A Quick Lesson on Shutter and Aperture Priority

Since the advent of digital photography, I’ve become more or less addicted to photography. It’s a compulsive thing, but most of the time it’s fairly constructive. I’ve learned a lot over the last 10 years and 70,000+ photos (most of them are bad…). There are tons of helpful infographics and cheat sheets on the web. Here’s one from Lifehacker. But I had to share a quick series of images I caught tonight. It’s not as thorough as the other guides or cheat sheets, but it does illustrate some pretty marked differences at the extremes of shutter priority and aperture priority. Plus, my kid just made me laugh. Enjoy!

1 reply
  1. Ted
    Ted says:

    I was going to suggest you get Cannon’s Nifty 50 but you have one (the ƒ1.8). It’s a wonderful lens at a fraction of the cost (look up the price for the ƒ1.4). It has a skimpy build, but if you kill lenses, just buy 2 :-). It makes my Rebel t2i look comically out of proportion with the 2 battery grip attached (perhaps I should buy a hood).

    One problem with is with video. If you have the aperture all the way open, the depth of field is so narrow that if your subject moves forward and back, they get fuzzy when they move through that point, so you need less than 1.8 just to be safe.

    My son and I took photos of each other for our church’s online directory. Our photos look great with the wonderful blurred background of trees. Unlike the other member’s cell phone photos.

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