D90 M mode - settings in "Shooting Menu"

[clk550lover]

I am learning taking photos in Manual 'M" mode and getting how Shuuter spped, aperture and ISO settings work. What other settings do I need to pay attention to "Shooting Menu" ?

I want to perfect low-light/night time photography. Are their any tips or links to these tips you would like me to master/study?

Thanks.

[srblough]

I wouldn't pay any attention to anything other than those until you have mastered them (except for image quality which determines the file format and detail saved). For low light / night time you might want to learn about white balance although the auto mode is pretty good.

[n8]

Some pointers for the basics:

Shutter speed: High speed freezes, low speed shows more motion and blur. Low speed also allows for more ambient light...like when using a flash at night. 1/500 sec is good for freezing. 1/15 is good for night portraits with a flash.

ISO: low = good IQ, but requires a lot of light, high = ability to shoot with less light, but the trade off is noise. Your d90 is good to about 3200

Aperture: low number means it lets a lot of light in, but minimizes the depth of field. Invert that for high apertures. IQ can also suffer at either extreme. Typically 2 stops above the lowest f-stop will give you your most sharpness

Get a tripod and remote if you don't have one already.

[Eleanor Maw]

To get good results experiment and take loads of photos with different settings and note down what you are doing, with digital cameras you can take as many photos you like and keep the best and delete the dud ones, although I have other cameras, the D90 is my most used camera.

[Franglais]

I can't see anything much in the Shooting Menu (of my D300) that is important in low light (apart from Auto-ISO - I deactivate it and set the ISO myself, usually to 3200 in low light)

In low light the camera's automatic systems can be fooled by the unusual situation. A couple of things that I do:

1. Switch to the central focussing zone (the most sensitive), focus on the part of the subject that interests me then hold focus and reframe (without changing the zoom) to take the picture. That way I'm sure that focus is on the right part of the subject. The lens is going to be wide open and depth-of-field will be limited

2. Switch to spot metering and meter a mid-tone on the zone that I want to be exposed. I don't do this often because matrix metering gets exposure right most of the time and I often get spot metering wrong..