📷 Exposure & Light Studio

About this simulation

Every photograph is built from three exposure controls — aperture, shutter speed and ISO — plus the direction and quality of the light falling on the subject. This studio lets you change all four on a live 3D still-life set and see, rather than just read about, what each one actually does to the resulting image.

How it works

• Aperture — a wider opening (small f-number, e.g. f/1.4) lets in more light and throws the background softly out of focus; a narrow opening (large f-number, e.g. f/16) lets in less light and keeps more of the scene sharp. Watch the iris diaphragm in front of the lens open and close.
• Shutter speed — a slow shutter (e.g. 1s) lets in more light but streaks anything moving, shown here by the ghost trail on the swinging ball; a fast shutter (e.g. 1/2000s) freezes motion but needs more light elsewhere.
• ISO — raising ISO brightens a dim scene electronically, at the cost of visible grain/noise, shown as a speckled overlay.
• Key light angle — a low, grazing angle (golden hour) casts long warm shadows and reveals texture; a high, overhead angle (midday sun) is cooler and flatter with short shadows.
• The exposure meter combines all three exposure settings into a single EV reading relative to a "correct" middle-grey exposure, exactly like a camera's built-in light meter.

Controls

• Aperture — f-stop from f/1.4 to f/16.
• Shutter speed — from 1/2000s to 1s.
• ISO — sensitivity from 100 to 6400.
• Key light angle — elevation of the main light from 5° (grazing) to 90° (overhead).
• Rule-of-thirds grid — overlays the classic composition grid used to place a subject off-centre.
• Drag to orbit the camera, scroll to zoom, ↺ to reset to a balanced exposure.

Did you know?

Doubling any one of aperture area, shutter time or ISO sensitivity doubles the light captured — photographers call this a "stop." Three very different settings (e.g. f/2.8 at 1/500s ISO 400, or f/8 at 1/60s ISO 100) can produce the identical brightness while looking completely different, because each control also changes motion blur or depth of field along the way.