New To IT All part 2

[I_Dralion]

So... am I correct in saying, there are two ways to control light on a simple point and shoot, one being the focus and exposure lock with the shutter button, the other with the exposure controls. I think I'm understanding I can somehow use both these tools to get the pictures i'm looking for. Or maybe I have cameras with limited abilities and I might never get what I'm searching for. I guess the point of this thread is to gain some starting place to learn how take advantage of my camera and get the pictures I want. Maybe some type of foundation to start from and a "do this next" type approach. To whomever replies, thanks in advance for your patience.

[Didache]

Hi there and welcome to the forum. There is bags of help to be had here from some very accomplished photographers.

Forgive me if what I put below is already familiar to you - and bear in mind that I am not familiar with your equipment. I'm just rambling about general principles.

There are three factors (generally speaking) that affect exposure on a modern digital camera: shutter speed, aperture, and ISO.

a) shutter speed - self explanatory and usually controlled by the Tv setting. As a general rule try to keep this as high as possible unless you are going for a creative effect such as blurred motion. Certainly keep it high enough to avoid camera shake.

b) aperture - the size of the little hole that lets light through to the sensor and usually controlled by the A setting. This is the one with the most creative possibilities and there are many photographers that use this all the time to set the aperture they want and let the camera work out the rest. The smaller the hole (eg f16 or f11) the bigger the depth of field, so if you want to have everything sharp from front to back, set the smallest aperture hole you can (oddly the biggest f number you can). There is a trade off however in that the smaller the aperture, the longer the shutter speed has to be in order to let in the same amount of light. Sometimes it comes down to a compromise, especially if you are taking pictures in lowish light.

c) ISO - the sensitivity of the sensor. Generally, you would want this to be as low as possible (100 or 200 ideally) as the higher the ISO, the more grainy or noisy the picture will be. However, there is another trade off here in that low light situations may require a higher ISO setting.

Take a couple of common situations to illustrate how all this works:

a) a picture in a forest - you may have some low light here so you could try setting your ISO to, say, 800 because you know you will need a little more sensitivity to capture detail. Using the Tv set the shutter speed as low as you can comfortably hand-hold it - say 1/60th sec. The camera will probably set a pretty big aperture anyway if the light is pretty low and thus you will have limited depth of field. There is no real way around this unless you use a tripod. You would want to beware of and avoid bright spots too (eg sun coming through the trees and brightly lighting something) as these areas will tend to burn out. Personally, I find that overcast weather is best for these kinds of shots as the light is more even and casts less shadows. Same with flower shots.

b) a tennis match - you will need to set your shutter speed high in order to catch the action - 1/500 or faster. Again, the faster you set it, the larger the aperture will be and the less depth of field you will have. Set the ISO low too.

In the end, the art is assessing the situations and deciding on the right combination of these factors, looking on the screen at the result and fine tuning it. It does come naturally after a while - it's a practice issue. It is worth persevering though as the auto modes (which are fine for general conditions) just don't hack more challenging lighting.

As for "the eye" - this is just something that comes with experience - there isn't a photographer living who doesn't have problems sometimes getting what his/her vision is into the camera.

As I said, forgive me if this isn't exactly what you are looking for, but I hope it helps.

Mike

[I_Dralion]

Excellent ! The more situational descriptions I get of camera use and how the different controls play into things, the better I'll be able to make decision.
Thanks!

[I_Dralion]

P.S. I don't think my olympus has so much manual controllability.

[another view]

There is bags of help to be had here from some very accomplished photographers.

...including the very accomplished photographer who wrote that.

I have an older version of that camera, the 720SW, and it doesn't have a lot of manual controls. Your newer 1030SW may have more than mine but nowhere near as many as something like a digital SLR. Before you worry about that, think about this -

Manual exposure is harder. Really, it's more work. Why would you want to do it? Most of the time I use a "semi" automatic mode where I pick the lens aperture and it picks the shutter speed for proper exposure. But sometimes I'll go fully manual when I'm looking for a result that the camera isn't giving me (or I'll know from experience that the camera won't do what I want so I just do it myself). This could be a case when there's a lot of snow (white) or shadows that I want to look a certain way - both of these situations might give me a shot on automatic that was more grayish (underexposed whites = gray, overexposed blacks = gray) just because the camera doesn't know what I want. That last part pretty much sums it up. Most of the time the camera "guesses" pretty well, but not all the time. That's why there are manual controls.

Point and shoot cameras might not have much in the way of manual control (but it's still something to understand) but all photography is about light. Learn about light. Learn what early morning light looks like and photographs like (there's a huge difference from the moment of sunrise and 1/2 hour later). Learn about overcast days, sunny days at noon, etc. Learn about light direction (sun behind you, to the side of you and in front of you). Light is really the #1 thing to understand. Not to say that the rest doesn't matter...

[shootme]

Trial and error. What I do is test the shots, I go out to my back yard and take a shot of something (like the bees the other weekend) I take a few shots and then come back inside and review them on my computer looking at the settings for the shots I liked, cropping and seeing how good the detail is then I do it all over again till I somewhat know what exposure, speed, etc I need with the light I have outside. Then I begin to remember these things etc. etc. Might be easier to comment if you would post a shot and explain what didn't work for you.