Nikon® D300s: Digital Field Guide

Chapter 5. Understanding Exposure

This chapter may contain some concepts that are very familiar to you. Although this camera is quite advanced, you may be new to dSLRs or to photography in general; therefore, I'm including this information. Even if you're an advanced user, you may find some important information on evaluating your exposure using histograms and adjusting your exposure using the exposure compensation and bracketing features of the Nikon D300s. This chapter covers information on exposure, the effects aperture has on depth of field, how the shutter speed is used to create different effects, and how ISO can affect both your aperture and shutter speed settings.

Understanding exposure is essential to controlling the outcome of your images.

Exposure Overview

Exposure is the most important aspect of photography. If you don't understand how exposure is calculated you're going to have problems understanding how your camera chooses the settings when using one of the semiautomatic modes like Shutter Priority or Aperture Priority. This can hinder your ability to achieve a specific effect in your image.

By definition, exposure as it relates to digital photography is the total amount of light collected by the camera's sensor during a single shutter cycle. A shutter cycle occurs when the Shutter Release button is pressed, the shutter opens, closes, and resets. One shutter cycle occurs ...