Master the Exposure Triangle

Shoot manual exposure photos on a DJI Osmo Action 6 to master shutter, ISO, and aperture.

Introduction

30 Second Summary

Every time you press the shutter button, your camera makes three invisible decisions about light. When those decisions go wrong, you get blurry action shots or grainy dark footage, and you have no idea why.

In this project, you will take full manual control of your DJI Osmo Action 6's exposure settings and shoot a series of comparison photos that prove exactly how each setting changes your image.

What You'll Build

You'll hold up your finished photos side by side, point to each one, and explain exactly which setting made it brighter, darker, sharper, or grainier.

By the end of this project, you'll have:

A shutter speed spectrum showing the same moving subject from frozen-sharp to completely blurred, proving that slower shutter speeds let in more light but introduce motion blur.
An ISO ladder showing the same dark scene from too-dark-but-clean to bright-but-noisy, revealing the exact point where grain becomes unacceptable.
An aperture comparison showing the same scene at f/4.0 vs f/2.8 and the visible brightness difference between them, plus a clear understanding of when ND filters become necessary.
Secret Mission: Calculate the exact ND filter strength you'd need for a sunny outdoor video shoot using the 180-degree shutter rule.

Are there any prerequisites?

You need a DJI Osmo Action 6 and the DJI Mimo app installed on your phone. No prior photography knowledge is required.

Before We Start

Before we pick up the camera, let's lock in what you're about to shoot and why understanding manual exposure matters for the footage you want.

Set Up PRO Mode on Your Osmo Action 6

Right now your Osmo Action 6 is making every exposure decision for you. It picks the shutter speed, the ISO, and the aperture behind the scenes.

To experiment with each side of the exposure triangle individually, you need to unlock manual controls. In this step, you will switch the camera into PRO mode so you can adjust every setting yourself.

In this step, get ready to:

Enable PRO mode and set Exposure to Manual.
Confirm Variable Aperture is set to Auto so the camera ranges between f/2.0 and f/4.0.

Enable PRO mode and set manual exposure

PRO mode is the gateway to manual controls on the Osmo Action 6. Without it, you only have access to auto exposure or basic EV compensation.

From the camera live view on the rear screen, tap the Image/Audio Settings icon on the right side of the screen.
A settings panel slides open. In the upper right corner of this panel, tap PRO to enable professional controls.
Find the Exposure setting and set it to M (Manual).

You should now see shutter speed and ISO sliders available on the settings panel. These are the two controls you will use for the next several steps.

What just changed?

In Auto mode, the camera looks at the scene and picks shutter speed, ISO, and aperture values it thinks are correct. Manual mode hands all three decisions to you.

You will make deliberate bad choices in the upcoming steps. That is how you learn what each setting actually does.

🙋‍♀️ Don't see the PRO option?

Make sure you are tapping the Image/Audio Settings icon on the right side of the rear screen, not the front screen. The PRO toggle appears in the upper right corner of the panel that opens.

If you still cannot find it, you can also enable PRO mode through the DJI Mimo app. Tap the ... icon on the camera view, enable PRO mode there, then return to the camera screen.

Still stuck? Help me find the PRO mode toggle on my Osmo Action 6.

Confirm Variable Aperture is set to Auto

The Osmo Action 6 is one of the only action cameras with a variable aperture. It can range between f/2.0 and f/4.0. For now, you will leave it on Auto so the camera handles aperture while you focus on shutter speed and ISO.

While still in the settings panel, locate the Variable Aperture option.
Confirm it is set to Auto. This is the default setting. If it shows something else, tap it and select Auto.

What does Auto aperture do?

In Auto mode, the camera chooses an aperture value between f/2.0 and f/4.0 depending on the shooting conditions. In low light, it opens wider (closer to f/2.0) to let in more light. In bright conditions, it narrows (closer to f/4.0).

You will take manual control of aperture in Step 5. For now, keeping it on Auto isolates your shutter speed and ISO experiments from aperture changes.

Verify your settings are ready

Before you move on, take a final look at your rear screen to confirm everything is in place.

Check that PRO is enabled (you should see manual parameter controls on screen).
Check that Exposure shows M (Manual).
Check that you can see shutter speed and ISO values ready to adjust.
Check that Variable Aperture shows Auto.

If all four items check out, your camera is ready for manual exposure experiments.

Your camera is now fully unlocked for manual shooting. Next up, you will take a few photos in Auto mode first to see what tradeoffs the camera makes on its own in low light.

