Beginner´s Guide to Manual Photography
 

Some might ask why you would want or need to modify camera settings manually when the camera can do it for you ‘just fine.’ It is certainly possible to get a nice photo just snapping away in automatic mode, but more often than not what you’ll end up with is a snapshot rather than an expressive photograph. It’s all in the eye of the beholder, really, but if you want to consistently end up with photographs instead of snapshots, you’ll need to grab the wheel and take control. The purpose of this article will be to lay out some of the most basic (and important) manual settings which can be found on most cameras. While this is hardly an exhaustive list of manual settings, bare in mind that this is an introduction to manual settings. The things I’ll be focusing on are Shutter Speed, Aperture, and ISO (sensitivity).