Stop by Stop
Photography basics · Namibia camera coach
Basics 1 · Exposure
When you take a picture, a small door inside the camera opens and light falls onto the sensor. The sensor records how much light reached each spot. That amount of light is the exposure.
Too little light and the photo comes out dark and murky. That's underexposed. Too much and the bright parts turn flat white. That's overexposed. Your job is to land in between.
One stop more means twice the light. One stop less means half. In this app every notch on every slider is exactly one stop, and sliding to the right always makes the picture brighter.
Each of the three settings also changes how the photo looks, not just how bright it is. The next chapters take them one at a time.
Reading the meter. Cameras show a little scale like the one under each photo, running from −3 to +3. The marker shows how many stops too dark (left) or too bright (right) the camera thinks the shot will be.
Aim for 0. You'll see this meter in every exercise.
Basics 2 · Aperture
Inside the lens is a ring of thin metal blades that form an opening. Open it wider and more light gets through.
Aperture is written as an f-number, like f/2.8 or f/16. The numbers run backwards: a small number means a wide opening, a big number means a tiny one. Read it as a fraction: f/2 is bigger than f/16 the same way ½ is bigger than 1/16.
A wide opening keeps only a thin slice of the scene in focus. Everything in front and behind melts into blur. A narrow opening keeps near and far sharp. How much of the scene is sharp is the depth of field.
Try it
The camera is focused on the person. Slide toward f/1.4 and watch the string lights behind them turn into soft circles. Photographers call those circles bokeh.
Basics 3 · Shutter speed
The shutter is a curtain in front of the sensor. Shutter speed is how long it stays open, in seconds or fractions of a second. 1/1000 is one thousandth of a second. 1/2 is half a second. Each step slower doubles the light.
Anything that moves while the shutter is open gets smeared. A fast shutter freezes a cyclist mid-pedal, or a springbok mid-leap. A slow one turns them into a streak, which can look great when you mean it.
Try it
Slide from 1/4000 toward 1 second and watch the cyclist. Then turn the tripod off and go below 1/60.
Your hands move too, and so does a game-drive vehicle with its engine running. Below about 1/60, handheld photos go soft all over. A tripod or beanbag fixes shake. It does nothing for a subject that moves.
Basics 4 · ISO
ISO sets how much the camera amplifies the signal from the sensor. ISO 100 is no boost. ISO 200 doubles the brightness, ISO 400 doubles it again, and so on.
ISO doesn't let more light in. It makes the light you already caught look brighter.
Every sensor produces a little random speckle. Amplifying the picture amplifies the speckle. At ISO 100 you won't see it. From about 3200 up you get grain and blotchy colour, worst in the shadows. That's noise.
Try it
This scene is at dusk. Slide ISO from 100 to 6400 and look at the dark buildings and the sky.
When the aperture is as wide as you want and the shutter can't get slower without blur. That's why ISO usually comes last. At a floodlit waterhole, it's the setting that saves the shot.
Basics 5 · Putting it together
Aperture, shutter speed and ISO all control brightness, and each brings its own side effect. Pulling on one corner means giving on another.
Open the aperture one stop and make the shutter one stop faster, and the brightness stays exactly the same. The picture doesn't.
Try it
The slider moves aperture and shutter together. The meter never leaves 0, but watch the background and the cyclist trade places.
Each box is one stop. One box to the right doubles the light.
| Aperture | Shutter | ISO | Background | Cyclist |
|---|
Basics 6 · Practice
All three settings are yours now. Pick a challenge, meet its goals, and get the meter to 0. If manual feels like too much, switch the mode dial to Av or Tv and let the camera handle one setting.
Basics 7 · Take it with you
Starting points, not rules. Set these, take a shot, look at it, adjust.
Open for exact settings and button steps on your Canon EOS 100D or R7.
Canon's full auto. Fine for snapshots, but you can't choose the look.
The camera picks aperture and shutter together; turning the dial shifts the pair, like the slider in chapter 5.
You pick the aperture, the camera picks the shutter. The mode most photographers live in.
You pick the shutter speed, the camera picks the aperture. Use it for anything that moves.
You pick all three and watch the meter. Best for night skies and steady light.
| Situation | Mode | Aperture | Shutter | ISO | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Portrait outdoors | Av | f/1.8 – f/4 | Camera picks | 100 – 400 | A blurry background pulls attention to the face. |
| Landscape | Av | f/8 – f/11 | Camera picks | 100 | Near and far both sharp. Tripod if the shutter drops below 1/60. |
| Wildlife, sport | Tv | Camera picks | 1/1000+ | Auto | Freezes fast movement. |
| Indoors, no flash | Av | f/1.8 – f/2.8 | Keep 1/60+ | 1600 – 3200 | Open wide to gather light, accept a little grain. |
| Night sky | M | Widest | 10 – 20 s | 1600 – 6400 | Tripod needed. See the Milky Way recipe in Namibia spots. |
| Silky waterfall | Tv | Camera picks | 1/4 – 1 s | 100 | Moving water blurs into threads. Tripod needed. |
In direct sun at f/16, set the shutter to 1 over your ISO. At ISO 100 that's 1/125.
On the 100D and R7, keep the shutter at least 1 ÷ (focal length × 1.6). A 300mm lens needs about 1/500.
Aperture and shutter change how the picture looks. ISO mostly adds noise, so reach for it when the other two are used up.
