From the course: Creating a Short Film: 07 Cinematography

Understanding exposure

From the course: Creating a Short Film: 07 Cinematography

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Understanding exposure

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- Capturing moving images is really the process of capturing light. Exposure refers to the amount of light that is being recorded by your camera. Exposure can be affected by lights in the scene, or by your camera settings, but in this chapter, we're going to be primarily focusing on ways to adjust exposure in camera. We adjust exposure on the camera in three ways, with the aperture of the lens, the sensitivity of the camera sensor to light, this is called ISO, and also with the shutter speed. These three things are often referred to collectively as the exposure triangle. Now when we adjust these settings, not only is exposure affected, in other words the brightness of the image, but aperture, ISO and shutter speed each have their own unique side effects that also need to be taken into consideration. In the next few movies, we're going to learn how each of these concepts work. For the rest of the course, we'll use these foundational principles over and over again, so make sure that they are clear to you before you move on. As we dig into these ideas, remember that there are no right or wrong answers per se, sometimes I might seem kind of intense about how things should always be this way or that way, or whatever, but you know, a lot of times, it's just like any other artistic endeavor, amazing results are achieved by doing things the wrong way. The key is that you need to understand the rules to know how to manipulate them to your advantage. So watch the next few movies, and learn the ins and outs of exposure.

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