Before you have anything to work with in the darkroom, you obviously have to make the negatives! And an important aspect of this is knowing the basics of using your camera. Most modern cameras have all kinds of automatic and priority features, so that you can get good photographs without much effort. However, you won’t always get the photograph you want with these settings, and it’s better that you know what is going on with your lens and your shutter speed even when you are using automated functions.

Ideas that make up camera basics for a manual film camera, old or new, and digital SLRs, like that brand new Nikon D90 you might have sitting on your desk, are the same. Even if you plan to never use film or a darkroom, all of these same principles apply to your digital camera, so read up on them to be the best photographer you can be!

1. The most basic element of your camera is the lens. It’s your camera’s eye and to know your lens, you’ll have to know about aperture and what those numbers like 50mm or 28mm mean. Read more about lens aperture.

2. The next thing you should read about is the shutter in the body of your camera and how its speed relates to aperture. Read about shutter speed.

3. Another important aspect of taking photographs with your camera is knowing about film speed, or ISO. When you are using film, this will be a fairly concrete idea, as in, you just bought a roll of 400 speed film and that will determine the kind of photographs you can get. When you are using a digital camera, ISO becomes a much more complex idea in that it’s up to you – so you should know what it means and what it can do for you, or how it can limit you. Read about ISO (coming soon).

These are the three most basic principles of using a camera. You could be using a Yashica LM from the 1950′s or a brand new Canon DSLR, and in either case, your worries would be the same. Other important, but more straightforward camera basics are:

-Focusing the lens - which can be tricky, but is usually something that you can determine by sight alone – read my two tips on focusing here (coming soon).

-Reading the camera’s light meter

Photography is so much about light that many film photographers insist the craft is 90 percent light. I don’t know if I’d go that far – composition and creative depth of field are two of my favorite tools – but honestly, if you don’t get the light “right,” there’s a limit to what you can do to compensate for it, either in the darkroom or with photo editing software. Fortunately, photographers don’t have to leave light up to luck – virtually all SLR camera have a built-in light meter. Some “read” light digitally and display the reading on a screen, while manual cameras, such as the classic Pentax K-1000, have a little red needle, or bar of light, that bobs up or down like a level, depending on how much light is reaching the camera’s lens.

In normal shooting situations, your goal is to get that reading or meter as close to the center as possible. This will involve changing the aperture (F-stop) to allow more or less light to reach the lens, and changing the shutter speed to increase or decrease the length of the exposure. If your adjustments don’t result in a perfect light reading, you’re probably better off using a flash, changing the speed (ISO) of the film you’re using, or even “pushing” or “pulling” the film by telling the camera it’s a different ISO that it really is, and then compensating for the difference during the development process. Changing the ISO adjusts the light meter’s sensitivity based on how that particular film takes in light.

As your photography skills become more advanced, you’ll see that there are times when getting that needle in the center doesn’t result in the best image. Perhaps your subject is “backlit,” positioned in front of a window, sunset, or other light source. The meter says the exposure is fine, but your picture comes out with the person nearly in silhouette. That’s because the intense light behind the subject “tricked” the meter into thinking the entire scene was brighter that it was, so your photo is underexposed. Another case in which the meter can “lie” is when you’re photographing a person whose skin tone is darker or lighter than what one might call Caucasian (“white”) skin tone.

In these cases, you can position the subject differently, or use an 18 percent gray card, sold in photography stores, to meter off of (simply ask your subject to hold the card up, take a meter reading off of that, take the card away, and shoot, ignoring any shift the light meter makes.) If you don’t have a gray card, and have Caucasian (“white”) skin tone, you can meter off your hand and then stop down (like from f/11 to f/16) for darker skin tones or stop up (open up the lens) for lighter skin tones.

You can also “bracket,” meaning you will shoot the subject with the meter reading in the center, and then (without recomposing or otherwise adjusting the scene) re-take the shot with the F-stop set a step higher and a step lower than the original reading. With bracketing, you are intentionally overexposing and underexposing the shot, increasing the chances that you’ll get one that is dead-on. It’s not a perfect technique, but it can be a lifesaver in tricky lighting situations.

It will also help if you consult your camera’s manual to determine the type of built-in light meter it has. An averaging meter will take into account everything that’s in the frame. A center-weighted meter concentrates mostly on the center of the frame, but takes the edges into account as well. A spot meter will only read the center, which means you can intentionally point it at part of your subject to get a reading.

Separate hand-held light meters can be used as well. There are both reflected (which is most common of those built into cameras) and incidental light meters. A reflected light meter is pointed toward the subject, to determine how much light is bouncing back to the camera. An incidental light meter should also be held in front of the subject, but facing a light source, to see how much light is falling on the person or object.

The bottom line is, practice, practice, practice! If your photo comes out too dark, it’s overexposed. If it’s too light, it’s underexposed. Or, part of the photo may look fine, but the rest of it is “blown out,” or too light. Keep experimenting, keep notes on your camera settings, read your manual (all cameras are different) and you’ll see your skills improve as you understand light and how it works with your camera and your subjects. I also recommend the book Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson.