First Digital SLR

[foothead]

Go into settings and enable the histogram on image previews, if you haven't already. This is probably the most helpful tool on DSLRs, but people (besides pros) rarely use it for some reason. It'll give you a much better idea of your exposure than just looking at the image on the preview screen.

The ideal way to set it (for me at least) is so the lcd remains black until you take a picture, then the image pops up with an overlaid histogram for about 3 seconds. I don't use canon, so you'll have to consult the manual for this probably. It'll probably be buried in the advanced settings.

EDIT: Here's an article on the histogram. Kinda funny, he says the same thing as me about it, even though I haven't read that article before.


When you get that down, set your camera to manual mode and the meter to spot. This isn't absolutely necessary with digital cameras, but it's a good learning tool. I actually carry just a spotmeter when shooting film. The way it works (put as simply as possible) is you take readings for several points within the frame, then figure out how to expose to get those within the film's exposure latitude. Usually you'd meter the highlights, shadow, and a midpoint (or several.) The meter shows you the proper exposure for 18% grey (often referred to as neutral grey). This is why you'll sometimes see portrait photographers having the subject hold up a grey card to calibrate the lighting. Metering off that will give you the most accurate exposure, though perfectly accurate rendering may not always be ideal in some situations (for example, if detail would be clipped.) Read up on the "zone system" for more info on this. This may be a bit advanced for now though.

 

[ssc456]

Hey guys and gals,

So I took my new camera out to the Zoo today for a trial run
Here's a couple of snaps I took:

I had it in manual mode the whole day so some of them may not be great but certainly satisfactory for a 1st day!

1 thing that I didn't quite work out was how to adjust for poor light?
I started off, I believe wrongly, adjusting the shutter speed to when it was darker slowing the shutter down to let more light in, then I changed later in the day to adjusting the ISO? Which is the correct way or is it a balance between the two?

Please click the bigger button as the smaller image on here appears awful?

 

[ssc456]

Pictures Continued:

*The insect ones were taken indoors and taken through glass and I did not adjust the light settings very well at all as at 100% they are very noisy, any tips on how to stop this?

 

[berry120]

Not bad at all for a first shot! In terms of the light settings indoors, try and keep the ISO at a level where it's not too noisy (800 is fine on most modern digital cameras), keep the aperture as open as you can and then shoot on a relatively long shutter speed. If you haven't a tripod then that last one is trickier, but I still find I can get usable shots around the half second mark if I keep my hand steady and take a few (then one usually ends up ok!)

In terms of your first shot - try using the flash in those scenarios, the face looks a bit dark (probably because the light is coming from one side) so the flash just helps brighten it up a bit. The in built flashes are usually more than adequate for those tasks.

 

[foothead]

Hey guys and gals,

So I took my new camera out to the Zoo today for a trial run
Here's a couple of snaps I took:

I had it in manual mode the whole day so some of them may not be great but certainly satisfactory for a 1st day!

1 thing that I didn't quite work out was how to adjust for poor light?
I started off, I believe wrongly, adjusting the shutter speed to when it was darker slowing the shutter down to let more light in, then I changed later in the day to adjusting the ISO? Which is the correct way or is it a balance between the two?

Unless you're ending up with camera shake, it's best to leave the ISO on the lowest setting. Adjust the aperture and/or shutter speed to change exposure. I hate to ask such a silly question, but do you understand how to read the exposure meter? It seems like this would have become apparent after about ten seconds of messing with it. Remember, it's showing you the reciprocal of the speed. so 25 would mean 1/25th of a second and 50 would mean 1/50th of a second. Thus the higher numbers are actually faster. There'll be a marker that pops up up if you get into the full seconds. It's a circle on my olympus slr.

Not bad at all for a first shot! In terms of the light settings indoors, try and keep the ISO at a level where it's not too noisy (800 is fine on most modern digital cameras), keep the aperture as open as you can and then shoot on a relatively long shutter speed. If you haven't a tripod then that last one is trickier, but I still find I can get usable shots around the half second mark if I keep my hand steady and take a few (then one usually ends up ok!)

In terms of your first shot - try using the flash in those scenarios, the face looks a bit dark (probably because the light is coming from one side) so the flash just helps brighten it up a bit. The in built flashes are usually more than adequate for those tasks.

EDIT. Whoops, my bad. I misread your post a bit. Didn't catch that everything you were saying in the first paragraph was about indoor photos. I think the parentheses threw me off somehow (Didn't sleep well last night.) I'll leave what I said anyway.

You should adjust the aperture as the situation requires. If you're just doing snapshots in full sun, the only reason to open it up all the way is if you're after shallow depth of field or want unsharp photos for whatever reason (this is often desirable for portraits.) Closing it up more will give you an increase in sharpness, until diffraction hits at least. I'm not familiar with the properties of the specific lens, but a good general rule is that they're usually sharpest when stopped down about two stops. Closing it up also gives more DOF, which is desirable in most situations. Wider apertures do give more light though, so they're also useful in situations with low light.


Shutter speed is the same way really. Use as the situation requires. Faster speeds freeze motion, while leaving it open can create an "in motion" effect. Usually, you want to freeze everything, but there are plenty of exceptions. Water is a good one. Just be sure it's fast enough to avoid camera shake when hand holding. Another "rule" I often see quoted for this is the reciprocal of your focal length, in 35mm equivalent. Your crop factor is 1.5, so you'd multiply the focal length by that for this. This is really just a very general rule though, and you'll learn what you can and can't do pretty quickly.

Definitely learn fill flash though. I'm not sure how far the built in flash will go, but it should be able to help at least.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Photo-S...585384&sr=8-1&keywords=ansel+adams+the+camera I suggest you pick this up. Your local library should have a copy if you don't want to buy it. Read the entire thing, not just the small format stuff. It explains everything far better than I ever could.

 

[Life]

Great Photo's man. Is that your Wife or Gf?

 

[ssc456]

Great Photo's man. Is that your Wife or Gf?

Thanks.

Wife as of 16th August 2013

 

[Life]

Congratz. You're stuck for life now