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Stii bought me a Canon PowerShot S5IS camera some time ago.  I love taking photos of everything and anything around me, and he thought he is doing me a huge favour.  So, I fiddled around, trying to help myself but without any huge success.  I was getting more frustrated than getting joy out of the camera.  I was still using the camera on the usual “Auto” setting as then nothing can go wrong - or so I thought.  Until I started developing some of the photos … some were out of focus (even though they looked fine on the camera screen) etc.  So, I started talking to the owner of the Photo Centre.  What a nice guy! He gave me ideas of what to do and when to do it.  He came to my house tonight and explained everything (or at least what I needed to know) about Aperture & Shutter Speed.

In a nutshell the Aperture and Shutter Speed must always be in balance.  The aperture is the depth of the object that you want focus on (ie, if you want focus on a nearby object and the rest of the photo out of focus, you would use a big aperture setting and if you want everything in focus, front & back, you would use a smaller aperture setting).  Of course this setting also determines the amount of light that goes through to your photo in the end.  This setting, combined with your shutter speed should always be in balance to give you the best quality photo.

The shutter speed is the time that the shutter takes to close, ie, the amount of light it allows through.  Therefor if you take photos in a dark place, you would use a slow shutter speed to enable the camera to absorb all the necessary light it needs.  The shutter speed will also determine whether a photo is blurry or not.  If you are taking a photo of a fast moving object, you will need the shutter speed on fast.  Taking such a photo on a slow shutter speed, the object will still be moving whilst the camera’s shutter is closing therefor cause a blurry effect.

Wow, this was interesting!!  I will try to post pictures that was taken on different settings.  Of course with Stii being in Cape Town, I can’t show you my first wonderful photo of burning candles … it’s beautiful!