I get a lot of questions from my friends who are now buying DSLR cameras as to the best way to use them. There’s no doubt a DSLR takes a better picture than a point-and-shoot, but learning how to creatively use your camera can be challenging. Especially when the manuals are seemingly written in another language ;)
For people who want to be a little creative without going full-boar in manual mode (which I shoot in), I suggest shooting in AV Mode – aperture priority mode.
The aperture that you can set your camera to depends on the lens on your camera. When buying a lens, the aperture is also called an “f-stop,” and represented with a number such as “F/1.4.” The lower the f-stop is, the more light the lens can let into the camera.
To illustrate what I’m talking about, this is the display on the back of my XSI:
I have a 50mm 1.4 lens on the camera, and it is “stopped down” to F 1.4. Based on the light in the room, at this F stop, my camera is at 1/100 second shutter speed. These two numbers always correlate. The lower the F-stop, the higher the shutter speed will be. In the next example, I closed down my aperture to 1.6, which resulted in a shutter speed of 1/80 second.
And then I closed down to F 1.8, which resulted in 1/60 shutter speed.
This is a pretty slow shutter speed, and definitely not suitable for moving objects. 1/100 is a decent shutter speed, but if you’re shooting kids or moving objects, you probably want a higher shutter speed. So your choices are to add flash to the picture, or increase your ISO speed.
ISO is kind of an artificial way for the camera to add light to your subject. In the previous examples, I had my camera at 400 ISO. I then increased the ISO to 800, and was able to increase my shutter speed to 1/100 again.
The only problem with increasing ISO is that your images will start to look grainy. Certain cameras are better at dealing with grain. I hated to push my XSi past 800 ISO because the grain was really distracting, but my 7D…I almost cried when I saw the images at 1250 ISO. They weren’t perfectly clean, but MILES better than the XSi images.
Keep in mind the shutter speed in above examples is a direct result of the light where I’m shooting. I shot the camera images in my office, which is not very well-lit. If I were to take my camera outside on a bright sunny day, my shutter speed could easily jump up to 1/2000.
You can’t see it in the above photos, but when you’re taking a picture with a DSLR, a small hash will appear below what I marked as the light meter. Speaking very broadly, you want that hash mark to be at 0. There are many, many exceptions to that, but generally speaking, if the hash mark is at +2, your photos will be overexposed, and if it’s at -2, it will be underexposed. Again, these are generalities, and that’s exactly why you should hire a professional photographer who’s experienced dealing with tricky lighting situations. But if you’re shooting in AV mode, your shutter speed will automatically adjust as you make changes to your aperture to bring it back to the “correct” exposure.
The smaller your F stop, the smaller your area of focus is. For instance, if you look at this picture of the rings from Kelli and Remi’s wedding:
You can see the area of focus is very small before things start to blur out. I shot this photo at a 2.8 aperture and 1/30 shutter speed. You have to be really careful when shooting at wide apertures. Even the smallest hand movement when taking the picture can result in a blurred image.
However, this picture of my parents was shot at f/7.1 and 1/500 shutter speed. The lower aperture (but higher number; yes, it’s confusing!) allows for much more sharpness across the image.
If you’re just learning your camera, experiment with the different apertures to see what you like. But keep in mind what a given situation might need – for instance, I would never suggest taking family pictures at 1.4 apertures. You would get several people looking very blurry!
If you want to learn more about digital photography, The Betterphoto Guide to Digital Photography is a GREAT book that covers all the basics. I would also suggest picking up a “field guide” for your camera model. Virtually every camera has one, and it’s a lot easier to read than your manual.
Happy shooting!
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