Chapter 4. Essential Photography Concepts

In order to be a better photographer, it's important get down to the basics. Anyone can point a camera and take a good picture, but when you begin to understand the concepts you start making a photograph as opposed to just taking a picture. This chapter goes over many of the basic photography concepts that you need. If you're new to photography or dSLR cameras this provides you with the basic building blocks such as aperture and shutter speed; if you've got some experience with photography think of this chapter as a refresher with some advanced information on topics such as using histograms to evaluate your exposure and bracketing.

Essential Photography Concepts

Understanding photographic concepts such as how aperture and distance relate to depth of field allows you to add creative elements to your images.

Understanding Exposure

Exposure is a very important aspect of photography. Understanding how exposure is calculated allows you to understand how your camera chooses the settings when using one of the semiautomatic modes such as Shutter Priority or Aperture Priority. Without this knowledge you will have trouble achieving a specific effect in your images.

By definition, exposure — as it relates to digital photography — is the total amount of light collected by the camera's sensor during a single shutter cycle. A shutter cycle occurs when the Shutter Release button is pressed, ...

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