noob to manual settings

carmel6942

My wife and I just purchased our first dslr. We have been using our p&s up till this point. We want to start taking better pictures and are going to start expermenting with the p,s,a,&m settings. This seems very intimidating because the camera did all the work before. First we are going to use the shutter priority settings then move to the aperature priority, then probably manual. What is the best method to determine what settings to use? Later in the spring we are going to be doing shots at local horse shows and I would like to have some Idea on settings and lots of practice to get some acceptable shots.

Equipment We have:
Nikon D50 & kit lens
70-300 4-5.6 comming soon (Thanks Christina)
Nikon sb800 flash also comming soon (tuesday).

I am sure that I will have lots of questions again but so far you guys have been a great help with everything.


Carl

silica

Go to Amazon and buy a copy of Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera by Bryan Peterson. It will be the best $16.49 you will ever spend on this subject.

larry l

Get a copy of Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera (Updated Edition) (Paperback). It's fairly inexpensive and a good basic introductory book that will answer most of the questions you're posing and be a great reference as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Exposure-Photographs-Digital-Updated/dp/0817463003/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-0066662-5902053?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1172893976&sr=8-1

good luck, once you practice a bit you'll love it

carmel6942 wrote:

My wife and I just purchased our first dslr. We have been using our p&s up till this point. We want to start taking better pictures and are going to start expermenting with the p,s,a,&m settings. This seems very intimidating because the camera did all the work before. First we are going to use the shutter priority settings then move to the aperature priority, then probably manual. What is the best method to determine what settings to use? Later in the spring we are going to be doing shots at local horse shows and I would like to have some Idea on settings and lots of practice to get some acceptable shots.

Equipment We have:
Nikon D50 & kit lens
70-300 4-5.6 comming soon (Thanks Christina)
Nikon sb800 flash also comming soon (tuesday).

I am sure that I will have lots of questions again but so far you guys have been a great help with everything.


Carl

pathfinder

Both of the above are great suggestions.

You have not explained the depth of your knowledge about photography and exposure, and how exposure is controlled by aperture, shutter speed and ISO setting; and the role white balance plays in setting your cameras settings.

Give us a little more information about what you understand about the above subjects, and then we can better explain things without repeating the basics again and again.

Terrence

+1 on Understanding Exposure. That is the first book I bought when I got into DSLR. IMHO, to effectively shoot manual, you need an incident light meter. The camera's refelctive meter, is easily fooled by many lighting situations. I own the Sekonic L-358. At about $250 used, it isn't cheap, but it is excellent. I use this mostly in my outdoor shooting, especially wildlife. Indoors I find it much easier to stick with aperture or shutter priority.

carmel6942

Thanks everybody, Understanding Exposure on its way.

As for what I know, shutter speed, aperature, and Iso are interrelated and if you change one you have to change the others some. I also know that if you want better depth of field you need to have a smaller aperature setting and you need a faster Iso setting to work in darker areas or with action. Other than that not a lot. I have been reading the other threads and did a search under shutter speeds and read most of the posts there. I apologize for my ignorance in this subject (and do I feel dumb) but I really want to take better pictures and I am looking for a place to start my adventures.

Angelo

in addition to reading the books recommended here you can run through some exercises to learn the real life effect of your actions. Since there are no film costs, these exercises are free!

(best with a tripod but improvise if you don't)

set your camera at any shutter speed and the largest aperture. point it at a static object and take the picture. then run through each f-stop, never adjusting the shutter speed.

compare the results

then you can do the same exercise by switching your actions to shutter speed variables on a fixed aperture opening

compare the results

and so on, and so on. believe me, this is old school learning but a terrific lesson tool. and it minimally mimics your camera's actions when bracketing shots.

pathfinder

carmel6942 wrote:

Thanks everybody, Understanding Exposure on its way.

As for what I know, shutter speed, aperature, and Iso are interrelated and if you change one you have to change the others some. I also know that if you want better depth of field you need to have a smaller aperature setting and you need a faster Iso setting to work in darker areas or with action. Other than that not a lot. I have been reading the other threads and did a search under shutter speeds and read most of the posts there. I apologize for my ignorance in this subject (and do I feel dumb) but I really want to take better pictures and I am looking for a place to start my adventures.

I think you already on your way since you realize that you do need to understand the basics of photography, even though the camera can be shot in automatic modes. It will just do a poorer job than can be done by someone who understands how to use shutter speed, aperture, and ISO to maximize an image's quality.

