First Dslr

LewisHall

LewisHall

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Lewis
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Hey, I bought my first DSLR the other day the Nikon d3200 and am going out Saturday to use it properly for the first time down the Black Jetty on Canvey Island I've still only got the 18-55mm lens atm and haven't really used apperture,shutter speed, is etc but want to start using them. Does anyone recommend a certain shutter speed etc I will be having the camera on a tripod so don't matter if slow shutters speeds. Also am I best to have it on manual and set them all seperatly or just focus on one at a time while I'm getting used to it?
 
My advice would be to start using it on A (aperture priority) mode. That way, you choose the aperture and the camera chooses the correct shutter speed to match.
It allows you to control the depth of field (the amount in focus) - if you choose a larger aperture (smaller number such as f4.5) then you will throw the background out of focus and isolate the main subject which is useful for portraits.
If you choose a smaller aperture (larger number such as f16) then nearly everything will be in focus - useful for landscapes etc.
Try this first and progress from there:)
 
Hello fellow Essexer!
My advice would be to grab a cheap old 50mm manual lens, it forces you to learn aperture, speed, etc and by consequence you master DoF, iso and more!

I'll be on Canvey for Christmas (briefly), hoping to get out and take some shots of the yacht club and local boats.
 
You can use any of the auto or semi auto settings for your exposure, they'll teach you stuff if you want to interpret them, and nothing if you don't. Get a book and read up on the exposure triangle, but much more importantly. Learn to understand what your meter is telling you. People can argue all night about Manual versus Auto exposure, but without the understanding of metering, they'll get the same results, only understanding metering will change the results.

However, it's really important from the beginning to never let the camera choose what to focus on. What you focus on becomes your subject, so if your camera chooses the wrong thing, you've let it ruin your photo. You can either choose a focus point yourself, or just use the centre one and then recompose.
 
Phil V said:
You can use any of the auto or semi auto settings for your exposure .... never let the camera choose what to focus on ...
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Rock-solid as usual.
Parryman said:
My advice would be to grab a cheap old 50mm manual lens
Click to expand...
Doing that on a Dwhatsit would surely condemn the poster to stop-down metering - a bit clunky for a beginner? He's unlikely to have a hand-held meter.
 
I went down there today and was taking pictures using on aperture priority but they was either coming out to bright or too dark (probably didn't help where it was such a dull day) I don't know what I was doing wrong eat didn't know if use would have any ideas... I have edited these the sky was literally like white so had to bright the brightness and contract down just so you could see the sky but that just makes the image even more darker any ideas why?


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Y'see. That's because you thought choosing Aperture priority or any other exposure mode is in some way relevant.

As per my post above, what were you metering? What does the camera meter think it's seeing?

As to the first images, there's far more dynamic range there than your camera can record, in the 2nd images there's a lot of range, but you had to decide whether to meter for the sky or the containers. To get them both as your eye sees them you'll need to do some trickery in processing.
 
There's several things you can do.

Many cameras have adjustable dynamic range, and while you can't alter the laws of physics, you can adjust the camera to accept a wide range in situations like this.

Phil's point about what you were metering is also crucial. Because your camera measures the light coming through the lens in order to calculate what settings to use, you can control what it measures by pointing it at different parts of the scene. If you have a live view capability and can set it to spot metering then you can see how the brightness of objects in the scene affect exposure and make choices about where to retain and where to lose detail. Please pardon me if this is obvious.

If you tripod mount the camera then you can use software to create a high dynamic range (HDR) image by combining 3 separate exposures for the highlights, mid tones and shadows. The 3 exposures must be made without moving the camera to enable the software to combine them.

Some processing packages will also allow you to recover highlight and shadow details from raw files, and may also allow the dynamic range to be increased by adjusting local contrast to bring up darker areas without blowing out highlights.

Back to the camera, many cameras allow auto-bracketing, where they take multiple exposures adjusted a predetermined amount either side of the calculated exposure. This is useful where you are not able to meter a scene with reasonable certainty.

FWIW the reasons for choosing aperture or shutter priority is all to do with controlling the way a subject appears in a photograph, and not about exposure control. Aperture controls depth of field of sharp focus, but for many lenses it also affects image quality, and selecting a mid-value aperture will help ensure the lens is giving its 'best' performance.
 
I think I might just have to get a book and have a read I don't know why the images lost so much quality once I posted them on my laptop there clear :confused:
 
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