Back to Basics

The Black Oil

I've pretty much forgotten most stuff I knew about photography, mainly due to college and my camera sitting in the corner gathering dust.

Anyway, was nattering away to someone on MSN and roughly came up with the following:

M/Manual, you are in control which can be both a gift and a curse. Something like f5.6 is your aperture - the higher the number the small amount of light gets in. Perhaps keep it at f5.6 and adjust your shutter speed, 125 may be good and don't go lower than 80 as the focus will be poor.

ISO: the higher the number the more light will be let in.
Sunny day 200
Normal dull day 400
Low lighting 800
Dark room 1600
Shutter?

Sports mode is poo, maybe f9 with 160-250 shutter and someone hits the ground maybe 12-160. Not sure on the f9 here, may have picked that up wrong.

Night, tripod!

I'm sure there's oodles of tutorials online but does this sound enough to get me back on my feet?:o

sineadw

Sounds good for a start Just remember shutter speed depends on focal length, so with a 50mm lens you want to keep to at least 60/sec hand held, but with 200mm you need 200/sec and so on.

The Black Oil

Oh yeah, thank you.:)

amcinroy

The Black Oil wrote:

M/Manual, you are in control which can be both a gift and a curse.

Taking control is more about using your camera to achieve the results you want. It doesn't matter what mode you are using. You won't see many sports photographers using metered manual. Aperture and shutter priority are powerful modes which when combined with exposure compensation will give you complete creative control while also allowing you to shoot more quickly with fewer missed opportunities.

The Black Oil wrote:

Something like f5.6 is your aperture - the higher the number the small amount of light gets in. Perhaps keep it at f5.6 and adjust your shutter speed, 125 may be good and don't go lower than 80 as the focus will be poor.

Don't limit yourself to f5.6 or any shutter speed. Use what is available to you for the photograph you wish to take. So maybe use f16 for sharp landscapes, Maybe use 5.6 for portraits against an out of focus background. As far as handheld shutter speeds are concerned, I agree that 1/125 is a safe bet although this depends on the focal length of the lens that you are using. Remember too that camera shake is nothing to do with focus. You can be correctly focused but still have blur caused by camera shake.

The Black Oil wrote:

ISO: the higher the number the more light will be let in.

This is incorrect. The only things that affect the amount of light entering the camera are aperture and shutter speed. The ISO number is a measure of the sensitivity of the capture surface. So ISO400 is 2X more sensitive than ISO200 etc. This is some times refered to as a "1 stop" of sensitivity. By using the "stop" terminology you can therefore compare aperture, shutter and ISO as equivalent controls. But remember that ISO is somewhat different as it does not affect exposure.

The Black Oil wrote:

Night, tripod!

Any time the shutter speed falls below what you can handhold requires a tripod or where sharpness is paramount. I will often use a tripod in the middle of the day when stopped down to f22, using neutral density filters at low ISO.

Hope that helps
Andy
www.skyandstone.com

The Black Oil

Thank you muchly.:)