ISO is the value that represents the speed in which a photographic negative is exposed. In other words, the higher the number, the less light is required to properly expose the image (and the grainier the picture is, which we'll talk about in a minute). This concept has been translated to digital cameras as well. Back in the old days of film photography, each film canister would have a numbe...

There are many factors that play into the minimum shutter speed, but the simple rule of thumb is that you need to be faster than your effective focal length if you're holding the camera. For example, if you're using the equivalent of a 50mm lens, your shutter speed needs to be faster than 1/50 sec to get a crisp photo, and if you're using the equivalent of a 200mm lens, your shutter...

Understanding Depth of Field The next concept to understand is depth of field. This represents the portion of the photo that is in focus. A shallow depth of field or DOF has the subject in focus but the foreground and background is blurry, and a wide depth of field has most, if not all, of the photo in focus. There are two things that affect depth of field: focal length and aperture. Focal Lengt...

Understanding Aperture The aperture is literally the hole in the lens that allows light to pass to the film or digital sensor, and the camera's lens is able to control how big that hole is. This is represented as an f-stop. For example, you might see the camera display a value like f/2, f/4, f/8, etc. The easiest way to grasp what an f-stop is, is to think of it as a fraction. Replace "...