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ISO, F-Stop, and Shutter Speed

Lesson 5 from: How to Capture and Edit Landscapes in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop

Jared Platt

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Lesson Info

5. ISO, F-Stop, and Shutter Speed

As the perfect light is quickly approaching, Jared reviews the camera settings you’ll be manipulating and which factors to consider in landscape photography.
Next Lesson: Taking the Shot

Lesson Info

ISO, F-Stop, and Shutter Speed

So at this point, I'm getting perfect light. I'm getting a nice crest of light on the cactus. I'm getting that beautiful light back on the mountain. So, I have highlights on one side, I have shadows on the other side. The lake is a beautiful blue because the light is hitting at that perfect angle, and I'm getting this crest of light on all of my foreground elements. So, I'm ready to take the shot and what I'm doing here is I'm exposing at 100 ISO because I want to have the absolute cleanest photograph I can. The higher the ISO, the more grain, the more noise. The lower the ISO, the cleaner the shot's going to be. And I want this to be as clean as possible so I can blow it up as big as possible. So, you wanna keep your ISO as low as you possibly can. The second thing I have is my aperture. So, the aperture is what's going to determine how much I have in focus here. I want the cactus to be in focus but I also want the background to be in focus and they are a long way apart which means I ...

need a really large depth of field. So, I'm gonna take my aperture up, the number, up. I'm at F11. The higher that number goes, the more depth of field I have. If I take it all the way down to, like, 2.8 or F4, I'm gonna have very little depth of field and only the cactus will be in focus. I want the foreground, I want the cactus and I want the background all in focus. So, I choose F11, which means, I've got ISO 100 at F11. The only other thing I have is my shutter speed. That's what's going to determine my exposure because the other two control how clean it is and how much depth of field I have. And I'll determine what shutter speed I'm gonna use based on my histogram. Now the shutter speed is simply the amount of time that the camera opens up the shutter to receive light, and the longer that shutter speed is open, the more blur you get. The faster that shutter speed is, the more it will freeze action. Because I'm on a tripod, which I don't normally use but when I'm doing landscape, I will often do it. Because I'm on a tripod, I can take that shutter speed as low as I want. Meaning, I can go to a 50th of a second, or a 20th of a second, or an hour if I want. And so, right now, I'm going to choose an 80th of a second and the reason I'm choosing an 80th is because I can see inside of my histogram right here, that at an 80th of a second, I don't have any shadows clipping on the left-hand side of my histogram and I don't have any highlights clipping on the right side of my histogram.

Ratings and Reviews

James Kitt
 

I wish more people would present this way! Each step from beginning to end demonstrated in short, concise and useful actions. Every tool and technique is something that I either use, (now better) or will start using because I now understand how to use it efficiently. I highly recommend this course!

Fauzan Pojam
 

Finally, a video tutorial that taught me what I've known on basic level and truly explore how to use it properly and what everything means. I've been waiting for something like this for awhile now. Greatly improves my technique now so thank you for this!

Angie Purcell
 

Great class wi with tons of helpful hints for both Lightroom and Photoshop.

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