Soulburn Studios Art Lessons

Camera Basics
By Neil Blevins
Created On: Oct 13th 2025
Updated On: Nov 26th 2025
Software: Any

If you've ever taken a photography class, you may have heard terms like Aperture, ISO, or Worms Eye view. These terms are not only useful in photography (traditional and digital), but also for digital 2D and 3D art as well. This quick lesson will explain many of these concepts and how they relate to each other and their real world origin.

Real World Camera Settings & Terms

First off, old cameras used real film to take photographs. Film was replaced in digital cameras with an image sensor. However, regardless of whether it's traditional film or digital, the same terms and settings apply to both methods.

First off, here's the most important settings or controls on your camera that you can directly modify...

Aperture (f-stop)
Focus Distance (m)
Shutter Speed (seconds)
Film Speed (ISO)
Focal Length (mm)

Now lets go more indepth into these settings and other terms you'll need to know...

Aperture: The Aperture is the opening that lets light into the camera. Measured in f-stop (focal ratio). The larger the opening, the smaller the f-stop, the more light comes in. The larger the f-stop, the smaller the opening and the less light gets in. F-stop of f/1.2-2.8 is big opening, f/4-8 is medium opening, f/11-32 is tiny opening.
F-stop: The value used to define the size of the Aperture.

Focus: an object that appears Clear in your photo, as opposed to "Out Of Focus" which means the object is blurry.
Focus Distance: The distance between your camera and the object that's most in focus. Usually measured in feet or meters.
Depth Of Field (DOF): The distance between the nearest and farthest object that's in focus. A large f-stop value (smaller hole) makes most objects in focus in your photo (Deep Focus). A small f-stop value (larger hole) makes more objects out of focus (Shallow Focus).

Shutter Speed: How long the Aperture remains open to collect light. Measured in a fraction of a second like 1/30s. Faster shutter speeds collect less light than longer shutter speeds. Slow shutter speeds you may need a tripod to keep the camera steady otherwise the image might be blurry.
Motionblur: The amount of directional blur an object has when it's moving. Higher shutter speed = less motionblur, lower shutter speed = more motionblur

Film Grain: How noisy your image is.
Film Speed: How sensitive your camera is to light. Measured in ISO. Lower speed (say ISO 200) produces a darker result, higher speed (say ISO 800) produces a brighter result. Low speed creates less contrast, less grain and more accurate colors. High speed creates a higher contrast final image, more grain and less accurate colors.
ISO: The value used to define the Film Speed.

Focal Length: How zoomed in the image is. Measured in mm. A low mm (say 16mm) is a wide angle lens and you appear to be further from your subject. A high mm (say 100mm) is a telephoto lens and you appear much closer to your subject. You can change your focal length by swapping your lens, or using a zoom lens that lets you change the focal length gradually between a min and max value.
Field Of View (FOV angle): How much of the scene you see, related to the Focal Length. A low focal length means a much larger field of view, and vice versa. Measured in degrees. Different types of cameras have a different ratio between the Focal Length and the FOV.

Finally, Exposure isn't something you usually control directly, but the exposure of your image is usually based on your choice of Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO.

Exposure: The amount of light per unit area reaching a frame of photographic film or the surface of an electronic image sensor.
Over Exposed: When there's too much light in your environment for your camera settings and so your final photo is too bright.
Under Exposed: When there isn't enough light in your environment for your camera settings and your final photo is too dark.

How Do They Relate To Each Other?

All of these settings relate to each other in a complex way. If you change one of them, you may need to reduce or increase others to get the image you expect or want. Here's some more info on how they relate...

