Q: What is Aperture?
A: The hole in your lens. The bigger the hole, more light comes thru the lens.
Smaller the hole, less light comes thru the lens.
Q: What is Sensor?
A: Equivalent of a film in digital world
Q: What is Shutter?
A: The gateway to your camera's sensor. Think of this as a door to your house: you have to open and enter the door to go inside your house. Same way, shutter has to open for light to reach the camera's sensor
Q: What is Shutter Speed?
A: How long should the door remain open? Faster the shutter speed = door to your house is opened and closed very fast, which means less number of people enter the house via the door (same way less light comes thru the shutter into the camera's sensor if shutter speed is fast)
Q: What is ISO?
A: Remember the famous mathematical problem: If 10 people build a house and complete it in 5 days, how long would 20 people take to build the same house? Maybe a tough question, but surely they'll complete it faster than the time taken by 10 people right?
Same thing here: Assume ISO 100 means there are 100 people working on the sensor to capture your image. So they take longer to complete the house (they need more light to come and fall on sensor to take a pic)
ISO 200 means there are 200 people working on the sensor to capture your pic, so they take faster than ISO 100 to capture a pic (they need less light to take a pic when compared with ISO 100)
But there's a drawback: 200 people surely make more noise and clutter than 100 people could right?
Same way ISO 200 makes noisier\grainier pic than ISO 100
The general guideline for beginners: use as low an ISO as possible.
There are exceptions to this guideline though, but that discussion is for a later point in time
Q: Recommend beginner book for me?
A: (1) The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby, read Volume I
Its a practical, hands-on book, use-this-to-get-this-effect book. No boring theories.
Who wants to read theory when starting out!
(2) Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson
The book I read when I started out in photography. Bryan explains basics of photography in a clear, easy to understand way.
Q: I've seen shots with blurred background that looks rocking. How do I do that?
A: DSLR owners, you have it easy. Choose the smallest f-stop number on your lens (f2.8 or f4 or f5.6 depending on your lens).
Where you set your focus point will be sharp, bkground is blurred.
Prosumer Camera Owners: You got it tough. There is no easy way to do this. Choose Manual Focus, and use that MF ring.
Note: The farther away the background is from your foreground, smoother the blur. i.e. if you shoot a flower and background is the earth directly below, you'll get only ok-ok blur. But get down on your knees, so that bkground is far away tree or building, you'll get much better blur.
Q: What is this full-frame camera and cropped sensor camera I keep hearing about?
A: We have to go to history for lil bit
During film days, the film size was 35mm.
When dslr was first manufactured, 35mm digital image sensor was so darned expensive.
Camera manufacturers reduced 35mm sensor size to reduce cost, and these are called "cropped sensor" cameras. Cropped because they use less than 35mm size to keep costs low.
35mm image sensor dslr's are called full frame cameras
