Food Fun Family

A family lifestyle blog about food, family, entertainment, travel and family-friendly products.

  • Home
  • Food
    • All Recipes
    • Main Dishes
    • Desserts
    • Side Dishes
    • Vegetarian dishes
    • Delicious Dishes Recipe Party
    • Recipe Round Ups
    • 15 Minute Suppers
    • Recipe Box
  • Family
    • Tips for Moms
    • Family life
    • Holidays & Celebrations
    • Savvy Living
  • Creative Life
    • Crafts + projects
    • DIY Bath & Body Products
    • Printables and Activity Sheets
    • Photography Tutorials
    • Give Me Your Best Shot – Photostory Friday
  • Travel
  • Entertainment
    • Giveaways
    • Book Club
    • Movies
    • Printables and Activity Sheets
    • Blog prompts
  • About
    • Contact Me
    • Privacy Policy
    • Advertise
    • Site Map – Find Your Way Around
  • Lollidale Goats
    • Our Does
You are here: Home / Photography / Exposure Triangle – a Bloggography Tutorial

Exposure Triangle – a Bloggography Tutorial

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 by Lolli 14 Comments

Bloggography at Better in Bulk

Visit my co-host, Manic Mother!

We have spent the last month discussing and experimenting with ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed, the three elements often referred to as the three points of the Exposure Triangle.

Photography - exposure triangle

It is at the intersection of these three elements that a picture’s exposure is decided.

Most importantly (and the most important thing to take away from today’s tutorial) is that adjusting one of these elements will impact each of the others. This means that you can never really isolate just one of the elements alone but always need to have the others in the back of your mind.

What is Exposure?

Over-exposed Acurate exposure Under-exposed

Exposure refers to how bright or dark your photo is. This is effected by the amount of light that is recorded by your camera’s sensor. A properly exposed photo should typically resemble the brightness of the original scene. A poorly exposed photo will either be too dark (under exposed) or too bright (over exposed), and may contain areas that are so dark or so bright that they contain no detail (know as being blown out).

An Analogy

shuttered windows with harp
Photo by Jooliree on Flickr

I have heard this photo analogy in a few different settings. Let’s see if I can do it justice. Imagine your camera is like a window with shutters that open and close.

The size of the window represents the aperture. If the window is larger, more light gets through and the room is brighter.

The amount of time that the shutters of the window are open represents the shutter speed. The longer you leave the shutters open, the more light that comes in.

This might be a little bit of a stretch, but imagine that you are wearing your sunglasses inside the room. These sunglasses (and how dark they happen to be) represent the ISO.  Your eyes become desensitized to the light that comes in.

There are several ways to increase the amount of light in the room…or at least how much light there appears to be. You could increase the time that the shutters are open (decrease shutter speed), you could increase the size of the window (increase aperture) or you could take off your sunglasses (make the ISO larger). If you wanted to room to be darker, you could close the shutters a little (increase the shutter speed), decrease the window size (decrease aperture), or put on some heavier sunglasses.

How To Adjust Exposure

Since we’ve talked about each of the elements of the exposure triangle individually, I thought I’d bring everything together in a little Exposure Cheat Sheet (or two). These are saved as jpegs, and for this tutorial, I give full permission for individuals to print them out to carry with you. The first chart is a review of what each exposure element’s function is, and what happens when you adjust it on your camera.

Exposure triangle review

This second chart is a more visual reminder (with numbers!) of how the exposure will be effected by adjusting your ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed.

(*Note: “dof” stands for Depth of Field. Please see a previous post about aperture and depth of field for a quick refresher)

Exposure cheat sheet - Photography

Challenge

Since this is a “bring it all together” week and somewhat of a review of the last 3 tutorials, we wanted to make this week’s challenge a review as well. This week, take your camera out and practice with ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture again. Was one of the 3 elements of the exposure triangle your favorite to work with….or is there an element that you still need some practice with? We’ll leave this one up to you! Next week, come back and share your results. And let us all know how you adjusted your picture to get your desired results so we can all continue to learn!

Have you joined the Bloggography Flickr group yet? If not, go see what other members have added this week! And feel free to add your pictures to the group pool.

© 2010 – 2014, Food Fun Family. All rights reserved.

About Lolli

Lolli has written 3740 post in this blog.

I became a mom in 1996, and in 2005 I had my fifth. Yes, 5 kids. In 2007, this blog was born (my 6th baby that will never grow up) and I've been sharing recipes, photography tricks, parenting tips, and everything in between. (Formerly Better in Bulk)

  • View all posts by Lolli →
  • Blog
  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Filed Under: Photography, Tutorials Tagged With: bloggography, Photography, tutorials

« My Kids Have Never Seen the Olympics
Fishful in New York »

Comments

  1. Lolli says

    Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 11:20 pm

    No, I don’t shoot in manual all that often (at least percentage-wise). Typically, I prefer to let the camera do some of the thinking for me. :)

  2. TJ McDowell says

    Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 11:18 pm

    So do you usually shoot in manual mode? We’re all about manual mode ourselves, but we also know other photographers who swear by aperture priority.

  3. Becca says

    Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 10:04 am

    Just opened my new camera yesterday and am SO excited to play!

    Thanks so much for this… I opened the book that came with the camera and about fell over… Couldn’t understand a thing :)

  4. Bundgyday says

    Friday, March 5, 2010 at 8:29 am

    i definitely love your writing style, very useful.
    don’t give up and also keep writing for the simple reason that it simply that is worth to follow it.
    impatient to browse through even more of your posts, have a pleasant day ;)

  5. Megan B says

    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 12:28 pm

    I do so love your photo tips. Thanks!

  6. Cecily R says

    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 9:13 pm

    Your tutorials are so great. I still want to spend a photography week with you…

    I need to join the Flickr group…and then MAYBE I’ll get brave enough to post something. Maybe. :)
    .-= Cecily R´s last blog ..Wordful Wednesday and 365 Week 9 =-.

  7. Brandy says

    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 8:14 pm

    I have been meaning to join you on the photo stuff when you announced it but life is crazy. Do you have them under a certain label so I can attempt to catch up

    The Buzz
    Brandy

  8. angie says

    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 6:27 pm

    THis is super helpful.

  9. Brandie says

    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 5:06 pm

    So I was playing so much my battery died. So excited cant’ wait to shoot some more!! How did NYC go today??
    .-= Brandie´s last blog ..True Story Tuesday =-.

  10. amy prikazsky says

    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 12:56 pm

    Awesome tutorial! I love using the window analogy when explaing this to other people!
    .-= amy prikazsky´s last blog ..5 things Tuesday with a TWIST…. =-.

  11. Amy says

    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 11:07 am

    Awesome tutorial! Thanks for the printouts!
    I will definitely be trying these out soon :)

Trackbacks

  1. Clickin’ Moms: First Steps with a DSLR review says:
    Wednesday, December 18, 2013 at 6:58 am

    […] about working better with my subjects, a bit about composition and, most of all, how to use the Exposure Triangle (that’s Aperture, ISO and Shutter […]

  2. Exposure: ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed | CalTV Cinematography says:
    Thursday, September 27, 2012 at 12:39 am

    […] https://foodfunfamily.com/2010/03/exposure-triangle-bloggography.html […]

  3. Photography Endeavors | Household6Diva says:
    Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 12:49 pm

    […] by 5 Minutes for Mom The ISO Setting – by The Pioneer Woman ISO Explained by Better in Bulk Exposure Explained – by Better in […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2025 · Foodie Pro Theme by Shay Bocks · Built on the Genesis Framework · Powered by WordPress

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.

Necessary Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Non-necessary

Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.