In short, apertures run from f1.4 - f2 - f2.8 - f4 - f5.6 - f8 - 11 - 16 - f22

If f16 admits 1 unit of light for a given shutter speed, f11 admits 2 units, f8 4 units, f5.6 8 units - each aperture larger( but smaller unit number ) doubles the amount of light admitted. Or halves it for smaller apertures.

This is convenient, because shutter speeds come in halves or doubles also.

Shutter speeds are typically -1/15th - 1/30th sec - 1/60th sec - 1/125th - 1/250th -1/500th etc. These can be combined with apertures to allow us to alter the shutter speed and aperture to create a combination of our choosing. Small aperture f16 gives more depth of field, but takes a much longer shutter speed.

ISO is the unit of measure of how much light it takes to properly expose an image. Think of ISO as a measure of how much water it takes to fill a bucket. Then, aperture is the diameter of the hose and shutter speed is a measure of how long the hose is allowed to run.

We always want to achieve exactly 1 bucket of water, and we can do this by varying the diameter of the hose and how long the water runs. By altering the aperture from f8 to f4 we are allowing in 2 fstops more light or four times more light. If we adjust the shutter speed from 1/100th to 1/400th we are cutting the time the hose is on to 1/4 so that we still fill the bucket but do not overflow it. We want a full bucket of light ( we do not want under exposure) but do not want to overflow the bucket ( nor overexposure)..

The tool we measure light with is the light meter on your camera, which, when pointed at a medium gray object will give us a good measure of the amount of light required to "fill the bucket"

If the object being measured is a lot brighter than medium gray - say the snow on a glacier - the meter will see a lot more light and try to make the image exposed to look like a medium gray ( the meter does not know it is a glacier - it thinks everything is gray ) - so we will need to add + expsoure compensation - typically for shooting a snow field in sunlight you need to add about +1.5 stops of light to keep the snow looking white compared to how it meters with a reflected light meter like in your camera. To meter a black cat in a coal bin, we will need to add -(minus) exposure compensation so that the cat looks black rather than gray - typically I will close my aperture about 1 or 1 1/2 stops when metering off a very black scene.

A good rule of thumb to be aware of is the Sunny 16 rule - which states that in full frontal sunlight at ISO 100, the proper exposure is f16 at 1/100th of a sec.

That leads to a table of equivalent exposures when shooting in sunlight like this - the table feature a a shutter speed of 1/125 instead of 1/100th, but this is only about 1/3rd of a stop and not a critical difference for most images.


Changing our ISO from 100 to 200, means that we only need 1/2 as much light as we needed at ISO 100 to "fill the bucket" again. Going from ISO 100 to 400, means that we can shoot at aperture f5.6 instead of f2.8 - 2 stops of light less since the ISO is four times faster, at a given shutter speed.

System

Angelo wrote:

in addition to reading the books recommended here you can run through some exercises to learn the real life effect of your actions. Since there are no film costs, these exercises are free!

(best with a tripod but improvise if you don't)

set your camera at any shutter speed and the largest aperture. point it at a static object and take the picture. then run through each f-stop, never adjusting the shutter speed.

compare the results

then you can do the same exercise by switching your actions to shutter speed variables on a fixed aperture opening

compare the results

and so on, and so on. believe me, this is old school learning but a terrific lesson tool. and it minimally mimics your camera's actions when bracketing shots.

Combined with some reading this is the best way to really learn what each control does. Trial and error with a dSLR is a good thing. You get instant feedback on what works. Couple this with a basic grasp of a histogram and you'll be shooting in M mode in no time. Keep running through the drill with various subjects in various lighting and you'll get the hang of it.

carmel6942

Angelo and Truth thank you I know what I am going to be doing on my next day off. shooting and changing settings

Pathfinder, thank you this is exactly what I was looking for . I really appreciate the table this gives me an idea of where to start at.

These forums are the best a beginner could ever ask for, everybody is so generous and helpful.

pathfinder

Welcome to the club!!

theNOIZ

Thank You!

pathfinder wrote:

ISO is the unit of measure of how much light it takes to properly expose an image. Think of ISO as a measure of how much water it takes to fill a bucket. Then, aperture is the diameter of the hose and shutter speed is a measure of how long the hose is allowed to run.

This is exactly the kind of thread/post I needed. Someone to break it down into simple terms so a noob like myself can understand.

--
Shaun Nelson
shaunnelson.smugmug.com

pathfinder

The next beer is on you, Shaun!!:D

carmel6942

The next beer is on you, Shaun!!

