Aperture, ISO & Shutter Speed

Transcript

Transcript of the recorded lesson. Recorded 2023, reviewed 2026.

For those that are new to shooting with cameras We want to go over the three main camera settings so that you have a basic understanding of how they work These three settings are aperture ISO and shutter speed Understanding these three settings and how they can affect your photos is extremely important So make sure to pay close attention as we go over each of these camera settings Also, we encourage you to seek out additional resources on this topic to get an even better understanding This might be one topic that you'll need to watch multiple videos on before it makes perfect sense Let's start with ISO ISO is the sensitivity of your camera sensor to light

It's one of the ways to brighten or darken your images However, ISO can also affect the overall quality of your photos Have you ever taken a photo with your phone at night or in a dark room and notice that the image looked very Grainy or low quality when your camera took that picture it noticed that there wasn't a lot of light available So it needed to compensate to produce an image that you could actually see the camera does this by raising the ISO Now the downside is the higher the ISO setting is the more grainy or noise might be seen in your image a Cheaper camera may only be able to go up to 800 or 1600 ISO

Before becoming grainy while a more expensive camera can go up to 10,000 or even 25,000 ISO and still produce a usable image. Here's a quick example using three different cameras We're going to be using a Sony a7 III as our high-end camera a Canon 70d as our beginner camera and an iPhone 12 Pro These photos were all taken at the same ISO setting as you can see the picture was taken in a low light setting And I'm sure you can already tell which camera is which but I'll give you a few seconds before showing the results

Well, all right. Here are the results. Did you guess correctly? Typically the more expensive the camera the less noise and better quality It's also important to know that the sensor and pixel size does have an impact on noise And this is why the high-end camera usually has bigger sensors and performs better in low light Because more light can hit the bigger sensor now This doesn't mean that you need to go out and buy the most expensive camera as a real estate photographer Most of the shots you will do will be during the daytime or around sunset So you won't have to worry about using super high ISO settings very often So simply put the higher the ISO number the higher the likelihood of having grain introduced into your image

Especially in the shadows the lower the ISO number the less likely you'll see grain in your pictures When you're shooting outside in the daytime you typically want to shoot at the lowest ISO setting Since there is already so much light for the cameras that we use that ISO is 100 For interior shots, we still keep it relatively low between 100 and 400 ISO Depending on the amount of light coming into the room. All right. Let's move on to aperture Aperture refers to the size of the opening of your lens When adjusting aperture the blades in the lens open and close to let more or less light in

Typically these are written in f stops the higher the f stop the more closed the aperture blades are and the less light coming in The lower the f stop the more open the aperture blades are And more lights come into the camera hitting your sensor a low f stop means more depth of field Which blurs the background of a picture a high f stop means less depth of field and the more of the image is in focus For our real estate photography We keep our aperture setting by default at f8 if you need your camera to shutter faster You can reduce the f stop at a lower setting like f 6.3 or even f4

Which will bring in more light into the camera sensor I personally shoot at f4 a lot with my camera and lens combination But the majority of our media specialists shoot at a higher f stop setting when shooting Remember to set the ISO based on the scene to keep it simple We leave our ISO settings on auto with the minimum setting of 100 and a maximum setting of 400 For real estate photography use f8 to avoid any depth of field issues If there is a mountain view in the distance, you may want to bump up your f stop So more of the images in focus Finally, let's talk about shutter speed

The shutter speed is the amount of time measured in seconds that your camera shutter is open With shutter speed you'll see a number of 1 over 50 1 over 100 1 over 250 up to 1 over 8000 or beyond depending on your camera It is also possible to slow your shutter speed down to 1 5 10 or even 30 seconds The slower the shutter speed the more motion blur and flowy looking images The faster the shutter speed the less motion blur for moving objects like cars sports and people running Once you understand these three concepts and how your camera uses them You'll be able to take some excellent real estate photos in addition to being able to troubleshoot any issues that may arise If you guys have any additional questions feel free to reach out. We'll see you guys on the next one