Shoot in Auto and See the Camera's Tradeoffs

Your camera is set up for manual control. But before you start dialing in settings yourself, you need to observe what the camera does when left to its own devices.

In low light, the camera faces a problem: there is not enough light to make a bright image. It has to compensate, and the way it compensates creates side effects you did not choose. Sometimes it slows the shutter speed and your moving subjects blur. Sometimes it raises the ISO and the image fills with grain. This step makes those invisible tradeoffs visible.

In this step, get ready to:

Switch the camera to Auto exposure and photograph subjects in different lighting conditions.
Review the results and identify where the camera made tradeoffs you did not control.

Switch to Auto and shoot a well-lit subject

To see what tradeoffs the camera makes on its own, you need to hand control back to Auto mode temporarily.

On the rear screen, tap the Image/Audio Settings icon on the right side.
Find the Exposure setting (currently set to M) and switch it to Auto.
Confirm that Variable Aperture is still set to Auto.
Exit the settings panel and return to the live camera view.
Find a well-lit subject in your room. A lamp, a lit screen, or any object sitting directly next to a light source.
Point the camera at the well-lit subject and press the shutter button to take a photo.

Check the photo on the rear screen. It should look clean and well-exposed. The camera had plenty of light to work with, so it did not need to make any compromises.

Why switch back to Auto?

You set up Manual mode in the last step so you have the option available. For this experiment, Auto mode shows you the camera's decision-making in action. You will return to Manual in the next step to take over those decisions yourself.

Shoot in dim light and capture motion

Now you will force the camera into a situation where it has to make a tradeoff. Low light with a moving subject is the classic scenario where Auto mode's compromises become visible.

Find a dimly lit area in your room. The far corner away from lamps, or an object in shadow.
Point the camera at the dim subject and take a photo.
Stay in the dim area. Slowly wave your hand in front of the camera (about arm's length away) and take a third photo while your hand is moving.

You now have three photos saved on the camera. Time to compare them.

Use the countdown timer for the hand wave

If you find it awkward to press the shutter while waving your hand, use the Countdown timer (available in photo settings). Set it to 2 or 3 seconds so you can start waving before the camera takes the shot.

Review the tradeoffs the camera made

Before you look at the dim photos closely, take a guess. What do you think will be different about the dim or motion shots compared to the clean well-lit photo?

Swipe left on the rear screen to enter playback mode and view your three photos.
Swipe between the photos to compare the well-lit shot against the dim shot and the hand-wave shot.
Look closely at the dim subject photo. It is either blurry (the camera chose a slow shutter speed to gather more light) or speckled with colored grain (the camera pushed ISO high to brighten the image).
Look at the hand-wave photo. Your hand is almost certainly blurred. The camera slowed the shutter to let in more light, and your moving hand smeared across the frame during the longer exposure.

The well-lit photo looks fine. The dim photos show a problem the camera created without asking you. It made a tradeoff, and you had no say in which tradeoff it picked.

What is the exposure triangle?

The exposure triangle is the relationship between three settings that control how bright your image is: shutter speed, ISO, and aperture. Changing one always forces a tradeoff in another.

In Auto mode, the camera adjusts all three without telling you. The blurry or grainy photos you just took are proof of tradeoffs it made behind the scenes.

💡 The three sides at a glance

Shutter speed controls how long the sensor collects light. Slower = brighter but motion blurs. Faster = sharper but darker.
ISO controls how much the sensor amplifies its signal. Higher = brighter but adds grain (noise). Lower = cleaner but darker.
Aperture controls how wide the lens opens. Wider = brighter. Narrower = darker.

Change one, and you force a tradeoff in at least one of the others. That is the triangle.

🙋‍♀️ All three photos look the same?

Your room might be too evenly lit for the camera to struggle. Try turning off overhead lights and using only a single lamp or screen as your light source. The dim area needs to be genuinely dark for the tradeoff to show up.

If the hand-wave photo is not blurry, wave faster or move your hand closer to the lens. The camera needs to be in a situation where it cannot freeze motion without making the image too dark.

Why do my Auto photos all look clean even in low light?

You have now seen the problem with your own eyes. The camera makes exposure decisions that affect your image quality, and you have no control over which compromise it picks. In the next step, you will take manual control of shutter speed and deliberately push it to extremes to understand exactly how it affects your photos.

