The Pareto Principle basically says that to achieve 80% of the results, it takes 20% of the effort.

Today, I'm going to teach you 80% of photography in 10 minutes.

Now remember, 20% of the effort is going to get you 80% of the way there, but it takes a lot more to really become a great photographer.

When I learn something new, I like to look at it in its simplest form.

I tell people, talk to me like I'm a five year old.

Once I have that basic understanding, that core knowledge, that like solid foundation of what this thing is, then I can build on top of it and really dig into the complexities of it.

That's what we're going to do with photography.

Today, I'm going to get you 80% of the way there so that you're creating awesome images and when you're not creating awesome images, you'll be able to troubleshoot and figure out why.

Here we go. 10 minutes.

First up is ISO and it's the first thing that I'm going to set in any given scenario.

The basic gist here is that ISO is the sensitivity of your camera's sensor.

The higher the number, the more sensitive to light your camera's sensor is going to be.

The lower the number, the less sensitive.

So you might be thinking, crank that ISO up, I want lots of light, I want to be able to pull all the light.

It's kind of the opposite actually.

You want to keep your ISO as low as possible because the higher the ISO, the more grain, the more noise, the more artifacts and weird funky things are in your image.

To show how ISO works, I did a little test shoot of one of my favorite lenses.

Here is ISO 100, here's 200, here's 400, 800, 1600, 3200, and 6400.

This is a Sony A7R II, so just for fun.

Here is 12,800 and 25,600.

This is a little fun.

ISO is a big reason that camera body prices fluctuate so much.

A cheaper camera might be able to go to 800 or 1600 ISO before getting really grainy and noisy, while a more expensive camera can go up to 3200, 6400, 10,000, and beyond and still be pretty usable.

In general with photography, you pay more to get more light.

So outside where there's plenty of light, I'm going to have my ISO at 100.

In the shade, 200.

Now, when I come indoors, I'm going to bump my ISO to 400 or maybe 800, 1600 even.

On this camera, I think 3200 ISO looks awesome and I'm at 3200 ISO on this camera a lot.

So remember, ISO is your camera sensor's sensitivity.

The higher the number, the more light, but the more noise.

So keep your ISO low.

Next up is aperture.

Aperture is the size of the opening in your lens.

This one is simple and you can actually see it happening.

Your lens has blades inside that actually open and close to create a smaller or larger hole.

That hole size is your aperture.

Now this one's a little confusing because the smaller the number, the bigger the hole and the more light comes in.

The higher the number, the smaller the hole and the less light comes in.

And you'll see this number written in f-stops.

Don't worry why it's written like that, it's a math thing.

I'll probably get into it in another video.

Cheaper lenses that might have come with your camera, like the Canon 18-55 kit lens that comes with a lot of Canon cameras, it goes from f3.5 to f38.

And Sony's kit lens I think is f3.5 to f36, which means at f36 it's a tiny little hole and at f3.5 it's bigger and it's going to let more light in.

So the higher the number, less light, lower the number, more light.

Then you move to lenses in like the $1500 to $2500 range, like this guy.

This is Sony's 85mm f1.4, which means it can open up huge and let in a ton of light.

So with aperture, the lower the number, the more light there is.

The higher the number, the less light there is.

But, aperture mainly controls depth of field, so I kind of want you to forget that first part about aperture.

Understand that that's how it works, but this is how we use it.

Depth of field is super simple.

It's basically how much is in focus in front of and behind the actual spot that you focused on.

And here's where it gets simple.

The lower the f-stop number, the smaller the depth of field.

The higher the f-stop number, the more depth of field.

So here's that shot on my lens again.

This time on a ruler, so you can see the depth of field.

The first shot is at f1.4.

The second shot, f2, f2.8, f4, f5.6, f8, f11, and f16.

You can see how as the aperture number went up, the depth of field did as well.

In any given scene, the first thing I'm going to do is set my ISO based on the actual scene.

The second thing I'm going to do is set my aperture based on my subject.

If I'm shooting one person for a portrait, I'm going to go really low with that depth of field.

I might shoot at f2 or f2.5, but if I'm shooting a group of people, I'm going to crank my aperture up a little bit, maybe somewhere in like the f3.5 to f4 range, because I need more depth of field to make sure that everyone that's in that line is in focus.

Then if I'm shooting a landscape where I want the tree in front of me and the mountain in the distance all in focus, I'm going to go up to f16, maybe f22, something where everything is going to be in focus and there'll be nothing blurry.

Those like super, super tack sharp landscape images, usually somewhere around f16.

So to recap, aperture is the size of the opening in your lens.

The lower the f-stop, more light, higher the f-stop, less light.

But remember that aperture controls depth of field, which is way more important in creating an image.