Bright Environment (Sunny Day):

You need to collect less light to take your picture, because the environment is already very bright
Small Aperture (ex: f/32)
DOF: more objects in focus
Use High Shutter Speed (ex: 1/96 sec) to capture less light, this will cause less motionblur
Use Low Speed Film to capture less light, this will cause less Grain, less Contrast, and more Accurate Colors

Dark Environment (Night Time):

You need to collect more light to take your picture, because the environment is very dark
Large Aperture (ex: f/2.8)
DOF: less subjects in Focus
Use Slow Shutter Speed (ex: 1/24 sec) to capture more light, this will cause more motionblur
Use High Speed Film to capture more light, this will cause more Grain, more Contrast, and less Accurate Colors

If your subject is too close to your camera:

Use Wide Angle Lens (low mm, say 16mm), but this will cause your image to potentially look more distorted (see How Focal Length Affects Camera Distortion)

If your subject is too far from your camera:

Use Telephoto Lens (high mm, say 100mm), but this will cause your image to potentially look more flat (see How Focal Length Affects Camera Distortion)

And here's some common situations you might be in and how to fix them based on these relationships.

If your photo is too light (Over Exposed):

it can be darkened using a smaller aperture (larger f-stop).

increase your shutter speed, it will darken things down.
it can be darkened using a lower ISO, and your image will have less grain.

If your photo too dark (Under Exposed):

it can be brightened using a larger aperture (smaller f-stop).

decrease your shutter speed, it will brighten things up but it might be blurry because you're jiggling the camera.
it can be brightened using a higher ISO, but the image will be more Grainy.

DOF causes your object to be too out of focus, increase f-stop, this will cause the image to be darker, so increase the ISO or decrease shutter speed.
DOF causes too much of your scene to be in focus, decrease fstop, this will cause the image to be brighter, so decrease the ISO or increase shutter speed.
Your object is moving fast (like a soccer player, a moving car, or a running animal), lower shutter speed to avoid too much motionblur. Use a high ISO film to get more brightness since the low shutter speed reduces the light your camera collects.

Camera Positions

The placement of your camera and what you're pointed at will also heavily affect your final photo. Here's some common photographic camera placement terms:

Wide Shot: Sometimes called Establishing Shot. Your are further away from your subject, and see more of the environment. If there's a person in your scene, you can probably see all of them from head to toe. This is used to give the audience an idea on what the environment looks like, and where the subject is in that environment.

Medium Shot: Half way between a close and wide shot, if a person is in the picture, you likely see them from waist up. Usually used when the actors are moving their bodies, and you want to see their faces at the same time.

Closeup Shot: You're very close to your subject, if a person, you see probably just their face. This when you don't need to see any body movement, you just want to see them talking or their expressions and emotion.

Extreme Closeup Shot: even closer than close up, you may just see their eyes. Usually used to see into the mind of the subject, what are they thinking?

Worms Eye View: The camera is low and you are looking up at your subject. Makes the subject look dominant.

Birds Eye View: The camera is above your subject and you are looking down. Makes the subject look inferior.

Over The Shoulder Shot: Looking over the shoulder of one character facing another character who's talking. Good for conversation.

Dutch Angle: A shot where the camera is slightly tilted. This feels a little off, used frequently to show something is wrong in the story.

Optical Effects

When using a camera, there are some special optical effects that can occur due to the way the camera lens interacts with the light in your scene. Sometimes you might want these effects, sometimes you don't, but regardless it's good to know about them.

Lens Flare: When something in your photo gets really bright (like the sun), you can see a flare occur that appears as a bright star with secondary circles.

Bloom / Glare: A soft glow in your photograph called a Specular Bloom that appears in the brightest spots of your photo. Consider this a mild Lens Flare.

Chromatic Aberration: Different wavelengths of light separate in a lens causing you to see a prism effect around the edges of objects.

Bokeh: Small Circles of light that appear when some part of your photo is bright and really out of focus.

3D Software Camera Settings

Finally, when using 3d Software like Blender or 3dsmax, there are some common camera settings that have no real world equivalent that you should know about.

Clipping Planes: These planes allow you to ignore (make invisible) objects that are too close to the camera, or too far away from the camera. Can be useful to optimize the amount of stuff visible in a scene, or to do cutaway renders.

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Conclusion

If your goal when painting in 2d or rendering in 3d is realism, some or all of these camera effects can be added to increase that reality. Or removed to get a more stylized look. Hopefully this helps explain some of these terms and how they interact to create the scenario you see before you.