Hello, thanks for joining me. I'm Joe from Camera Lessons Online and today I'll be teaching you a thought process to help you shoot. Well, literally anything. Let's go. So this is going to be our final video in our back-to-basic series. It's back to school season and I thought it was a good time to get into the essential components of photography, the working process and the moving parts that we need to understand in order to be able to be effective photographers. Of course, everything we do here is brought to you by Camera Lessons Online and we believe something very simple that these skills and the ability to create wonderful visual imagery both in stills and in video is a skill set available to absolutely everyone. In order to facilitate that we make the videos here on the YouTube channel. We've got the website cameralessonsonline.com where we have an introduction to photography, online course. It's about four hours. We've got books and we've got other things there as well. I hope that you check it out and I'll put a link in the description. So today is going to wrap up this back-to-basic series. We've talked about aperture shutter speed ISO and an in-depth understanding on the aperture numbering system and the stop sequence. We've talked about motion. We've talked about depth of field and image quality. And so today we're going to be putting these together into a framework that will allow you to be successful in literally any environment. Meaning that you'll be able to walk into any situation and know exactly what you need to do to get the shot that you want. Therefore, shoot anything. Everything else that you do is a matter of applying principle. So what we're going to start with is what I like to refer to as exposure theory. This is the thought process where you make creative decisions regarding aperture shutter speed and ISO in order to give you the exposure you want with the creative benefit that you want. Now as we're working with exposure theory, it means that we're working with restrictions as a certain amount of available light, a certain subject in front of us, and certain creative implications that we want to achieve. And first we need to understand that there's a certain amount of light hitting our subject, which means some combination of aperture shutter speed and ISO is going to give us a proper exposure. So let's do a basic example. Let's say that a 1 1 25th of a second at F4 at ISO 100 is a correct exposure. Now if that's true, then a 60th of a second at F5 6 would also be a correct exposure. And the 30th of a second at F8 would also be a correct exposure. Well, let's say I want a 30th of a second at F8. However, it's just a little bit too dark. At that point, I could easily take my ISO and move it to 200. Now we typically do this in the other direction. We typically will make an ISO decision when we need a faster shutter speed. And for reasons why on that, just look at the ISO video that we have. So typically what will happen is we'll move the other direction. We build a proper exposure at ISO 100 and we find that perhaps F5.6 at a 1 1 25th of a second is a proper exposure. Therefore, 1 2 50th of a second at F4 is a proper exposure. But if I need to be even faster, but I have an F4 lens, the only way for me to be a faster shutter speed is to bring up my ISO value. So we can move these pieces around in order to build a proper exposure. That is the mechanics of moving your exposure triangle to fit a proper exposure. So now let's get into actually working an exposure in a real life situation. And a thought process that's going to allow you to shoot in any environment you want with any creative application that you want. In other words, we have one thought process that allows us to shoot sports, to shoot landscapes, to shoot portraits, to shoot anything. And having one good thought process is going to make photography work flow a lot easier as you get accustomed to shooting. Now this is actually a conversation about how to shoot in manual mode so that you are making these decisions yourself. One thing I'm going to make videos on in the future is why shooting in manual so powerful. And also about why I like to build my exposures without referencing the camera's metering system because there are certain inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the camera's metering system. All of that is to come in later videos. For right now, let me tell you my thought process, which is all about the importance of the corners of the triangle. All right, so we think of our exposure triangle. And first, we're going to think of a creative application or creative implication for our shot that is the most important thing. It's what's going to define success. And I'm going to narrow it down to only three options. What the motion looks like inside of the frame, what the depth of field looks like inside of the frame, and the image quality that you record. Now, of course, this is just another way of saying the aperture of the shutter speed and the ISO, right? But I'm going to phrase it initially as a thought process regarding what success creatively going to mean to me. So I'm going to lock in a corner of the exposure triangle to something that's going to give me success. Now, this might be setting F8 to get a reasonable depth of field for a landscape picture as an example. Then I'm going to choose the next most important corner of the triangle, something that's going to allow me to prop up that initial decision and allow it to work. Thirdly, I'm going to have a corner of the triangle that is least important. But before I get to that, I've actually locked into place two corners of the triangle. And I can do that in my mind before I even pick up the camera. So, for instance, if I'm shooting a landscape image as our previous example would indicate I might choose F8. And then I might say I've got a tripod so I'll choose ISO 100. And I can actually lock those into place in my camera in manual before I even look at the scene or set the camera up on the tripod. I know that shutter speed is going to be what I call my compensating corner. My compensating corner is going to be the corner of the exposure triangle that's going to move or what I call float in order to provide the actual brightness of the image I want. Because the scene in front of me might be a little bit brighter, it might be a little bit darker, and shutter speed will change in order to compensate for that. So, as the light around me changes, for instance, we get cloud cover when it used to be sunny, I know the only thing that I'm going to change will be my shutter speed. So, most important, second most important, and a compensating corner. Let me give you some real life examples. Of course, we've been talking about a landscape image. If I have a tripod, then I might choose F8 or F11, choose ISO 100, and then move my compensating corner in this case, my shutter speed until I have the image I want. But what if I show up at that same scene, and I don't have a tripod, in which case creativity comes first, F8, then practicality comes second. That's going to be a shutter speed I can hand hold, perhaps a 30th or 60th of a second, and then my ISO will move in order to make the image bright enough. Now let's take a look at a totally different example. That's going to be an action sequence. Let's take a look at shooting birds in flight. If I'm shooting birds in flight, what's going to give me the creativity that I want is going to be a fast shutter speed. In this case, a 1,600th of a second. Now, the lens I was shooting at, the maximum aperture at 600 millimeters was F6.3. So I set my aperture at F6.3 because it's going to give me the most light I can get out of that particular lens. At that point, my compensating corner is my ISO, and I will move it until the picture is bright enough. Let's take a third example, and this one's going to be a little bit tricky if we look at some nuance in a second, but initial is take a look at a studio lit portraiture. In those instances, the image quality I'm recording is actually the most important thing. I'll set that at ISO 100. Because I don't have any real background, depth of field is insignificantly important, so aperture can come second and I'll choose to choose something reasonable. 5.6, F8, something like that. At which point, the shutter speed moves in order to give me the exposure that I want. Eagle-eyed viewers, by the way, are going to notice that in a studio environment, shutter speed does not affect the exposure when the strobes go off. So the shutter speed is actually going to be something that allows me to affect the exposure without the strobes going off, which we want to actually be a black frame. And shutter speed would be appropriate to give me what I want. There, if I'm looking at the exposure as the strobe with the strobes on the subject, then actually the third corner of the triangle would be the power of the strobe themselves. So that one's a little bit more complicated, but the exact same principle applies. Remember, any situation you walk into first decide what will give you the creative implication of the shot that you want. What defines success to you? Set that first. Then find a corner of the triangle that props up that decision and find a compensating corner that's least important because you'll change that in order to give you the brightness of the shot you want. This type of shooting works in any environment. It allows you to set up a shot quickly, even if you do not reference your camera's meter, shoot an image, review it with your histogram, make an adjustment, and just start shooting. In later videos that I'm going to be producing this time goes on, I'll be talking about why we shoot in manual exposure and the inconsistencies and inaccuracies of your metering system so that that whole thought process makes sense. But until then, I hope that this was useful. I hope that you can take this information and go out and start shooting with it right away and start having some real success in manual. So if it was useful or at least entertaining, of course I'm going to ask you to like and subscribe. It's free. You knew that. Thank you so much for taking your time. And I'll see you next time. Bye.