Lawrence Ripsher

There are a few things which make a good photograph. The idea / subject is one, composition is another, exposure is still another. In order to get these elements right, you can vary pretty much three things:

- What’s in front of the camera (the subject, lighting, etc)
- The position of the camera (the point of view, distance from the subject, the composition)
- What’s in the camera (the camera’s settings, lenses, etc)

And that’s pretty much it. Simple right?

So what this post is going to discuss is the third aspect – what’s going on inside the camera, how you can influence your camera to do your mind’s work and why good photography is actually all about compromise.

Aside from specific settings like in camera contrast / sharpening / etc (which are more about processing than anything else), there’s actually not that many settings you can modify when taking a picture. If you shoot in Aperture mode, where you set the aperture and subsequently influence the shutter speed, then it’s even simpler. Aperture mode, by the way, is what I use 95% of the time and would implore everyone (beginner or otherwise) to adopt this mode. Without requiring much more effort, it’s so much more useful than Program mode and so much more practical than Shutter / Manual mode. Only for sports or night scenes do I ever think about switching from anything other than Aperture mode – and it’s with that in mind I continue the rest of this article.

So back to the camera. There are really three settings inside your camera that you can modify:

- The Depth of Field (DOF), also known as Aperture
- The ISO level
- The shutter speed

When shooting in aperture mode, the third (shutter speed) is not even something you can actually directly modify – you can only influence it by changing the other two settings.

And so that’s why photography – or rather photography as far as the desire to exposure correctly, obtain sharp images, etc – is all about compromise. Unless you’re in perfectly lit conditions (and I seldom am for most of the images i take), you going to have to sacrifice something. That sacrifice could be any one of the following:

- The sacrifice of Aperture. This means reducing the depth of field by shooting wide open (e.g. at a large aperture  of F/1.4). The sacrifice might be that you might not be able to get all the scene you want in focus which could defeat the purpose of the image. In contrast, the plus side is that you’ll be able to use a high shutter speed and low ISO

- The sacrifice of ISO. Here, you might want to keep a larger depth of field or don’t have a fast enough lens (e.g. F/5.6) but you still want to keep the shutter speed high. So you bump up the ISO which allows you to do those things but unfortunately results in higher amounts of noise. Noise in itself might not be bad but the lack of dynamic range and the effect it has on colour certainly is. I could write an entire article (and probably will soon) about why high ISO is bad for images – but in the meantime I can say this definitely qualifies as another sacrifice.

- The sacrifice of Shutter Speed. Here you decide you want to shoot in low ISO (for nice clean images) and / or want to keep a small aperture for increased depth of field. So you let the shutter speed drop. Now however you risk camera shake or a moving subject causing a blurry image, and wonder why you bothered having it in focus in the first place if you weren’t going to get a sharp image.

That’s a simplistic way of looking at it. But there are other factors though of course. For example, you can overcome the sacrifice of shutter speed by using a tripod, having in camera IS or just employing steady hands – but that only works when the subject is not moving. Similarly, you might overcome the sacrifice of aperture by shooting with a cropped camera (rather than full frame) or by simply going for shallow DOF images in the first place. So does this give you a way out of the sacrificial pit? Sort of but it comes at a secondary cost – such as expensive lenses, practicality (carrying a tripod, setup time, etc) and so on.

So for the most part, when the light drops, the scene becomes challenging or you have less than perfect equipment – you’re going to have to sacrifice something in order to get the shot you want. And this, essentially summarises what I consider to be the challenge to shoot technically proficient / well exposed images. Simply put, it is a decision of which aspect to sacrifice for a particular situation and to what extent.

So, while there’s no real way out of this, you can make your life (and your images) a lot better by practicing and reflecting upon which of the three paths you’re most likely to take before an image or even an entire shoot. For example, for my personal case, I’ve expended some effort at understanding the shutter speed I use to reliably hold a camera steady (for different focal lengths) and that helps me understand the extent at which I have to drop depth of field or increase ISO. Usually, given the choice, I tend to lean towards opening up the aperture before I increase ISO – but that’s not a golden rule by any means – it really depends on the subject and what I want to convey. The final decision I make usually depends on the specifics of a particular situation (which are a bit too detailed to cover here) and of course perhaps a bit of instinct / luck.

So rather than being a recipe for what to do when, what this article is meant to be more of a explanation of the principals behind the "Compromise of Good Photography". Hopefully it will allow those who read it (and haven’t perhaps given this topic much thought before) to gain a bit of insight into both the importance and implications of those little dials on the top of their DSLR.