Learning Photography

[Christina]

I was talking to someone here a few months ago and now I can't remember who it was and we had both recently gotten cameras but hadn't learned to use anything other than the easy programmed settings. I'm finally getting around to taking it more seriously and keep track of what I'm doing and learning and it's fun. Whoever you were - are you still here and do you want to try to learn more together?

[nygreenguy]

I was talking to someone here a few months ago and now I can't remember who it was and we had both recently gotten cameras but hadn't learned to use anything other than the easy programmed settings. I'm finally getting around to taking it more seriously and keep track of what I'm doing and learning and it's fun. Whoever you were - are you still here and do you want to try to learn more together?


Maybe me? I just got a digital SLR for xmas!

[Christina]

Maybe. I spent some time yesterday reading the manual (gasp) and it does all sorts of things that I didn't know about. I decided that first I would learn to take pictures in bright sunlight without them all washing out. First I tried the Priority Shutter Speed setting and set it to as fast as it could go but the camera automatically readjusted the aperture to keep the same exposure. Then I used the Priority Aperture setting and made it very small but it did the same thing and auto-adjusted the shutter speed. I gave up and moved to fully manual settings where I could set both at once and that worked much better.

What I think that I learned is that using shutter speed to reduce light is OK if capturing motion is irrelevant and using the aperture to do it is OK if having a smaller depth of field doesn't matter. Hopefully practice will give me a better sense of how to balance it. If my camera has a light meter I haven't found it yet and I haven't the vaguest idea of what ISO is or what it has to do with anything.

ETA: I might be wrong and drawing the wrong conclusions, of course.

[Sodong]

ISO mode on my camera is used to take low light images. Usually you need a tripod or at least set the camera on something and auto-open the shutter after a ten second delay to prevent movement. The longer you have the shutter open, the more sensitive to movement. It causes blurring of your image that is difficult to remove post acquisition. Like this.

http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n51/anniep46/Night003.jpg

[Sodong]

Ah, here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki6Zs8qstVM)

[Christina]

Thanks - there are also a lot of links on that page to other photography subjects too. I've been playing around with night shots using my tripod and changing the shutter speed to see what I get. I can get a good shot of the moon but I haven't quite figured out what setting will reflect the true sky color instead of lightening it up.

[Sodong]

I don't have an SLR camera, just a digital with some fancy functions. Anything I know about cameras, optics or light I know from using expensive, high resolution/sensitivity cameras attached to research instruments at work. Still, I like to play around with my camera

As for the sky colour, I don't know what settings/capabilities your camera has but you can always adjust contrast, brightness, gamma (if needed, usually rarely) as well as alter red/green/blue levels post acquisition. There's some good open source software to do it too.

[Thalia Thinks]

I'm not real bright when it comes to the settings. I am getting into taking pics but I don't stray from the basic setting. Other than sepia and black and white. I love taking sepia shots.

Do we have a thread to show off our favorite pics that we've taken?

[Zygote]

Christina, what's your camera?

My D70 has a dial that shifts the aperture and shutter speed while keeping the exposure right. It also has a button and dial combination that over- or underexposes the picture making it lighter or darker than the built in light meter says it "should" be. I had to take a class from a professional photographer to learn those two things. The manual buried the treasures in a sea of trivia.

[LoneWolf]

So what is the best digital SLR in the $600-$1200 price range? I would use it for everything from underwater photography (I know I need a casing) to macrophotography to landscape (mountains and such) type photography. So a little of everything. I know that will require extra lenses.

[Christina]

I have a Sony H9 (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0702/07022705sonyh9h7.asp). The manual is fairly useless because it tells you where the settings and dials are as if you couldn't see that for yourself but it doesn't tell you anything about why you would use them. It assumes that you already know. I've been playing with it a lot and have gotten a lot better at taking pictures in bright light and in the dark but the colors still aren't true in the night shots. I can get a clear shot of the moon now but the sky is also lighter than it should be from the slow shutter speed.

[nygreenguy]

Christina, what's your camera?

My D70 has a dial that shifts the aperture and shutter speed while keeping the exposure right. It also has a button and dial combination that over- or underexposes the picture making it lighter or darker than the built in light meter says it "should" be. I had to take a class from a professional photographer to learn those two things. The manual buried the treasures in a sea of trivia.

I love my D70 but Im still trying to figure it all out. Im trying to find a reasonable macro but they are all $600!!!!

[loose cannon]

What I think that I learned is that using shutter speed to reduce light is OK if capturing motion is irrelevant and using the aperture to do it is OK if having a smaller depth of field doesn't matter. Hopefully practice will give me a better sense of how to balance it. If my camera has a light meter I haven't found it yet and I haven't the vaguest idea of what ISO is or what it has to do with anything.

ETA: I might be wrong and drawing the wrong conclusions, of course.



