A Photographer’s Quick Reference

While cruising around the interwebs today, I found an article from Mom and Camera with an interesting little gem for photographers who are just delving into the meat and potatoes of Manual Mode 101.  It’s an amazing little cheat sheet for all the settings you might have trouble keeping straight.

If you’re a new photographer, and even if you’re not – this is a great thing to have printed out and available at all times. Understanding these concepts is absolutely paramount to your growth as a photographer.  How can you be an artist if you don’t even know the different brushstrokes to use? Can you create fantastic symphonies for the piano if you don’t even know the basic scales? Of course not.  That’s why understanding this cheat sheet is so important in the quest to become a great photographer.

This cheat sheet literally gives you everything you need, so study up. It’s better to get these things right in your camera first so that you have less work in photoshop later trying to repair things that could have been fixed with the right know-how.  Besides, you’re better than that. Heck, you don’t even NEED photoshop, do you?

Ansel Adams didn't need Photoshop.

Here are a couple more tips regarding manual focus, and how it corresponds with all this jargon.

1. The wider your aperture, the harder it will be to focus on things CLOSE to you. Therefore, don’t use a wide aperture if you need to focus on a distant subject.  Think about it this way – in order to see a far away object, you often have to squint, right?  It’s like stopping down your eyeballs to a smaller aperture! If you’re eyes are wide open, you won’t see it clearly.
2. The slower your shutter speed, the more susceptible you are to camera shake. If you want to use slow shutter speeds and keep things in focus, USE A TRIPOD. They are the next best appendage to arms. They’re a lot steadier.
3. Slow shutter speeds can be used to your advantage! (especially with your favorite tri-legged accessory)  Using slow shutter speeds is how you can create awesome light painting effects or show movement in a stationary photograph, like this -

Copyright Dennis Calvert

As you can probably guess, once you understand these rules, you can pretty much start breaking them.  But once the basics all become instinct (in any art form), the possibilities are literally endless.

Be sure to show some love over at Mom and Camera for the awesome cheat sheet, and let us know what you think!