Hi,
Many people use smartphone to capture the events happening on their life, but also many photographers use smartphone as an alternative way to capture the subject instead of using DSLR cameras. I hear some user ask the photographer how can they do that beautiful shot using only the smartphone. The answer was, they use the manual mode on the built-in camera app.
Here is the thing that we will discuss:
ISO
Aperture
Shutter Speed
Golden Triangle
ISO - When you talk about ISO, it was not all about the International Organization of Standardization. Hello? We are talking about cameras and that was another part of the story. Back to the track, the ISO was preferring to the noise added to your image.
Refer to the photo above you can see that if the ISO is higher the noise grains become more visible and noticeable, but ISO was not all about noise grains added to the photo, but also it is a sensitivity of the camera you will trigger.
Keep in mind that the Higher the ISO, the brighter you will get.
2. Aperture - was the hole or gap on the camera it self. It is also an opening of the camera where the light travels, specifically in a simple word this is the blur effect on the camera.
On the photo shown, the lower the aperture the bigger the hole. On the other hand, the lower the aperture the more blur effect you will get. Since we are talking about smartphone here, the nearer the object you need to lower your aperture to get focus on the subject. If the subject was too far you need to make the aperture higher so you can focus widely on the distance.
Here is a sample on the smartphone camera:
On this photo, you can see that my subject are near to my camera, so in order to focus on my subject I need to reduce the aperture. If you notice, the background on the image was blurred and only my subject was emphasize.
On this another photo, you can see that I get farther from my subject so in order to focus on my subject that was far from my camera I need to increase the aperture. And the background are still blurred but it is more noticeable than the first photo.
On this photo, you can see I am farther distance from my subject. In order to focus, again I need to increase my aperture. Now the background was noticeable because it was like I am taking a landscape photo.
Going back to this image, we can now say that it was true. The lower the aperture the more blur effect you will get, hence the nearer the object you need to lower your aperture to get focus on the subject and if the subject was too far you need to make the aperture higher so you can focus widely on the distance.
3. Shutter Speed - It was refer on how fast or slow you will close the window of the camera. It is like a blink of the eye. In other term, this is the exposure time when the film or digitizer of the camera will exposed to the light.
As the photo shown, if you set the shutter speed into 1/1000 second, you would probably have a freezing effect to the subject, but the exposure time was too fast so you probably get a dark photo. Hence, if you set to 1/2 second, you would probably get a motion blur image on the subject (if the subject was moving) and the exposure time is converted in to half second, so probably you would get a bright photo.
So on the other hand, it was like an exposure time how long or short you will expose the digitizer of the camera into light.
If you do a night photography, I know that it was too dark on the environment. So I suggest to set your shutter speed into 1/2 sec. or 2s. Keep in mind that if you expose into longer period of time you should use a tripod to stabilze the image.
4. Golden Triangle - It is refer to the balance exposure, aperture, and noise grains into image. The image was to be balance and equal, not too dark or bright and not too noisy or less noisy.
In this case, you need to control the ISO, Aperture, and Shutter speed.
Why should I learn this thing if the Auto mode are there to guide me?
Well, learning this kind of stuff about photography makes you more aware about your camera. I know it was too hard to learn this Manual mode but I am telling you, if you learn the manual mode you will be a great mobile photographer. Hence, you can also use this topic in terms of DSLR cameras.
TIP:
Use a standard ISO settings on what you want, if you want your image more noise grains set it into 1600, if you want less noise I suggest to use 800 or 400 as standard.
Play with your imagination, imagine of what kind of image you want to produce. It is brighter? It is dark? It is blurry? It was your choice, because this is a manual settings.
Learn to use Shutter speed, it can help you a lot in most of the time.
Do not always rely on Auto mode, you can be more better than Auto settings.
Keep it balance, not too warm and not too cold. You know what I mean.
Always check other professional photographer's image you can learn more about photography.