CounterClifton

I've seen some of the most fantastic photos taken by the most rudimentary of cameras. IMO, a dSlr should be fine, even in automatic mode. You can learn about how to start tinkering with aperture and shutter speed. Essentially facets of the same thing - the wider the lens opening/the longer it's open, the more light gets in.

But in addition to understanding how these things work together to let in light and create sharp images, I'd suggest starting with the basic stuff that would be important for ANY camera, even a pinhole camera.

Yes, it is all about light, one way or the other. That's what a camera captures. If you're snapping shots of candid moments, you're going to have to get better with the controls for better shots. But if you're doing landscapes, architecture, still life, you have the chance to practice with the basics.

- Learn when the light is right. Shadows create depth (usually good). Backlighting almost always creates grain on your underexposed foreground subject (normally not good). The more you try to "fix" it in post-processing, the worse it usually gets.
- Figure out where to rest the camera. Maybe just how to brace yourself on something, but a makeshift support, such as little bean bag on a wall or chair is great in lieu of a tripod. You yourself are the most likely source of camera shake. The lower the light, the worse it is too, as the shutter has to remain open longer, capturing every little movement.
- Get closer. Robert Capa, the war photographer, is reported to have said "If your photos aren't good enough, you're not close enough". I think there's a lot of truth in that. And I don't mean longer lens. I mean walking right up until your subject fills the frame, if you can. Maybe even overfills it. It's an interesting experiment to try.

massimop

pavot,

I really don't think you need to worry about being embarassed or judged for linking to some disappointing snaps, since everyone takes photos that didn't come out as they hpped and wished they knew how to fix.

But can I make an additional suggestion?

Take a couple of new pictures of someplace near your home that you find picturesque & attractive. If one of those is an exampl of a photo you wish was better, share it here. Then, if people give you specific suggestions to improve it -- like, turn of your autofocus or change the focus -- you can go back to the same spot and try out the advice, taking a new photo. If you are happy with the results, voila! Problem solved. But maybe a different suggestion will work better. By a process of elimnation you can see how to fix a photo and get one you like better

AJPeabody

A very simple way to see if your settings need adjustment to get the picture qualities you want. It's what I did with my new camera back when it was new.

Take it out to your front or back yard. Take a picture of your house or a garden bed or a tree. Change a setting and take the same picture. keep changing settings until you like the picture. Note in your head or on paper something like "House, sunlight, aperture priority at F8" or "Tree, landscape mode, shutter priority at 100, 50mm on the zoom, etc." Then find a similar scene to one of these, set the camera as you have noted, and see if you like the shot.

I have a non-dslr Canon that I can set for my preferred snapshot settings as I am traveling in a city, and it is ready for many shots. I switch to my favored landscape settings when I am not in the city, and so on. I only need to remember 3 or four settings for everything I usually take, and at least 5% of my pix are worth showing to other people. At home I delete the rest and presto! I'm a great photographer.

Myer

I could only read a few of the posts but I'll chip in my two cents worth. I'm not a Nikon person (I use Canon) so I don't know one model from the next.

Unless you have the absolute most expensive of lenses no lens is really, really sharp throughout its range. This is what range means. Your lens is probably somewhat of a zoom lens. Probably in the range of 18mm - 55mm or something relatively close to that. Then you have the lens aperture or lens opening. Most consumer lenses are sharpest around f8 which is more or less midway between fully open and fully closed down.

So what can you do? Most pros, semi-pros or advanced amateurs change their camera body every few years. However, there lenses are expensive and those are seldom replaced.

Now lets take a look at what happens. If you are shooting in a fully automatic mode then the camera is deciding on two or three settings. The setting are ISO, shutter speed and aperture.

ISO is the sensitivity of the sensor. The higher the number the better you exposure results are in dimmer light. However, the higher the ISO the more noise you will have.

Shutter speed is self explanatory. It's the amount of time the shutter is open. The slower the shutter speed the better your exposure will be in dimmer light. Unfortunately, the slower your shutter speed the greater the chances of getting a blurred photo.

Aperture. The smaller the number the more wide open the lens will be. So the more wide open the lens the better your exposure will be in dim light. However, especially with a consumer lens, the more wide open the lens the softer the photo will be.

So as you can see there are 3 main settings and the combination of all three is always a compromise unless you have absolutely perfect conditions.

