Photography isn’t about what camera you have or how good it is. You just need to understand how to use it to reach your full potential.

Think of the camera as your eyeball. The aperture, measured in F-stop’s, is your pupil. The aperture determines how much light is let in, altering the depth of field. Think of it as your focal point. What do you want your eye to focus more on? A smaller F-stop allows more light and creates a blurry background. A larger f-stop allows less light and creates a sharper background.

The shutter speed is like your eyelid. How fast you’re blinking determines the motion in your perspective. A fast shutter speed results in a photo with every piece outlined clearly. A slower one has blurred motion. If you were to take a photo of a waterfall, you’d find that a slow blink is blurry, a faster one is detailed.

Finally, the ISO is your sunglasses. This is your light sensitivity. Just like how sunglasses have different tints depending on how much you want dimmed, cameras have the same thing. In darker surroundings, your camera is trying harder to see in the dark. Higher ISO’s are better in these situations. Despite it allowing you to take more photos without much light, the result may end up having more speckles or grains — that is called noise. Once there’s more light, on the other hand, lower ISO’s are better. Your camera isn’t trying as hard to capture all the light. It gives you the cleanest pictures free of grain.

Change the settings according to your surroundings. Not everything will be perfect and you certainly won’t get it right the first attempt. Perfection takes practice!