Control Shutter Speed and Hit the Darkness Problem

In Step 2, you saw the camera's automatic decisions in action. It chose a slow shutter or high ISO to cope with dim light, and you got blurry or grainy photos you never asked for. Now it is time to take the controls yourself.

Shutter speed is the most visible variable in the exposure triangle. A fast shutter freezes motion but lets in less light. A slow shutter lets in more light but smears anything that moves. In low light, you are about to hit the core problem head-on: freezing motion makes the image unacceptably dark.

In this step, get ready to:

Switch back to Manual exposure and lock ISO at a constant value.
Shoot the same moving subject at three different shutter speeds.
See the blur-to-freeze spectrum and prove that fast shutter in low light equals a too-dark image.

Switch to Manual and lock your ISO

To isolate shutter speed's effect, you need everything else to stay the same between shots. You will lock ISO at a middle-ground value so only the shutter speed changes.

Tap the Image/Audio Settings icon on the right side of the rear screen.
Set Exposure back to M (Manual). You should see shutter speed and ISO sliders reappear.
Set ISO to 400. This is a middle-ground value that stays constant for the entire experiment.
Set Shutter Speed to 1/500.

Why lock ISO at 400?

If you leave ISO on auto, the camera will silently adjust brightness behind your back. By fixing it at 400 (not too dark, not too noisy), every brightness change in your photos comes purely from the shutter speed difference. That is how you isolate one variable.

Before you take this photo, think about what you expect to see. You are in a dim room with a fast shutter speed of 1/500. A fast shutter opens and closes quickly, giving light very little time to reach the sensor. What do you think the image will look like?

Wave your hand slowly in front of the camera and tap the shutter button to take the photo.
Look at the result on the rear screen.

Your hand is frozen sharp. No blur at all. But the image is extremely dark. Almost unusable. This is the designed problem: a fast shutter freezes motion perfectly, but in low light it starves the sensor of light.

Image is not dark at 1/500?

You may be too close to a strong light source. Move to a dimmer area of your room, away from direct lamps or windows. The effect is most dramatic when the only light is ambient room lighting.

Also confirm ISO is set to 400 and not on Auto. If the camera chose a high ISO automatically, it would compensate for the fast shutter and the image would look bright.

Shoot at 1/60 and 1 second to complete the spectrum

Now you will slow the shutter down in two steps. Each slower setting gives the sensor more time to collect light, but anything moving during that time gets smeared.

Change Shutter Speed to 1/60.
Wave your hand at the same speed as before and take the photo.
Look at the result on the rear screen.

The image is noticeably brighter than the 1/500 shot. But your hand has visible motion blur. The sensor had more time to gather light, and your hand moved during that time.

Now change Shutter Speed to 1 second (the full "1s" option, not a fraction).
Set a Countdown timer so the camera fires after a short delay. This prevents your finger tap from shaking the camera during the long exposure.
Wave your hand in frame and let the countdown take the photo.

Why use the countdown timer?

At 1 second, even the vibration from tapping the shutter button smears the image. The countdown lets the camera stabilize before the shutter opens. Your camera supports countdown delays of 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, or 10 seconds.

Look at the 1-second result. Everything is bright. But any movement is a complete smear. Your hand is a ghost trail across the frame.

Entire image is blurry at 1 second?

If everything is blurry (not just moving objects), the camera itself moved during the exposure. Make sure you are using a countdown timer and the camera is resting on a stable surface or mount. Do not hold it in your hand for 1-second exposures.

Retake the shot with the camera placed on a table or shelf, pointed at the scene. Only the moving subject (your hand) should be blurred.

Compare your three shots and name the problem

You now have three photos taken with the exact same ISO, of the same subject, with only shutter speed changed. Time to see the full spectrum side by side.

Enter playback mode on the rear screen by swiping up from the bottom of the live view.
Swipe through your last three photos. Compare them in order: 1/500, 1/60, 1s.

What do you expect to see when you line them up in your mind? Think about the pattern before you read on.

Here is what you have proven. Slower shutter equals more light plus more blur. Faster shutter equals less light plus frozen motion. The relationship is direct and unavoidable.

Your shutter speed spectrum

1/500 — Dark image, hand frozen sharp. The shutter opened and closed so fast that almost no light reached the sensor.
1/60 — Noticeably brighter, hand has visible motion blur. The sensor collected light for longer, but your hand moved during that time.
1s — Bright image, hand is a complete smear. The sensor collected light for a full second. Anything that moved became a ghost trail.

Reading left to right: brightness goes up, sharpness goes down. You cannot have both in low light with shutter speed alone.