If you are shooting in fully automatic more the camera is deciding what type of photo you are taking. For instance, if you are shooting a sporting event you probably don't want a slow shutter speed as all of you photos will be blurred even if they are in focus.

GET OFF AUTOMATIC.

I've got to go but I check in and continue tonight of tomorrow morning.

You can see my travel photos at:

www.travelwalks.com

Nikki

AJPeabody shared my favorite tip: take thousands of shots, be brutal about deleting the ones that aren't great, show the remaining few, and people will think you're a genius.

Myer

If you are using fully automatic then you have to have a way of telling the camera what type of pictures you're taking.

For instance, if you're shooting a sporting event you want a fast shutter speed otherwise your photos will be blurred because of the motion of the people or the ball, etc.

To make up for the fast shutter speed you'll need some combination of a wider open aperture or and increased ISO.

So you had to select "Sporting Event" or some like that.

You do have a better option. Most DSLR cameras allow you to select a semi-automatic mode. The choices usually are Shutter Priority (where you select the shutter speed and the camera select the aperture) or Aperture Priority (where you select the aperture and the camera selects the shutter speed).

For some reason most people use aperture priority. Not me. I use shutter priority (or fully manual depending upon whet I'm doing).

My reasoning is that if the conditions are excellent it doesn't matter which you use. Everything will be fine. However, that's not usually the case. So my thinking is that I'd rather have a sharp under-exposed photo than a blurred properly exposed picture. If it's sharp and under-exposed I can fix it in Photoshop. If it's blurred then it's blurred.

I don't know how many people read my two posts or understand what I wrote. So I'll stop and see if anybody has any questions.

CounterClifton

<i>AJPeabody shared my favorite tip: take thousands of shots, be brutal about deleting the ones that aren't great, show the remaining few, and people will think you're a genius.</i>

So true!


Although, some of my favs have been ones I sat there and waited for as the sun moved to the right spot or just the right group of people passed by. Granted though, not all my favs are super sharp and technically perfect.

This was a shot I sat leaning on a stack of rocks and waited for. I took two snaps and picked the best (though I guess that's still only 50%). Still not perfect though.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater

Andrew

Myer: <i>For some reason most people use aperture priority. Not me. I use shutter priority (or fully manual depending upon whet I'm doing).</i>

I prefer aperture priority to shutter priority because I usually want a faster shutter speed if I can get it. I may know that I am pretty safe with say 1/100 second handheld in a certain situation, at a certain focal length, to avoid camera shake, but if that means the camera picks f/11, I'd rather be at f/8 and get the faster shutter speed, because I know f/8 is the sweet spot on my lens. 1/250 and f/8 (if that's what the equivalent of 1/100 f/11 would be, just guessing) gives me a better chance to get a sharp exposure, even if 1/100 is PROBABLY OK. Sometimes your hand isn't as steady as at other times.

What would be nice is to have a mode where I set the MAXIMUM (slowest) shutter speed, but have the camera prefer faster, and at the slowest/max speed, sacrifice aperture. I guess the program mode may do this on some cameras, though as I said above, my Lumix's program mode is stupid and seems unable to work this way.

I often underexpose things too when I want to make sure I will get a sharp exposure in a borderline situation. This works even better if you shoot raw. But there's a point of diminishing returns with underexposure; the ability to lighten it later is traded for more noise, the more you have to lighten it - probably acceptable if you aren't lightening it much.

But it is nice to have the ability to bracket in different ways with a digital camera at almost no cost, especially in cases where you are shooting a landscape or something static at your leisure and you can expose the same shot in different ways and pick the best settings later when sorting your pictures.

Myer

Andrew,

I use my camera a lot. In most cases I don't have to look at the back or top to see the settings. I can see them in the viewfinder and can adjust (especially the shutter speed) without looking. Just the feel.

Also, I shoot RAW + .jpg so I have the best of both worlds.

Since I shoot in shutter priority mode I'm always looking to see if where the aperture is.

I shoot a fair amount of birds-in-flight with a 100-400 lens (Canon pro level lens). I do that in manual mode since I track the birds from above and then below the tree line (and visa versa). I practice a fair amount so I've gotten reasonable at it.

I shoot birds flying at 1/2000 or 1/2500 sec and f7 or f8. ISO is 400.

