I don't know of a rule for how fast you can go, but there is a rule of thumb for how slow a shutter speed you can go, which is, you can hand hold a shot down to the reciprocal of the length of the lens (this is a little off with digital, but it's still a pretty good rule). This means that a telephoto lens set to 200mm can be hand held as slow as 1/200 of a second. A 30mm lens can be hand held down to 1/30 of second. How fast you can go is purely a function of how much light there is:D . From your previous posts, you already understand the relationship between aperture, light, and shutter speed!
So when you are taking a picture of a static object like the arch (it was a great shot), adjusting up or down in priority mode simply allows you to control depth of field.
As far as your question about adjusting contrast, saturation, etc. in camera, I feel you should continue to do this post production. Yes, it seems like you "always" have to do this, but I think you'll find that you have better control doing it with your software (especially the contrast/brightness) and it's al lot easier to add than to take away .
When you do just shutter priority to stop the action what rule of thumb do you use to figure how fast you can go without losing the image. When I was out in St. Louis I came up with a little trick that seemed to work for me. I was putting the camera in Priority mode and it picks the best shutter and aperture. You can vary either in this mode but it isn't as quick as using shutter priority or aperture priority. Anyway I looked to see what shutter speed it was going to use and used that as a base of a good shot. I figured it wouldn't hurt to go one stop lower or higher and you would still end up with the same shot. The only problem is you don't always have time to do this. The arch wasn't going anywhere so I had all the time in the world. Is there some secret out there I don't know. I have heard of a light meter on your camera but I don't think the coolpix 5700 has that.
Sorry one more question on this post. All of my shots needed the contrast bumped up about 15% the brightness down about 10% and the saturation up 20%. Is there a way to set my camera so my shots would be closer to this and not all need tweaking. The only one I found messing with made it bad was the silluette.
Thanks again. I hope I am not driving people crazy with all these questions.
I don't know of a rule for how fast you can go, but there is a rule of thumb for how slow a shutter speed you can go, which is, you can hand hold a shot down to the reciprocal of the length of the lens (this is a little off with digital, but it's still a pretty good rule). This means that a telephoto lens set to 200mm can be hand held as slow as 1/200 of a second. A 30mm lens can be hand held down to 1/30 of second. How fast you can go is purely a function of how much light there is:D . From your previous posts, you already understand the relationship between aperture, light, and shutter speed!
So when you are taking a picture of a static object like the arch (it was a great shot), adjusting up or down in priority mode simply allows you to control depth of field.
As far as your question about adjusting contrast, saturation, etc. in camera, I feel you should continue to do this post production. Yes, it seems like you "always" have to do this, but I think you'll find that you have better control doing it with your software (especially the contrast/brightness) and it's al lot easier to add than to take away .
Keep up the great work,
Regards,
Brad
OK that in mind how do I know what my lens is? I thought when you zoom in and out the the lens changes value like for instance 20mm - 70mm. While you are at it can you explain to me what that 35mm means? What is 35mm's. Also when I pick up my camera and have no zoom on it everything is smaller than real life. What lens value is true to exactly what you are looking at? I am so grateful for everybody's help. If you haven't noticed I am one of those types of people that likes to know exactly how things work . I have gone to some good websites and read about this stuff before but I didn't really understand everything.
35mm is the generic term used to refer to the format/film size of the standard film type cameras that we have all used over the years. It is basically the actual size of a typical slide or negative. Cameras were generally described/categorized by the size of film.
Now in our digital world, our terminology refers back to this 35mm "standard". For example your camera has a zoom lens equivalent to a 35-280mm zoom lens on a 35mm camera (it's not the same measurement, but the specifications are quoted for comparitive purposes). I don't exactly remember, but I believe the focal length of a lens is the distance (in millimetres) from the first lens to the film plane (which would be the point of focus). Like in telescopes, longer and bigger is better (when you want to bring things very close!).
So this is what 35-280mm tells us. First of all it's a zoom lens that can be set anywhere between these 2 focal lengths. Any lens that is 35mm and less would be probably be considered a wide angle. 50mm was always considered to be the "standard" 1:1 lens in the 35mm world (objects looked the same through the viewfinder as the naked eye) although the "true" length may be slightly longer/shorter than that on some cameras. Just a rule of thumb:D
Lens that are 125mm and larger are considered telephotos. So, the bigger the "length" of the lens the closer the object is going to look, the smaller the or shorter the length, the closer the image. Lenses can come in various fixed length sizes (eg. 24mm, 28mm, 50mm, 200mm, 400mm, etc.) or as zoom lens. Zoom lens obviously have the benefit of convenience of being many lens in one!
