Brightness or shutter speed??? Please help.

Subliminal

Hi again, this time i really need help understanding. I came close to putting my camera ( Sony F505V ) in the for sale section today on boards. I love this camera, for everything except indoor shots, as it is really bad at indoors. I started to re read the manual today, and came accross a section calle AEA And AES. AEA Meant Aparature Priority Mode and AES meant Shutter Speed Priority Mode. I didnt even know the camera had a shutter speed option. The problem is, i understand that increasing shutter speed produces sharper images, and slow speeds like 8" lets you se the movment more ( Blur motion etc ) The problem i am having, is that when messing with these settings, they do the affect as labeled, but also, seem to increase and decrease brightness. The first pic below is F2P88 which is F2.8 AEA with 8" AES and as you can see, the image is sharp. But when i use AEA F2.8 and AES 350, ( F2P8350 below ) the image just darkens significantly. I have not used flash at all nor has the environment changed. Why is a high speed shutter causing the picture to darken so drasticly? i thought only aperature priority would have caused this, but AEA remained identical for the two shots. If anyone could give me help on this i would be in thier debt. I really dont want to sell this camera, but if its not doing its job, i will have to. There are no ISO settings on the camera, but other than that it is a great camera. I have never seen such a sharp picture from the lens ( Carl Zeiss ) Thanks in advance...

DotOrg

you need to read something very basic on how a camera works and what difference changing the shutter speed (the amount of time you let the light onto the sensor) and changing the aperture (how with the hole at the back of the lens is) has on the final picture

start with this: http://www.photo.net/learn/making-photographs/
and see if you understand why a fast shutter speed will lead to darker pictures than a slower shutter speed

dubtom

Although it may seem complicted, the simplest way to describe is by thinking of the apature of your cam as being a hole. When you set it to 2.8 the hole is at it's largest, there by letting a lot of light in, reducing the amount of shutter speed you need. When set at F8, the hole is about 4 times as small, letting a lot less light in, needing a longer shutter speed.Your first pic, the shutter was open for 8 seconds? loads of light, your second pic, even though at 2.8, the shutter was only opened for 350 th of a second. A lot less light.It may take you a while to get your head around the subject of exposure times and apatures, because they do seem to be calulated in reverse, 2.8 = biggest hole, f8= smallest, but you should read all you can and it will become clear.Maybe think about joining a camera club,or doing a course, best of luck.

mbf

I can understand your confusion. The section of the manual is a little unclear at best.

What auto-exposure does is to measure the light coming into the camera (either across the entire frame, or just at the autofocus points) and adjust the aperture and shutter speed (and possibly ISO - depends on the camera) to values which will give the largest light range within the areas measured.

AEA sounds like a mode where you can manually set the aperture and the camera should figure out the correct shutter speed to use.

AES conversely: set shutter speed, camera figures out aperture.

Now you're talking about an indoor shot, which usually means very little light, so you need a low(wide) aperture or a slow shutter speed.

It's not clear from your post which setting you're changing, but for the second picture, it seems you've told the camera you want 1/350 seconds which is a very fast shutter speed. The camera has tried to compensate with as wide an aperture as possible to let in more light, but it can't get any wider than 2.8, so that's the best you'll be able to get. The camera should have shown the aperture it picked and possibly highlighted it in red to say that it needed, but couldn't get a wider one.

Shutter speed and aperture (and ASA/ISO speed if your camera supports it) are directly related and getting a good feel for how they work together is very important.

If you take the example of your first shot which seems well-lit, the aperture was set at f2.8 and the shutter at 8" (which looking at the relative light in the pictures probably mean 1/8 of a second rather than 8 seconds). If you were to set the aperture to f4.0 (which would halve the light coming through the lens) the camera would have compensated by doubling the shutter speed (to 1/4 of a second, or 16 seconds if it was indeed 8 seconds). Each increasing fstop number (decreasing aperture width) halves the light getting through the aperture and requires twice as long of an exposure.

ISO 50 requires twice as long an exposure as ISO 100 (fixed aperture), ISO 100 requires twice as long an exposure as ISO 200, etc.

E/V (again assuming your camera has it) allows you to make up for lousy autoexposure calculations (in 1/3 steps). Setting the E/V to positive values would overexpose the shot slightly, which you might want to do if theres a very brightly lit object (or a source of light) in an otherwise dark frame and you want the object to have a glow around it. Alternatively you might want to underexpose (set the E/V to negative values) to bring out the detail in a lampshade with the bulb inside switched on.

A lot of photographers recommend bracketing your exposures (taking one at +1/3 and one at -1/3) in case there's some details in the light or dark that you'd miss otherwise. There are even ways to merge bracketed shots like that into images with a larger dynamic range than normal.