What happens if you're shooting action? You want to make sure your shutter speed is fast enough to freeze the action. You have to decide what's most important. To me it's freezing the action. If I'm a stop or so under-exposed I'll fix that. But if my shutter speed is slow and the photo is blurred it's garbage.

So, I use shutter priority.

Myer

Back to pavot's question.

Your photos may be in focus. Photos that are not sharp enough could be cause by several things.

1. Consumer quality lens being used out of the sweet spot.
2. The camera body and lens not aligned. This can only be adjusted in higher level camera.
3. Shutter speed too slow for the scene or your ability to hold the camera steady. Learn to hold the camera with you left hand under the lens. Take a breath and hold. Then press the shutter. Takes practice.
4. Glare in the photo can give the illusion of not being sharp. Try reducing the "highs" a little in Photoshop or some similar editing program.

There are probably a few other things but these the the things that come to mind.

Andrew

Myer, I wasn't trying to convince you to switch to aperture priority; you seemed to wonder why others use it, so I explained why I do. But, I don't shoot much action.

I'm waiting to see pavot's sample photos. It's pointless to keep speculating what he/she means until then.

AJPeabody

Is the sharpness loss due to narrow depth of field from too wide an aperture? One could retry using aperture priority at f8 or f11 or even f16 and see. (Let's not get into hyperfocal settings.)

Myer

AJPeabody,

That's another reason for lack of sharpness. Insufficient depth-of-field.

In aperture priority you would make sure the aperture is between f8 and f11 or a bit more closed.

In my case since I use manual or shutter priority I would either slow the shutter (depending upon my scene) or increase the ISO a bit.

Like I wrote above, unless the conditions are excellent the combination of the various settings are a compromise. You have to do what's best for your style and the scene type.

menachem

chatter about camera settings: love it!

Myer

Let me summarize.

We have 3 basic mode of photography; Fully Automatic, Semi-Automatic and Manual.

Many people new to a camera take the position that since they're new they'll start with Fully-Automatic and progress from there.

Well, you can't progress from Fully Automatic.

The best way to approach this is to read about the two Semi Automatic choice (Shutter Priority or Aperture Priority), select the one that seems to make the most sense to you and then spend an hour a day for four or five days practicing it.

Regardless of which one you select, conditions that are not ideal will cause you to have to make a few adjustments on the fly. You will learn this and understand it through practice.

It won't take you more than a few days to see much improves results.

Don't go out and buy a camera and wait until you're on the plane to read the manual and play with the camera settings. Then you'll be back in Fully Automatic.

Nelson

Another amen to what AJPeabody said about deleting most of your images. I think I once read that National Geo photographers took 3,000 photos for every one published. And that was in film days.

Which made NG's Jim Brandenberg's "Chased by the Light" project quite interesting. He allowed himself one picture per day for 90 days.

On my most recent 2-week trip I took about 1,200 shots and deleted 700. Of the remaining 500 I put 70 into an online gallery and 50 will go into a real book that I'll show to friends.

Myer

Nelson,

It depends what you are shooting and what your goal is.

I was recently on a trip. I went to one specific spot three times; twice early in the morning and once late in the afternoon which was by far the better time.

Each time I was there I shot from three difference distances. To make sure of the exposure I took three shots from each location.

That means I shot about 30 photos.

Since the late afternoon time was by far the best all the photos taken early in the morning were scrapped. Then I kept 3 from the late afternoon shoots. So I kept about 3 out of 30.

When I go to shoot birds-in-flight I often end up keeping between 40% and 70%. It depends on what I happened to see on that specific day.

rs899

A lot of good poop here. I can only add that with the advent of digital media, any perfectionist should just take a number of shots at different apertures, shutter speeds , focal lengths/zoom settings. Back in the dark ages when film actually cost money, it was a lot harder to do. I can remember weighing how many sheets of expensive 4x5 color sheet film I wanted to waste bracketing exposure back when each sheet cost the equivalent of a student's lunch. I used to have to drag my view camera around on the seat of my MGB as it wouldn't fit in the trunk.

I am very happy to just use a good cellphone camera.

Myer

What's a good cellphone camera?

I'd like to see what happens when you get a great shot and decide you'd like to hang an 11x14 of it on the wall.

They look great on that little, sharp screen but far from great blown up and printed.

In most cases the shutter speed is about 1/30 sec and it's hand held.

Good luck.

fuzzbucket

Get one with the most pixels you can find.
Then read the manual that came with it.