In another post about aperture priority, I talked about depth of field as being the amount of the photo that is in focus for a given aperture setting.

The following two images demonstrate this. The first uses an aperture of f2.8 which is a very wide aperture meaning the hole that light can pass through is large. This gives a narrow depth of field with only a small area of the image in focus.

The next image shows the other extreme, a very small aperture, f22. This has much more of the image in focus, but requires a longer shutter speed.

Try the different aperture settings on your camera and learn how changing the aperture will effect the image.

In another of my posts called What is ISO I talked about something called noise. This is the grainy effect you can see on your images in certain circumstances. Increasing the ISO setting on your camera is the main way that you will start to see more noise.

The following image shows 3 different ISO settings. These pictures were taken on my Sony Alpha 100, and the amount of noise you may see on other cameras may be better or worse than this. Try it for yourself with your camera so you can see how your camera performs.

You can see on the zoomed in areas that ISO1600 produces much more of the noise or grain effect than ISO100.

So when you are taking pictures, try to keep the camera on the lowest ISO setting you can as that will give you the best quality image.

Here’s an image that illustrates what Under Exposed images, correctly Exposed images and Over Exposed images look like.