So, your particular camera has an all purpose wide angle/telephoto lens. A very good combination.
Getting back to your depth of field question earlier, try the following test just to see the difference:
Try the cat/bunny photo again (or another average size object such as a headshot of a person). Get fairly close so that what ever object you are taking a picture of fills most of the picture frame (you want to zoom out so the camera is getting as much of your view as possible).
Using the same aperture setting as the previous photo (say f2.8), move back a fair ways and use your zoom to zoom-in and "frame" the picture the same way (i.e. the object(s) should fill the viewfinder approx. the same size).
You should now have 2 virtually identical photos, but taken from 2 different distances, close and far away. Did they look different? They should!
OK that in mind how do I know what my lens is? I thought when you zoom in and out the the lens changes value like for instance 20mm - 70mm. While you are at it can you explain to me what that 35mm means? What is 35mm's. Also when I pick up my camera and have no zoom on it everything is smaller than real life. What lens value is true to exactly what you are looking at? I am so grateful for everybody's help. If you haven't noticed I am one of those types of people that likes to know exactly how things work . I have gone to some good websites and read about this stuff before but I didn't really understand everything.
Comments
I don't know of a rule for how fast you can go, but there is a rule of thumb for how slow a shutter speed you can go, which is, you can hand hold a shot down to the reciprocal of the length of the lens (this is a little off with digital, but it's still a pretty good rule). This means that a telephoto lens set to 200mm can be hand held as slow as 1/200 of a second. A 30mm lens can be hand held down to 1/30 of second. How fast you can go is purely a function of how much light there is:D . From your previous posts, you already understand the relationship between aperture, light, and shutter speed!
So when you are taking a picture of a static object like the arch (it was a great shot), adjusting up or down in priority mode simply allows you to control depth of field.
As far as your question about adjusting contrast, saturation, etc. in camera, I feel you should continue to do this post production. Yes, it seems like you "always" have to do this, but I think you'll find that you have better control doing it with your software (especially the contrast/brightness) and it's al lot easier to add than to take away
Keep up the great work,
Regards,
Brad
www.digismile.ca
Rich
35mm is the generic term used to refer to the format/film size of the standard film type cameras that we have all used over the years. It is basically the actual size of a typical slide or negative. Cameras were generally described/categorized by the size of film.
Now in our digital world, our terminology refers back to this 35mm "standard". For example your camera has a zoom lens equivalent to a 35-280mm zoom lens on a 35mm camera (it's not the same measurement, but the specifications are quoted for comparitive purposes). I don't exactly remember, but I believe the focal length of a lens is the distance (in millimetres) from the first lens to the film plane (which would be the point of focus). Like in telescopes, longer and bigger is better (when you want to bring things very close!).
So this is what 35-280mm tells us. First of all it's a zoom lens that can be set anywhere between these 2 focal lengths. Any lens that is 35mm and less would be probably be considered a wide angle. 50mm was always considered to be the "standard" 1:1 lens in the 35mm world (objects looked the same through the viewfinder as the naked eye) although the "true" length may be slightly longer/shorter than that on some cameras. Just a rule of thumb:D
Lens that are 125mm and larger are considered telephotos. So, the bigger the "length" of the lens the closer the object is going to look, the smaller the or shorter the length, the closer the image. Lenses can come in various fixed length sizes (eg. 24mm, 28mm, 50mm, 200mm, 400mm, etc.) or as zoom lens. Zoom lens obviously have the benefit of convenience of being many lens in one!
So, your particular camera has an all purpose wide angle/telephoto lens. A very good combination.
Getting back to your depth of field question earlier, try the following test just to see the difference:
Try the cat/bunny photo again (or another average size object such as a headshot of a person). Get fairly close so that what ever object you are taking a picture of fills most of the picture frame (you want to zoom out so the camera is getting as much of your view as possible).
Using the same aperture setting as the previous photo (say f2.8), move back a fair ways and use your zoom to zoom-in and "frame" the picture the same way (i.e. the object(s) should fill the viewfinder approx. the same size).
You should now have 2 virtually identical photos, but taken from 2 different distances, close and far away. Did they look different? They should!
Give it a try,
Regards,
Brad
www.digismile.ca