I guess that is going to mean your gonna have alot to drink then cuz I owe you more than just one. .

by the way I have been practicing with my camera today alittle easy to take 100 shots. I have been in shutter mode and changing the shutter speeds and ISO settings taking pictures of my daughter and adjusting the ef settings +/- to find out what the differences are. Some good some bad nothing to show yet.

Angelo

carmel6942 wrote:

by the way I have been practicing with my camera today alittle easy to take 100 shots. I have been in shutter mode and changing the shutter speeds and ISO settings taking pictures of my daughter and adjusting the ef settings +/- to find out what the differences are. Some good some bad nothing to show yet.

I recommend you practice in "manual" mode. When shooting in any camera program mode you subrogate a degree of control to the camera.

carmel6942

Angelo wrote:

I recommend you practice in "manual" mode. When shooting in any camera program mode you subrogate a degree of control to the camera.

Thank you, I will shoot in "manual" mode next time, I appreciate the advice. Even though I did shutter priority, I did see alot of difference between shots taken using the different settings I can only imagine the differences when i set everything.

Terrence

You'll learn the most starting with manual mode. The two most important things I learned early was the relationship between ISO, aperture size and shutter speed and how a camera's reflective light meter works. Once you have a solid understanding of those principles, it is easier to understand what the camera is doing when you dial in various settings and modes.

You have a great source of information here at dgrin. Search the forums and ask questions and enjoy learning.

LiquidAir

One thing I have learned that helps shooting in manual mode is to start thinking in Exposure Values. For instance, Pathfinder's "Sunny 16 table" can be summarized as EV15 at ISO 100, EV 16 at ISO 200 and EV 17 at ISO 400 (as well as EV 18 at ISO 800 and EV 19 at ISO 1600).

I put together a set of web pages which show the relationships between Exposeure Value, Shutter Speed and Apeture:

Exposure Value Table
Aperture Value Table
Shutter Speed Table

I am slowly putting together a "how to" document for putting these table to use in practice. When I get a something together I'll post a link to it in this forum.

carmel6942

Thank you for the tables, they are a great referance for me. The exposure values have me confused, I am not sure what the numbers mean in relation to everything else. What exposure values should I be trying for?

I just recieved Understanding Exposure from Amazon, so hopefully I will start to understand better.

LiquidAir

carmel6942 wrote:

Thank you for the tables, they are a great referance for me. The exposure values have me confused, I am not sure what the numbers mean in relation to everything else. What exposure values should I be trying for?

I just recieved Understanding Exposure from Amazon, so hopefully I will start to understand better.

Exposure Value is a combined number for the effects of aperture and shutter speed on the brightness of your final image. If you take two pictures with different settings on your camera that happen to have the same Exposure Value, then the final picture will be equally bright.

As an example: When I am in direct sun, I usually set my camera to ISO 100, f/8 and 1/400s. On the exposure value table that is EV 14.7 (or just under the EV 15 number I gave for direct sun). Pathfinder mentioned the "sunny 16" rule which would have you set the camera to ISO 100, f/16 and 1/100s which also work out to also be EV 14.7. Since they have the same exposure value, the final brightess of the image will be the same. Personally given my typical subjects in direct sun, I usually prefer a faster shutter speed than 1/100s which is why chose that location on the table.

Here is another example of how I use that chart. I know that proper exposure in my living room on a bright sunny day runs around EV 7 at ISO 100. If I am taking picture of my active 2 year old, I need a minimum shutter speed of 1/125. I go to the Aperture Value table to determine the proper aperature and I find it is f/1. Now personally I don't own an f/1 lens, so I know I have to bump the ISO. Bumping the ISO to 800 gives me 3 stops more sensitivity so I can now use EV 10 instead of EV 7. At 1/125, EV 10 is much friendlier f/2.8 so I can set my camera and start shooting.

carmel6942

LiquidAir wrote:

Exposure Value is a combined number for the effects of aperture and shutter speed on the brightness of your final image. If you take two pictures with different settings on your camera that happen to have the same Exposure Value, then the final picture will be equally bright.

As an example: When I am in direct sun, I usually set my camera to ISO 100, f/8 and 1/400s. On the exposure value table that is EV 14.7 (or just under the EV 15 number I gave for direct sun). Pathfinder mentioned the "sunny 16" rule which would have you set the camera to ISO 100, f/16 and 1/100s which also work out to also be EV 14.7. Since they have the same exposure value, the final brightess of the image will be the same. Personally given my typical subjects in direct sun, I usually prefer a faster shutter speed than 1/100s which is why chose that location on the table.

