to photography than pointing your iPhone and shooting. Once you make the switch from your smartphone to a DSLR camera you may be a little intimidated. You may become exhausted just looking at the camera with all the settings it has. However, the more familiar you get with all of these settings and how they work together, then that is less time spent editing your photos in post-production.

When I first started taking photography classes in high school, I only ever learned about composition styles. I knew that there were different lenses you can buy but I never understood why there were so many or even why they were so expensive. Up until my Junior year of college, I never heard of the exposure triangle. The exposure triangle consists of three different parts that all work together to determine the amount of light exposure that your photograph will receive.

The first part of the exposure triangle is the aperture. The aperture is what determines how open or closed your camera lens is. This is where your different camera lenses come in because one camera may have an aperture of 1.4 whereas another lens may have an aperture of 2.8. The lens with the lower aperture number can open wider which means that more light can get it. This is important because this in turn will affect your shutter speed and ISO which are the two other parts of the exposure triangle. Your aperture also deals with the depth of field. The lower the aperture number, the blurrier your background or foreground will be which will make your subject stand out more. The higher the aperture or the more closed your lens is then the clearer everything in your image will be.

The second part of the exposure triangle is shutter speed. The shutter speed is how fast your lens closes when snapping a photo. The faster your lens closes, the clearer a moving object will be. However, if you have a fast shutter speed then there will be less light exposure for your image. If you are taking a picture of a basketball player then you would want a faster shutter speed to freeze that motion. However, it gets tricky because you also need more light. At that point, you will need to adjust either the aperture or the ISO.

The third part of the exposure triangle is the ISO. The ISO essentially changes the sensitivity to light for your photo. The lower the ISO, the less lit up your photo will be. The higher the ISO then the brighter your photo will be. However, there is a tradeoff. If you are taking photos at night and the aperture and the shutter speed are where you want them, but it still is too dark then you would turn the ISO up higher.
If you turn it up too high, your image will be more lit but it will be more grainy. Much as the meme above suggests, shooting with an ISO of 6400, your image will be grainy.

It is important to study your camera. Understand all of the settings. Especially the exposure triangle because it plays such a huge role in photography. Once you understand the exposure triangle then you will become more confident in your work and it will look so much better. There will come a time when you can’t get enough light to your camera without sacrificing the quality. Before this happens, I suggest buying lighting equipment, so you don’t complain and turn out like the guy in the meme above!
Do you have any questions about the exposure triangle? If so, comment below and if you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow the page and check out my other blog posts! Thank you so much!