💡 What is the darkness problem?

In low light with a fast shutter, your image is too dark to use. Slowing the shutter fixes brightness but destroys sharpness on anything that moves. Shutter speed alone cannot solve this without sacrificing one or the other.

This is the fundamental tension of the exposure triangle. You need a second variable to recover brightness without introducing blur. That second variable is ISO, and it comes with its own cost.

You have hit the wall. Fast shutter plus low light equals darkness. The next step introduces the tool that recovers brightness without touching shutter speed: ISO. But it has its own price.

Control ISO and Discover the Noise Tradeoff

In the last step, you proved that a fast shutter speed freezes motion but starves the image of light. Your 1/500 shot was sharp but nearly unusable in the dark.

ISO is how you recover that lost brightness. It amplifies the sensor's signal so a dark scene becomes visible. But amplification comes with a cost: the higher you push ISO, the more visual noise (colored speckles and grain) creeps into your photos.

In this step, get ready to:

Shoot 4 photos at the same shutter speed but different ISO values.
Zoom in and compare the noise levels across your ISO ladder.
Identify your personal ISO ceiling for the current lighting.

Shoot your ISO ladder

You are going to take four photos of the exact same subject. The only thing that changes between shots is ISO. This isolates the variable so you can see its effect with your own eyes.

Set your shutter speed to 1/500 in the Manual exposure settings. This is the fast setting from Step 3 that left your image too dark.
Change ISO to 100.
Point the camera at the same subject you used in Step 3 and take a photo.

Your first shot will look extremely dark. That is expected.

Change ISO to 800 and take another photo without moving the camera.
Change ISO to 3200 and take another photo.
Change ISO to 12800 and take a final photo.

What does ISO actually do?

ISO controls how much the camera amplifies the electrical signal from the sensor. At ISO 100, the signal is barely boosted, so the image stays dark but clean. At ISO 12800, the signal is amplified 128 times, which brightens everything but also amplifies random electrical interference.

That amplified interference is what you see as colored speckles (noise) in the image. It is the same principle as turning up the volume on a quiet audio recording and hearing hiss.

You should now have 4 photos on your camera, each taken at 1/500 shutter speed with only ISO changing.

Zoom in and discover the noise tradeoff

Before you examine these photos closely, take a guess. What do you think the dark areas of the ISO 12800 shot look like compared to ISO 100?

Enter playback mode on the rear screen by swiping up from the bottom of the live view.
Navigate to your ISO 100 photo.
Pinch to zoom in on a dark area of the image.

The image is nearly black. But any detail you can make out is smooth and clean. No speckles, no grain.

Swipe to your ISO 12800 photo and zoom in on the same dark area.

The image is bright enough to see everything. But look at the dark areas closely. They are filled with colored speckles and grain. This is noise. The camera amplified the signal to brighten the scene, and amplified random interference along with it.

Why does noise appear in dark areas first?

Dark areas of the scene produce the weakest signal from the sensor. When ISO amplifies that weak signal, the random electrical interference (noise) becomes a larger proportion of what you see. Bright areas have a strong signal that drowns out the noise, so they stay clean even at high ISO.

💡 Your ISO ladder at a glance

ISO 100 — Nearly black image. Any detail you can see is perfectly smooth and clean. No noise.
ISO 800 — Darker than you want, but usable. Shadows are still mostly clean if you zoom in.
ISO 3200 — Bright enough to see everything. Colored speckles begin to appear in the darkest areas when zoomed in.
ISO 12800 — Fully bright. Dark areas are covered in colored grain. The noise is obvious even on the small rear screen.

Reading top to bottom: brightness goes up, image cleanliness goes down. ISO solves darkness but introduces a new cost.

🙋‍♀️ All four photos look the same brightness?

Make sure your Exposure is set to M (Manual), not Auto. In Auto mode, the camera compensates for your ISO change by adjusting shutter speed, which defeats the experiment.

Also confirm shutter speed stayed at 1/500 for every shot. If it shifted between photos, retake them with shutter locked.

Help me figure out why my ISO comparison photos all look the same brightness.

Find your personal ISO ceiling

You have proven that higher ISO brightens the image but adds noise. Now the practical question: how high can you push ISO before the noise becomes unacceptable?

Swipe through all four photos in playback mode.
Find the ISO value where the image is bright enough to be usable AND the noise is still acceptable to your eye.