Here is another example of how I use that chart. I know that proper exposure in my living room on a bright sunny day runs around EV 7 at ISO 100. If I am taking picture of my active 2 year old, I need a minimum shutter speed of 1/125. I go to the Aperture Value table to determine the proper aperature and I find it is f/1. Now personally I don't own an f/1 lens, so I know I have to bump the ISO. Bumping the ISO to 800 gives me 3 stops more sensitivity so I can now use EV 10 instead of EV 7. At 1/125, EV 10 is much friendlier f/2.8 so I can set my camera and start shooting.

Ok, I feel real dense right now but let me see if I have this right . I figure out what my base EV is and select the setting that is going to give me the correct exposure using an aperature/shutter setting available to my specific lens. If I don't have a big enough aperature then I can adjust my ISO setting up to gain 1 stop per increase ex iso100 to iso200. Doing this will move my EV level up one. Thank you for all your time and effort. I am really feeling much more confident. Tomorrow I will be going out and doing some real practice with the camera. A day off finally.

Does this look like a good table to determine what EV settings to begin with? listed for ISO 100 This is the actual link online. http://www.answers.com/topic/exposure-value
EV Settings.jpeg

LiquidAir

That table looks like a good starting point for a lot of things. In the end though you should use your own experience with your gear and the environments you usually shoot in. As a simple exercise, try going through the EXIF of some shots you have taken (without a flash) where you are happy with the exposure and figure out an EV at ISO 100 for each one.

carmel6942

I think something sunk in. I went out today and did some practice shots of my puppy and then down by the river. What do you think?

carmel6942

and the river
134823943-M.jpg

Phyxius

Hey Carl!
I'm happy to hear the lens got there safe and sound. I was so worried shipping it, it got those air bubbles and foam padding (from a saddle, compliments of our local tack store).

When I first started using my dSLR for horse shows I was a bit nervous and I used the "sports" setting. It's okay and good conditions, but the control you get in manual mode is NICE! You just have to keep an eye on clouds/sunlight and horse color. You need fast enough shutter speeds to stop action, which for grand prix level jumping should be 1/1000 - 1/1600 or faster. For flat work at the walk, trot, and canter you can slow it down quite a bit, but I won't go below 1/320 unless you HAD to. Two things I love about the 70-300 is that it's A)light weight, handing holding for 8hrs at a show is not a problem and when at 70mm it's not very big and it travels really well. So, you should be okay without a monopod with this lens at the horse shows.

So, some ideas on how to use the "S', "A", and "M" settings while at the shows...

"A" - of course is aperature. For the 70-300 you have 4-5.6. If the light isn't great or if it's cloudy one second and sunny the next you probably won't have time to spin dials and change two settings, so aperature is nice to play with. Also, if you're shooting inside you can set the aperature to it's widest opening (smallest number) and then the camera will choose the needed shutter speed.

"S" - is shutter. So, when you're shooting and the light is consistant you can set the shutter to the speed you want and then let the aperture take care of it's self. Unless you're right up on a jump or rider the 4-5.6 won't limit your depth of field too much. (But, if you have a busy background you'll want to make sure you have enough depth of field (DOF).

"M" - Manual. Once you sort this out, you'll LOVE it! I shoot manual 90% of the time now, especially when I'm indoors. Trial and error rules at first, but you get the hang of it pretty quickly. And, pretty soon you'll learn what settings work best for what light and event.

Also remember that black horses are hard to get detail on in low light and white horses can confuse the camera's sensor like snow. It's also tough with black jackets and white breeches and you may get some chromatic aberrations around the saddle pads, bridles, etc. Check out Shay Stephen's Color Fringe Reducerp. It really works!

Also, don't forget to put the auto focus mode to AF-C (continuous) and then I prefer single area, but if you were shooting a pas de deux or quadrille you may want to try out dynamic area. When shooting jumps, using AF-C focus on the horse and rider (half-press the shutter) and track them to the jump, full pressing when you're ready to take the picture. If you pre-focus on the jump you'll probably miss focus and end up with a sharp pole and soft faces.

And, as I mentioned in the letter, for trot timing it's easiest to follow the outside hind, so you're not taking a shot in the middle of a post and so that the horse is in full extention or suspension when you "click".

Have fun and I can't wait to see some more horse pictures. :