So low f-stop, small depth of field, higher f-stop, large depth of field.

Pretty simple, right?

Last up is shutter speed, and shutter speed is super simple.

Shutter speed is the amount of time measured in seconds that your shutter is open.

With shutter speed, you'll see numbers like 1 50th of a second, 1 100th of a second, 1 2 50th of a second.

It goes all the way up to 1 8000th of a second, depending on your camera.

And you can go the other way, and you can slow your shutter speed down to one second or two seconds or five seconds or 10 seconds.

Most cameras go up to 30 seconds without something called an intervalometer.

I use my intervalometer.

It's very interesting.

While shutter speed controls the amount of time that your shutter is open, it also controls motion blur.

From a lot of motion blur, all the way up to where moving objects are just totally frozen in place.

Super slow shutter speeds are going to be used when you're on a tripod shooting something like a landscape or a cool waterfall and you want that, what's that, looks like smoke but water.

Looks really cool.

All the way up to shooting like three minute exposures and getting really cool star Milky Way shots.

All the way to the other side where you want to freeze motion.

Shutter speed is what helps you accomplish that.

Faster shutter speeds are going to be used in things like sports or maybe someone's running or your dog is running in the backyard and you want that really crispy shot of your dog just frozen in place.

When I'm shooting portraits, I don't want any motion blur in my images.

I want people looking nice and crispy.

I'm going to shoot somewhere between 1 250th of a second and 1 500th of a second.

If my subjects start walking or start running or something like that, I'm going to go a little faster and if it's low light and I need the extra light, I'll go a little slower and I'll get them to stand really still so it's still nice and sharp.

For sports, you're going to be somewhere in the 1 800th range, maybe 1 1000th and even beyond.

Basically, the faster your subject is moving, if you want to freeze them, you need a faster shutter speed.

So the total basics of shutter speed is slower shutter speed, more motion blur, faster shutter speed, less motion blur.

That's it.

And now I'll put it all together.

So anytime I'm going to take a shot, I'm going to walk into the scene and the first thing I'm going to do is set my ISO.

So I'm going to look at the scene.

If I'm outdoors, there's plenty of light.

I'm going to bring that ISO as low as I can, maybe 200 or 100.

Second, I'm going to look at my subject.

I'm going to choose how much depth of field do I need for that one person or two people or five people.

And I'm going to set my aperture based on that.

And then third, I'm going to choose how much motion blur I want or don't want and set my shutter speed based on that.

So here's two quick scenarios.

I get everything set for my shot.

My subject is totally ready.

I get everything dialed.

I look at my shot and it's too dark.

There's three places I can go to get more light.

The first thing I'm going to do is slow my shutter speed down.

But I can only do that until I start seeing motion blur on my image.

Second, I'm going to lower my aperture.

It's going to let more light in, but I can only do that until my subject isn't in focus because I don't have enough depth of field for them.

And the third place to find more light is to bump my ISO.

It's my last resort.

I don't want to bump my ISO, but I will.

And again, depending on your camera, that's either going to be a really bad thing or in cameras like this, it's not going to really be that big of a deal.

The second scenario is the exact opposite.

I get everything dialed in.

I take my test shot and it's too bright.

Now, the first thing I'm going to do this time is my ISO because I have plenty of light.

So I'm going to crank that thing down and I'm going to get a really, really nice clean image because of that.

Now, if I crank my ISO all the way down, it's still too bright.

The second thing I do is I start raising my shutter speed.

And the very last thing that I would change is my aperture.

I really enjoy that low depth of field look when I'm shooting portraits.

So aperture is the last thing that I mess with.

There's a ton of great charts out there that are an awesome reference to just always have on hand.

I made one for you right now.

Be ready to screenshot in three, two, one.

And that's it.

That is 80% of photography in 10 minutes.

Huh, I did it.

For all you advanced photographers out there, I realize there is way, way, way more that makes up photography and it makes a good photographer.

But as like the basic foundational elements, if you can understand those three concepts and how your camera uses them, you're going to be able to take awesome images.

And you're going to be able to troubleshoot when you see something wrong.

So if you see that you don't have enough depth of field, you know that your aperture has to go up.

Higher number, more depth of field.

If your image is super grainy, you know your ISO has to come down.

And lastly, if there's blur in your images, you know that your shutter speed has to go up.

And that's it.

Hit the subscribe button below.

I'm going to have a ton more videos out.

Leave comments below asking questions about photography and I'll make videos like this answering them.

Yeah, that's all I got.

If this whole time you were really upset because I was saying ISO instead of ISO, you're wrong.

It's ISO, not ISO.

It's not an acronym.

Look it up.

Take that, internet.

I told them.

I told them good.