I've just bought myself a nice dslr camera and lens and am dabbling in wildlife photography, birds in particular. I'm still at the beginner stage but might be able to help you here a little bit. This is what I've learned so far:

Once you get your head around the 'exposure triangle' of shutter, aperture and iso, the good shots will start to come.

Lets say I am taking a photo of family/friends outside in the garden on a nice sunny day. Ok, I would start at shutter 1/125, aperture f/12 and iso 100.

Shutter: There is not going to be a lot of movement so a speed of 1/125 should freeze everything and give a clean sharp focus. If there is no need to shoot fast (say at 1/2000) then don't. The goal is to always let the maximum amount of light possible to hit the camera sensor without washing out all the colour. If we were trying to snap a hummingbird and freeze wing movement then 1/2000 shutter would be the go. Horses for courses.

Aperture: I'd choose f/12 because it is middle of the range and a good starting point. Aperture can be confusing because the numbers are the wrong way 'round. A small aperture number of say, f/5.6, indicates that the aperture is wide open (large hole for the light to enter) while an aperture of f/22 indicates the aperture is almost closed (tiny hole for the light to enter).

The wider the aperture the less depth of field we have to work with. That's why I'd choose f/12 for the family pic, it will give sufficient depth of field to ensure that everyone in the pic is in focus. For the hummingbird I would open the aperture right up to f/5.6 so as to blur the background and isolate the bird. If a landscape shot where I wanted everything in focus, I would use f/16 to f/22. The smaller the hole, the longer or deeper the depth of field. For most general shooting a setting between f/8 to f/16 is ideal.

Iso: Must always be set as low as possible. Iso refers to the sensitivity of the sensor to light. In normal average daylight iso 100 will be fine, if it's a cloudy day then maybe push it up to 200 or even 400 if the light is particularly dim, but try and leave it at 100 as much as possible. The higher the iso the more chance of 'noise'. As a general rule don't go higher than 400 till you feel more confident. With most modern cameras iso can be safely left on auto.

Back to the family pic. I'm standing on the footpath camera in hand, the family is on the front lawn and the house is in the background. I take the pic using the settings mentioned earlier and get a good result, everything is in focus.

Now listen up, because this is the important bit, and it's also the fun part, my god my grammer is terrible.

This photo would work better IMHO if the house was slightly out of focus, after all it is supposed to be a photo of family, not family plus boring suburbia cube home.

The way to slightly blur the house but keep the family members in sharp focus would be to open up the aperture from f/12 to let's say f/8. This will shrink or shorten the depth of field and give the desired effect. Because we have made the aperture larger more light will now hit the sensor. Remember that the original settings of shutter 1/125, aperture f/12 gave us a good exposure, this means the shutter must now be altered to compensate for the extra unwanted light.

Going from 1/125 up to 1/250 or 1/500 might do the trick. Basically if you open up the aperture one notch then you must alter the shutter speed one notch the other way to keep the same exposure value. The higher shutter speed (less light enters) will cancel out the effect of opening up the aperture (more light enters).

I use aperture priority most of the time, it's a great way to learn. If shooting a landscape I want everything to infinity in focus so aperture will be set as low (highest #)as possible and let the camera work out the rest, most times it will do a great job.

If I want to shoot a bird in a tree I only want the bird to be in focus so the aperture would be set at wide open (lowest#) and again, let the camera do the rest.

In the viewfinder you should be able to see what shutter and iso settings the camera is choosing. Watch and learn and then experiment.

When something catches my eye and I feel the need to photograph it, the first thing that comes into my mind is "what depth of field am I looking at here?", everything else flows from that. Works for me.

Photography is the opposite of painting. A painter starts with a blank canvas and paints what he 'sees'. The photographer starts with a full palette and the skill is to islolate the important element that has caught your eye. Depth of field is an important part of photography and a good area to focus (haha) on.

Phew! That's a bit of a ramble, hope some of it makes sense.

[Christina]

Thanks for all of that. I'm pretty tired and I want to read it all again in the morning while looking at my camera and then I'm sure I'll have lots of questions.

[Worldtraveller]

I don't have a nice enough digital that I can manually set most thing. It allows it, but all through a menu, so it's not worth it most times. I've learned to make the most of the different 'auto' settings though. When I'm doing landscape photos, I will usually aim at some place slightly brighter than where my subject is to let the camera set it's parameters. This works really well with mostly auto cameras that seem to want to overexpose most things.

It works better for fast subjects (I take a lot of pics at airshows and races) without having to work quite so hard. I really want to get a new camera though, that I can do more manually.

[Christina]

I've been playing around with it and it seems like the advanced settings do most of the things that I want to do other than take decent night pictures, slower motion or ones in bright sunlight without washing out the color. The action setting seems to take care of most things that move but I'd still adjust the shutter speed for things like waterfalls or very fast moving objects like hummingbirds.

[Khatru]

Last year I treated myself to a Nikon D60. It's a nice camera but I have a lot to learn about its functionality.

Maybe we could have a thread for posting pics we've taken that we're particularly proud of?