There are three basic camera settings you need to know when starting out, ISO, shutter speed and aperture. So lets start at ISO, ISO is how sensitive the sensor or film (if you’re old mature or a hipster). So the higher the ISO the more sensitive it is (so the brighter the image!) The base ISO for most cameras is 100, they go up in stops of light. A stop of light up is basically double the amount of the light. A stop down is half the amount of light. The higher the ISO the more noise there will be in a photo, this in a digital camera is because the camera is giving more charge to the sensor so it’s more sensitive this then shows up imperfections on the sensor.
Moving on to shutter speed, this is how long the shutter was open and allowing light onto the sensor. Typically a photograph will be at least 1/50th of a second. Any slower would be called long exposure photography, the longer the exposure is the more motion blur will be introduced. Sometimes this is what you want in the photo, if it’s water or to create a sense of speed. A stop of light would be double or half the shutter speed. So one stop up from 1/50th would be 1/100th. One stop down from 1/50th would be 1/25. In gig photography specifically I try to have at least 1/200th of a second to make sure the artist is tack sharp with little motion blur.
Now aperture is a system of blades that open and close to different sizes. The wider the aperture is the lower the f-number is. This is because it’s to do with ratio’s. It’s basically how many times the aperture diameter goes into the lens diameter. So f2.8 means it goes into the lens diameter 2.8 times! In addition, the wider the aperture the more light goes into the photo. Also, the aperture effects the depth of field (DoF). This is how much of an image is in focus front to back, this is why some photos have such blurry backgrounds as the DoF is really shallow.
Now with this info, go out and have fun shooting and just play around with them and see what you can and can’t do with these settings!
Here’s the video of me explaining this: