So I thought I would take a post to explain how to get some different looks with one camera and a single lens, and if their is interest maybe in a later post go into how to change up a look with different lenses.

When you are taking pictures with a digital SLR there are really 3 main things to focus on to alter the look of your shots.

ISO – this is the speed in which your film (make believe film in the case of digital cameras) is going to expose. For example a good shot taken at a 200 iso will look completely blown out at 1000 iso, if all you change is the iso speed. Knowing this one would assume you want to shoot at a very high iso so that you get crisp unblurred shots. While you will get faster shots at a higher ISO, you also get alot more noise as you increase the iso.


The first shot was taken at an ISO of 1000 and the second shot was taken at an ISO of 6400. Although I was able to use a much faster shutter speed for the second shot, the quality of the photo is noticeably grainy.

Shutter Speed – This is how fast the mirror in your camera opens. The faster the shutter speed the more crisp your shot will be. The only real thing this will do to the look of your picture will determine if it is under or over exposed. The shutter speed does nothing to the quality of the picture, it will always have the same grain. Also a slow shutter speed will blur your subject if you or it is moving


This is the most common thing people know to change. The slower the shutter speed the brighter the photo. These photos show shutter speeds of 1/4000, 1/1250, 1/320, and 1/125 from left to right.

Aperture – This is the third and final major variable for shooting images, and in many ways adds the most options to the look of the photo. The aperture is the opening in the lens, it determines how much light is let into the camera. Varying the amount of light let into the camera also has a direct effect on how the image looks as well though. For example on my 35mm lens if I set the aprature to f1.8, which means the lens is letting as much light in as it can, the foreground and background are going to be much more out of focus, this is refereed to as “depth of field” or DOF. But if I take the same shot with the apeture closed to f20, much more of the scene will stay in focus. here is a quick example.

both of these are taken with the exact same lens (35mm f/1.8), I just changed the aperture to decrease my DOF on the second image.
The first image was taken at 1/2500 f/1.8 and an ISO of 1000
The second image was taken at 1/50 f/16 and an ISO of 1000
You notice that I had to change the shutter speed as well, but this change was done only to compensate for the loss of light because of my higher aperture (smaller hole in the lens).

I think this is a good amount of info to start with, and it covers the basics. I would write more, but I do not get many visitors to the site. However if you do come across this and find it helpful and want me to elaborate, or add more info, comment or write me and let me know.