Subliminal

mbf, cheers, thats after making a lot of sense in relation to MY camera. I thought AEA could be adjusted, seperate from AES, but now thanks to your post i realise they change together reletively. The camera doesnt have iso settings, but in the menu, there is a option called Exposure +/- but after changing the settings both to max and the Min settings ( +2, -2 ) i cant see any difference on the picture. Camera doesnt have, and i dont even know what E/V is, exposure somthing im guessing. The problem is, indor pictures are DREADFULL. Same in movie mode indoors. Its really sad that ive had to dump 50 pics so far because of terrible indoor pics/movies. What i was hoping, is that i could adjust the AEA AES settings to compensate for bad indoor pictures. I think its a fault in camera now, rather than in some setting i can fix. Really dont want to sell it, but if the indoor pictures are THIS bad, i will have to. Cheers again mbf thats made a lot of sense to me. Also, thanks to the previous posters for the help too, i appriciate it.

Sub

DotOrg

indoor pictures nead flash as most compact cameras can't cope with low light conditions due to lack of a high iso setting on them, they just aren't sensitive to light enough

i really doubt the camera isn't working though

i've done a tiny bit of googling and found all this info below:
it says low light (inddor shooting is quite good if you just read the manual and understand it)






Select AE mode, icon representing current mode is displayed on LCD:

• Auto
• Aperture Priority Auto (shows effect of aperture setting immediately)
• Wide: F2.8, 3.4, 4.0, 4.8, 5.6, 6.8, 8.0
• Tele: F3.4, 4.0, 4.8, 5.6, 6.8, 8.0
• Shutter Priority Auto
• (8s, 4s, 2s, 1s, 1/2s, 1/4s, 1/8s, 1/15s, 1/30s, 1/60s, 1/90s,
1/100s, 1/125s, 1/180s, 1/250s, 1/350s, 1/500s, 1/725s,
1/1000s).
• Twilight Mode
• Twilight+ Mode (exposures less than 1/30s)
• Landscape Mode
• Portrait Mode




Aperture Priority Mode

Aperture priority is where you designate the aperture and the camera calculates the best shutter speed, if the exposure is outside of the cameras range (either over or under exposing) the aperture will flash on the LCD screen. Used properly Aperture Priority can be invaluable as it has a direct effect on depth of field (the distance in front and behind the focal point which will be in focus when taking the shot).

The DSC-F505V offers a usable ange of apertures. Good in good light, but crippled in medium to low light because of a lower shutter speed limit of 1/30s in Aperture Priority mode... Why, I'm not sure, but it means that unless you have good light you'll not be using small apertures. Available apertures:

* Wide: F2.8, 3.4, 4.0, 4.8, 5.6, 6.8, 8.0
* Tele: F3.4, 4.0, 4.8, 5.6, 6.8, 8.0

Aperture Priority mode is accessed through the Program AE button. A basic example of aperture priority is shown below for more read my digital photography glossary:

Exposure: 1/30s, F3.4
(Less depth of field) Exposure: 1/4s, F8.0
(More depth of field)

As you can see in this example we've managed to increase the depth of field slightly, unfortunately digital cameras tend to be limited to fairly large (by SLR film camera standards) apertures (normally F8.0 as with the F505V) this limitation is due to the relative size of the imaging area (CCD) and focal lengths used. It's also worth noting that I DIDN'T use Aperture Priority mode to achieve the shots above (I used Shutter Priority), that's because we wouldn't have been able to take the second shot at 1/4s, in Aperture mode the lowest shutter speed the camera will produce is 1/30s...



Shutter Priority Mode (S)

Shutter priority is where you designate the shutter speed and the camera calculates the correct aperture, if the exposure is outside of the cameras range (either over or under exposing) the shutter speed will flash on the LCD screen.


Twilight+ mode (low light) / Long Exposures

As with other Sony digital cameras the CD1000 features two Night modes, Twilight and Twilight+. Twilight seems to lock shutter speed at 1/30 sec, Twilight+ allows for longer exposures (up to two seconds with ISO locked at 100). In this mode the LCD refresh rate halves and a brighter preview image appears to be built by combining two frames. Below are some samples of Twilight+ mode, the last sample was using Shutter Priority at 2 seconds shutter speed.

A fairly good performance in low light, nearly every shot taken in Twilight+ comes out underexposed, but I'm guessing this is intentional and it's often very difficult for the metering system to get an accurate light measurement in very low light, rather than over expose and lose detail Sony decided to err on the side of caution. Even the two second exposure (last image) shows little noise (though focus was a little odd).


