Photography Basics

What I learned so far about Exposure and it's 3 basics.

 Will try to explain in simple words.

1) Aperture is a hole (or an opening) in your camera lenses through which the light travels.

The wider aperture, the more light is coming in.

Effect on photography: Wide aperture (for ex. f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6) will make object you shoot sharp but background blurry. Narrow aperture will make the whole photo sharp.

Also in low-lid environment you will notice that photos shot with wide aperture will be brighter. (due to more light coming in).

2) Shutter speed. It's basically the time while camera shutter is open. Shutter speed determents the amount of light that reaches camera sensor. It's measured in seconds.

Effect on photography: Short shutter speed (Ex. 1/250, 1/500, 1/100) is good for moving object, helps to "freeze" an action. Long shutter is good for night shooting (must use tripod), and different creative photography techniques like light painting.
Generally, non-moving objects are shot using shutter speed 1/125.

3) ISO is a sensitivity of your camera sensor. Usually, you can see numbers like 100, 200, 400, 800 and more in your camera settings.

Effect on photography: Always try to use lower number possible to avoid noise. However, bigger number of ISO makes photos brighter and its commonly used in low-lid environment.  So, smaller the ISO-better the quality of photo in terns of noise.

RAW files vs JPEG.

Which one to use and why?  

RAW files are basically "raw". Meaning there were no information changed and lost since the shooting. In most cases, you can easily restore underexposed or overexposed shots in special programs like Photoshop Lightroom.

In contrast, JPEG file were changed, compressed and processed by your camera. It's not easy to "restore" any lost information on the photo if file is in JPEG. Also every move and change you do with JPEG files will worsen the photo quality.

Since RAW format has all original information from your photograph, it weight more than JPEG. However, It shouldn't stop you from using RAW, because you will preserve all the beauty of your photo and even more, you will be able to enhance your photos to make them look like professional once.