For most people shooting indoors, this ceiling falls somewhere between ISO 1600 and ISO 3200. Your preference may differ. That is fine. The point is that you now have a concrete number for this lighting condition.

Your ceiling changes with lighting

The ISO ceiling you just found is specific to your current indoor lighting. In brighter conditions you will rarely need high ISO at all. In darker conditions you may be forced above your ceiling. Knowing your limit helps you make intentional tradeoff decisions instead of letting the camera guess.

Take one final look at your ISO ladder. You started Step 3 with an image that was too dark at 1/500 shutter speed. ISO solved the brightness problem. But now you have a new cost: noise. The exposure triangle always involves a tradeoff.

You now control two sides of the exposure triangle. Shutter speed trades motion blur for brightness. ISO trades noise for brightness. Next up, you will unlock the third side and discover what happens when all three hit their limit.

Control Aperture and Understand Why ND Filters Exist

You proved in the last step that ISO can recover brightness when your shutter speed is too fast for the available light. But higher ISO comes with noise. There is a third side of the exposure triangle that adds light without any penalty: aperture.

Aperture controls how wide the lens physically opens. On the DJI Osmo Action 6, you can switch between f/4.0 (narrow, less light) and f/2.8 (wider, more light). In this step you will see that brightness difference with your own eyes, and then answer a harder question: what do you do when there is too much light?

In this step, get ready to:

Shoot comparison photos at f/4.0 vs f/2.8 to see the brightness difference aperture creates.
Understand when and why ND filters become necessary for video.

Shoot your aperture comparison

The exposure triangle has three sides: shutter speed, ISO, and aperture. You have already isolated the first two. Now you will isolate the third by keeping shutter and ISO constant and changing only the lens opening.

On the rear screen, tap the Image/Audio Settings icon on the right side.
Set your shutter speed to 1/500 (it should already be there from Step 4).
Change ISO to 800. This gives enough brightness to see a difference without blowing out the highlights.
Locate the Variable Aperture option and set it to Starburst (f/4.0).
Point the camera at the same subject you used for your ISO experiment and take a photo.

What is Starburst mode?

On the Osmo Action 6, Starburst sets the aperture to f/4.0, which is the narrowest (darkest) opening available. It also creates a six-point starburst effect on bright point-light sources. For this experiment, you are using it simply because it gives you the smallest aperture to compare against.

Now switch Variable Aperture to Fixed (f/2.8). Do not change shutter speed or ISO.
Take a photo of the exact same subject from the same position.

Before you compare the two photos, predict: which one do you think will be brighter, and by how much?

Enter playback mode and swipe between the two photos.

The f/2.8 shot is visibly brighter than the f/4.0 shot. The wider opening let more light reach the sensor. You just used aperture to add light without touching shutter or ISO.

How much brighter is f/2.8 vs f/4.0?

Switching from f/4.0 to f/2.8 is a 1-stop difference. That means exactly double the light hits the sensor. The image should look noticeably brighter even on the small rear screen.

Lower f-numbers mean wider openings. f/2.8 is wider than f/4.0, which is why the image is brighter despite the number being smaller.

🙋‍♀️ Both photos look the same brightness?

Make sure Variable Aperture was not still set to Auto for one of the shots. In Auto mode the camera adjusts aperture on its own, which defeats the experiment.

Confirm that shutter speed and ISO did not change between shots. If either shifted, retake both photos after locking them.

help me figure out why my two aperture comparison photos look the same brightness

Understand why ND filters exist

You just used aperture to make an image brighter. Now flip the logic. What happens when you need an image darker but you have already used up all three sides of the triangle?

Imagine filming outdoors in bright sunlight at 30fps. Good cinematic motion blur requires a shutter speed of 1/60. This comes from the 180-degree shutter rule: the shutter speed denominator should be double the frame rate.

You set shutter speed to 1/60 (locked for motion blur).
You set ISO to 100 (the lowest possible).
You set aperture to f/4.0 (the smallest opening on the Action 6).

The image is still overexposed. There is simply too much light. All three sides of the triangle are maxed toward darkness, and it is not enough.

What is an ND filter?

An ND filter (neutral density filter) is a dark piece of glass placed over the lens that reduces incoming light by a fixed number of stops. It does not affect shutter speed, ISO, or aperture settings.

It lets you keep creative settings like a slow shutter for smooth video motion blur, even in bright conditions. Think of it as sunglasses for your camera lens.

