Help a newbie

Weidii

Hello everyone, you have a newbie in your midst.

Basically I just inherited a Nikon D70 and I have no idea how to properly use it. I love to draw, so I have a good eye for composition/colour/texture/expression, but I'm just clueless about the technicalities of the camera. Does anyone know of any good tutorial websites or videos which I should look at to get started with the thing? I've tried to work it out by fiddling around with it myself, but the amount of settings and numbers just boggles me.

Any advice appreciated.

AnCatDubh

hey weidii - nice inheritance! My suggestion to you is to drop along to your local bookseller or library and check out Bryan Peterson's "Understand Exposure". It provides a wealth of information and advice about the technicalities of.... well... understanding exposure. Anytime book recommendations are sought, this one always crops up as being highly recommended. Have it myself and i regularly recap on chapters time and time again.

Good luck with it.

ThOnda

Good suggestion. I read it online and it was nicely written in very very simply way. If somebody can't understand that book, (s)he should buy point and shoot with only automatic mode.

Thirdfox

To be frank, I've had a good look through many of the photography books (in Hoggis Figgis - they have a pretty big collection) and I didn't find anything that was particularly useful (except for "The Photographer's Eye" - which talked about the various elements of composition and so on). Not to knocking the book that has been recommended above but I didn't think it actually taught me anything that I couldn't easily have found out by experimenting and having a good read of the camera manual.

I found that all the information in these kind of books can be freely found online in forums like this or at dpreview or even the dreaded Ken Rockwell page (guide to D70 here: http://kenrockwell.com/nikon/d70/d70-settings.htm) Ken talks rubbish at times but there are helpful bits in there too. edit: His camera guides are usually very well written and can be more informative than the dry manual (which you might not even have since this is an inheritance).

The best advice I can give you is to go out there and make mistakes, find out what works and what doesn't. With digital you have the luxury of being able to instantly review (and delete) shots. Reading about it isn't as educative or fun as actually going out there and doing it

ThOnda

Well, some hints about Aperture, ISO and filetypes should be provided before trying. It's much better and easier, when you know what are you trying.

Just browse web, there are many tutorials and lectures. Like this one - second line in google results...
A have never seen that page before, but it doesn't look like there should be lots of mistakes or B-S.

Thirdfox

Oh yes, of course - some basic knowledge of aperture, shutter speed, ISO etc. is necessary but to actually find out how f16 is different to f3.5 - I suggest you take a picture to find out... and if you're still confused then ask questions here, we won't bite

One thing I'd suggest though is to use the A, S or M mode (maybe the P mode) - I use A mode 75% of the time - it allows you to control your aperture directly and let the camera work out the other settings. Using one of the "scene" modes won't really you teach you anything (except for focal length differences of your lens I suppose and composition, something you say that you're accustomed to already).

Weidii

Thank you all so much for all this advice, you have offered me a wealth of information that would have otherwise taken me a long time to uncover

I have been playing around with the camera in M and A mode so far, still not too sure what I'm doing. I think I need to find out a bit about what all the jargon associated with photography means, then get out there and start shooting. Hopefully I'll learn by trial and error.

Can anyone reccomend what sort of lense would be best to start off with? the camera came with a few but I'm not really sure which to use at the moment.

JMcL

I'll second AnCatDubh's recommendation of Understanding Exposure. It's very clearly written, and an excellent introduction at the stage you're at now (I really wish I'd bought it earlier - it'd have saved me a lot of time)

Ricky91t

Just something quick you could try(this is how i learnt to use my first slr)
Turn it on set it to auto shoot a picture of anything.
Then press the image preview button go through the photos till you see that image
Then click info and a screen like this should appear

This will show you how the camera set up the shot and made sure the picture wasnt too bright etc.If you then switch to m you could put in these setting by changing the shutter speed etc and then you can adjust them you'll notivce the higher the shutter speed say1/500 will freeze the moment where as 1/15 might be blurry if you have shakey hand.You'll also notice the aperture at 5.6 will leave a blurry out of focus background where as f11 will make the image darker and have an in focus background
Here a handy sight giving you info on the D70