Internal Flash

The pop-up flash on the DSC-F505V has a range rated as 0.3 m (12") - 2.5 m (8.2 ft), measured findings (thanks to Ulysses for these) are: From 0.3 m on out to about 3 m use the Low flash. From 3 m to 5 m use the Normal flash. Above 5 m use the High flash. Flash is generally not much good after 10 meters. It's location was probably the only choice based on the design of the camera. On the whole it works quite well, fairly consistently overexposing which can be corrected by selecting a Flash level of "Low" from the Camera menu.

Subliminal

Cheers for that, ive googled myself a bit, must have been doing it worng!
Really appriciate it, if i can get these settings sorted, and use flash, it looks like i can sort the problem out. Thanks for taking the time to get that stuff for me, ive saved it all to a text file, i will read it over and over till i get it.

Thanks all for your help, im happy now that this can be sorted, thanks to you.

Cheers

Sub

mbf

Subliminal wrote:

The camera doesnt have iso settings, but in the menu, there is a option called Exposure +/- but after changing the settings both to max and the Min settings ( +2, -2 ) i cant see any difference on the picture. Camera doesnt have, and i dont even know what E/V is, exposure somthing im guessing.

E/V (Exposure Value, I think) is the same as the Exposure +/- on your camera. If you weren't seeing any difference, then the camera probably still had the aperture or shutter speed out of range.

Subliminal wrote:

The problem is, indor pictures are DREADFULL. Same in movie mode indoors. Its really sad that ive had to dump 50 pics so far because of terrible indoor pics/movies. What i was hoping, is that i could adjust the AEA AES settings to compensate for bad indoor pictures. I think its a fault in camera now, rather than in some setting i can fix. Really dont want to sell it, but if the indoor pictures are THIS bad, i will have to. Cheers again mbf thats made a lot of sense to me. Also, thanks to the previous posters for the help too, i appriciate it.

Sub

The only thing wrong with the first photo was a slight shake - easily remedied by bracing yourself against something or placing the camera on a solid surface or a tripod - you can pick up mini-tripods for €10-15 in most camera shops - larger ones will set you back anything from €25-lots of money.

The second photo is underexposed - the settings you had didn't give the camera enough light. Try again with a slower exposure - you should be able to get as slow as 1/25 if you're bracing yourself, much slower with a tripod. You're probably not going to be able to take anything faster than 1/30 indoors unless the sun is streaming through the window.

The other thing you can do is get more light into the scene - turn on a few lamps, compose the light in your shot. You could use the flash - but the image will look a lot different, especially at close range. I hate flash photography - but then again I only have a compact camera (canon powershot a95) with a built-in flash and built-in flashes suck at everything except filling in shadows on a very bright day.

tonyj

Subliminal wrote:

The problem is, indor pictures are DREADFULL. Same in movie mode indoors. Its really sad that ive had to dump 50 pics so far because of terrible indoor pics/movies. What i was hoping, is that i could adjust the AEA AES settings to compensate for bad indoor pictures. I think its a fault in camera now, rather than in some setting i can fix.

It's not a fault in the camera. For indoor pictures you need *light* from either a flash or preferably studio lights. Even a dSLR set at ISO 1600 can produce terrible indoor shots if there's not enough light. You'd be surprised how much light you need to get a good sharp photo.

You can use tricks like long shutter speed on a TRIPOD - but this is only suitable for still life, and you need to ensure you're setting the white balance correctly - incandescent bulbs are quite yellow to the camera.

For now the only two things you should be learning about are shutter speed and aperture. Leave ISO and EV alone until you understand these two concepts first.

condra

Hi Sub. Sorry for not replying to your message sooner Ive not been well lately.
I definatly think selling the camera would be a bad idea, at least not until you have mastered its many features. The camera is most definatly capable of superb indoor shots, as long as the subject is lit properly and the camera is configured correctly. Longer shutter speeds are pointless without a tripod on any camera.

Part of the reason why some of your indoor shots arent giving you the results you want may be because of its manual capabilities.

In the absense of any daylight, your indoor subject will need to be very well lit, this doesnt necessarily mean it needs lots of light, rather more than one light source may help define the dimensions of your subject.
Dont forget there are 3 light settings on that cameras flash. Also, putting something like a cigarette paper [yes a rizla] over the flash may help to diffuse some of the light. Experimenting with lighting can be rewarding.

If you look at any professional photographic studio, they often use very strong lighting, positioned in front of aswell as at an angle to the subject.

Of course this equipment is expensive but youd be surprised at how much a picture can benefit from something like a 100w bulb in a spotlamp, placed at an angle to complement the main flash.

I agree that learning more about shutter speed and aperature is far more important than worrying about ISO settings. To be honest tho, I often got good results from that camera on automatic mode.