White pans, fog or a black cat can fool the meter. Look at the result and nudge it with exposure compensation.
Your camera · Reading the screen
This guide shows the EOS R7's shooting screen, from Canon's R7 guide. The EOS 100D's screen isn't mapped in the app yet.
The screen only shows the settings that are currently switched on, so yours will usually look emptier than this. The numbers match Canon's EOS R7 guide, so you can look any of them up there.
Tap anything on the screen, or pick it from the list, to see what it means and whether it matters in Namibia. Then try Find it to test yourself.
Schematic drawing, not a photo of the camera. Positions follow Canon's EOS R7 guide.
Your camera · Metering modes
The light meter measures brightness and picks the exposure that would make what it measured come out a medium grey. The metering mode decides which part of the frame it measures.
Measure a small, bright patch and the camera exposes for that patch: everything darker drops into shadow. That's how Deadvlei's trees turn black against the dune.
Whichever mode you use, a big bright area like Etosha Pan still fools the meter. That's what exposure compensation is for (see the Metering lesson under In Namibia).
Your camera · Drive modes
The drive mode decides what happens when you press the shutter: one photo, a burst of photos for as long as you hold it down, or a photo a few seconds later.
A springbok's pronking leap lasts about a second. The more frames per second (fps) your camera takes, the closer one of them lands to the top of the leap.
Your camera · Focus
One-Shot AF focuses once when you half-press and then locks: right for Deadvlei trees or a resting lion. Servo AF keeps refocusing as long as you half-press: right for a walking elephant or a flamingo taking off.
The AF area is the part of the frame the camera uses to find focus. A small area puts focus exactly where you choose. A big area lets the camera find and follow the subject itself.
Around midday, distant animals can look soft even when focus is right. That's heat haze, not your camera. Shoot early and late, or get closer.
Schematic: AF frame sizes and positions are approximate.
In Namibia · Exposure with your camera
Same triangle as in the basics, now with Namibian scenes and your camera's real limits: its fastest shutter, its highest ISO, and whether it stabilises the image.
Namibian midday sun is among the brightest on earth. Try "Midday glare" at f/2.8: the camera runs out of shutter speed and the dune burns out.
At the floodlit waterhole, the rhino barely moves but the light is dim. The aperture goes wide, ISO goes high, and grain is the price. Grain is better than a missed rhino.
In Namibia · Metering and exposure compensation
This is the most important lesson for Namibia. Your camera's light meter assumes every scene is a medium grey. Most scenes average out close to that.
Etosha Pan doesn't. It's a huge bright white surface, so the camera thinks there's too much light and darkens the shot. White becomes dull grey and the elephant looks dirty. The meter isn't broken, it's fooled, and exposure compensation corrects it.
It works in reverse on a dark oryx against bright sand, and you use it on purpose for silhouettes.
Turn on highlight alert in playback. Areas that are pure white with no detail blink on the screen. A few blinks in the sky are fine. Blinking on the elephant means dial back.
In Namibia · White balance
Light has a colour, measured in Kelvin (K). Floodlights are orange (low K). Midday sun is neutral, about 5200K. Shade and fog are blue (high K).
White balance tells the camera what colour the light is so it can correct it. Auto white balance (AWB) tries to make everything neutral, which is exactly what you don't want at sunrise on Dune 45: it corrects the glow away.
The trick: a setting higher than the real light makes the photo warmer. Cloudy or Shade in daylight adds warmth. Tungsten in daylight turns everything blue.
For tricky mixed light, like a lodge lit by bulbs and a fire, you can teach the camera what white looks like. Fill the frame with a sheet of white paper in that light and take a photo. Then choose Custom White Balance in the shooting menu, select that photo, and set white balance to Custom. Check your manual
RAW files keep all the colour information, so you can change white balance later on the computer. It still helps to get it close now, so the photos on your screen look right. RAW+JPEG gives you both.
In Namibia · Night skies
Namibia has some of the darkest skies on earth: very little light pollution, dry air, and many clear nights in the dry season. NamibRand Nature Reserve is an International Dark Sky Reserve.
Never trust the ∞ mark on the lens. Test first: a 5-second shot at a very high ISO shows your composition fast, then set the real exposure.
Photograph moonlit dunes and mountains with a few stars instead: M, f/4, 15–30 s, ISO 800–1600.
Desert nights are cold and batteries die fast: keep spares warm in an inside pocket. Check the ground for scorpions before sitting, watch for snakes around rocks, and stay close to camp. Light a foreground only very gently with a dim torch, and never while other people nearby are shooting.
Green: under 20% lit, best for stars. Orange: under 50%. Grey: too bright. Tap a night to plan it.
Tap a marked spot, or anywhere in Namibia. Simplified map, not for navigation.
This page can't read your phone's location by itself, so paste your coordinates in. Phone GPS works without mobile signal.
Times are approximate (within a few minutes) and use approximate spot coordinates that haven't been verified. Moonrise and moonset are rough estimates. Namibia is on UTC+2 all year.
Troubleshooter
Pick what's wrong. You'll get the fix as button steps for your .
Gear care, and the rules
Short and practical. Each one has a reason.
Checking…
Much of Namibia has no mobile signal. Save the app on this device before you leave, then add it to your home screen: on iPhone tap Share → Add to Home Screen; on Android open the menu → Install app. Last updated .