The Action 6's variable aperture (f/4.0) already helps by being darker than the old fixed f/2.8 found on earlier action cameras. But in full sunlight it is often still not enough. That is when you reach for an ND filter.

Common ND filter strengths:

ND8 removes 3 stops of light.
ND16 removes 4 stops of light.
ND32 removes 5 stops of light.

Why does the Action 6's variable aperture reduce the need for ND filters?

Older action cameras had a fixed f/2.8 aperture. They could never close down to block light. The Action 6 can close to f/4.0, which is 1 stop darker than f/2.8. That extra stop means you can sometimes avoid ND filters in moderately bright conditions where a fixed-aperture camera could not.

In harsh, direct sunlight the 1-stop advantage is not enough on its own. You still need an ND filter on top of f/4.0 to maintain cinematic shutter speeds.

The complete exposure triangle

Here is the full picture of how the three variables interact:

Image too dark? Slow the shutter (costs sharpness), raise ISO (costs cleanliness), or widen the aperture (limited by lens hardware).
Image too bright? Speed up the shutter (costs motion blur style), lower ISO (already at 100?), narrow the aperture (limited to f/4.0 on Action 6), or add an ND filter.
Motion blur you don't want? Faster shutter. Recover lost brightness with higher ISO or wider aperture.
Too much noise? Lower ISO. Recover lost brightness with slower shutter or wider aperture.

Every exposure decision is a balance. The triangle never gives you something for nothing. Knowing this lets you pick the tradeoff that matters least for your specific shot.

You have now explored all three sides of the exposure triangle with your own hands and eyes. You shot a shutter speed spectrum, an ISO ladder, and an aperture comparison. You understand what each variable does to brightness, what it costs, and what happens when all three are not enough.

Ready to go deeper? The Secret Mission challenges you to calculate exactly which ND filter strength you need for a real outdoor shoot using the 180-degree rule.

Secret mission

Apply the 180-Degree Rule and Calculate Your ND Filter

Professional videographers pick their ND filter before they even press record. In this secret mission, you will apply the 180-degree shutter rule to lock in your shutter speed for video, then calculate exactly which ND filter strength you need for different outdoor brightness scenarios.

Clean Up Your Resources

This project runs entirely on your physical camera with no cloud services or subscriptions. There are no ongoing costs. Decide whether to keep your photos and settings as they are, reset for everyday shooting, or clear everything out.

Resources you used:

Comparison photos on camera storage (shutter speed spectrum, ISO ladder, aperture comparison shots).
Camera settings changed to PRO mode with Manual exposure, specific shutter speed, ISO, and aperture values.

Keep everything running

No action needed. Choose this if you plan to keep practicing manual exposure or want to reference your comparison photos later.

Your photos stay on camera storage for future reference.
PRO mode and Manual exposure settings remain active so you can pick up where you left off.
Consider transferring your best comparison sets to your phone via the DJI Mimo app so you have backups.

Pause - I'll come back to this later

Keep your photos but reset the camera to automatic mode for everyday shooting. You can re-enable PRO mode any time you want to practice again.

On the rear screen, tap the Image/Audio Settings icon on the right side.
Set Exposure back to Auto.
Set Variable Aperture back to Auto.
Your comparison photos remain on camera storage for when you return.

Delete - I don't want to use this again

Remove your practice photos to free up storage and reset the camera to its default auto settings.

On the rear screen, swipe left to enter playback mode.
Locate each set of comparison photos (shutter speed series, ISO ladder, aperture comparison).
For each photo, swipe up or tap the delete icon to remove it.
Return to the camera live view. Tap the Image/Audio Settings icon on the right side.
Set Exposure back to Auto.
Set Variable Aperture back to Auto.
Your camera is now back to its default shooting state.

Nice Work!

You just took full manual control of your DJI Osmo Action 6 and proved with your own photos exactly how each side of the exposure triangle shapes an image.

You've learned how to:

Shot a shutter speed spectrum and an ISO ladder proving the brightness tradeoffs of each setting. Faster shutter freezes motion but darkens the image. Higher ISO recovers brightness but introduces noise.
Shot an aperture comparison demonstrating that a wider aperture (lower f-number) adds light without adding blur or noise.
Built a clear mental model of when and why ND filters are needed: when all three triangle settings are maxed toward darkness but the scene is still too bright for your creative intent.
Secret Mission: Applied the 180-degree shutter rule and calculated exact ND filter strengths for real outdoor video scenarios at both 30fps and 60fps.

Ready to quiz yourself?