Here are a bunch of tips and ideas for you to learn more about your new Digital SLR camera and make better images!
1. Shutter Priority. Use this mode to control the camera's shutter speed. It's best used in these situations: a) Dark rooms, such as auditoriums, when you need to stop motion but can't use flash; b) Settings where you want to blur movement, such as a mountain stream, and c) Settings where you want to stop fast motion, such as an insect wings or water droplet.
To learn about this, set your camera to Shutter priority and experiment with various things that move. You'll be able to see the difference in the motion of the subject by varying the speed and letting the camera do the rest of the exposure settings.
2. Aperture Priority. Use this mode to control the camera/lens aperture. Often this is used to force a "wide open" shutter, which will focus your subjects but blur the background, or a "stopped down" shutter, used to put every item in the viewfinder in sharp focus.
To learn about this, experiment with a couple of staged "still life" images and vary the aperture or "f-stop" from wide apertures such as f/3.5 (wide opening), to small apertures such as f/8 or f/11. Let the camera figure out the rest of the settings, and then compare the images to see how the sharpness of the background changes as the f-stop gets smaller.
3. ISO settings. The ISO is a measure of the sensitivity of the image sensor. Similar to the different film speeds of the film cameras, you can vary the ISO to get specific results. Remember that the smaller ISO number means better quality but less light. So if you want the sharpest, best image in bright daylight, ISO 50-100 may be your best setting. Shooting in low light? Maybe ISO 800, 1600, 3200 or higher would work for you. You'll get exposures with more noise in them, but the subject movement will be minimized.
To learn about this, Change your ISO out of Automatic, to 100, choose Aperture Priority of around f/5.6, and then take a series of shots in a somewhat dark setting, such as an indoor room out of sunlight. Then change ISO from 100 to 200, 400, 800 and as high as your camera will go. You'll find the camera choosing faster and faster shutter speeds, but the images will start to become noisy.
4. Macro mode. Your camera has at least one removable lens. It has a minimum focusing distance, meaning that it can't focus sharply on images closer than that.
To learn about this, check in your lens manual or look up online the minimum focus distance and experiment with some close-up imagery. Some suggestions: pull out some kitchen items like grains or beans and do a close-up. Vary the f-stop and camera angle to get some of the material sharply in focus and some blurred. Try it with office supplies, pets, you name it. The key is to play with the "world of the small".
5. People perspective. It's not intuitive, but the best images of people may be taken at the farthest end of your zoom lens. When you use the wide angle setting, you have to approach your subject and in doing so, your lens will distort the closest features, such as the nose. By stepping back and zooming in, you place the subject's features in more of the same distance, so distortion is minimized.
To learn about this, get a cooperative subject and make a series of head and half-body shots in the full zoom range of your lens, starting with wide angle, and stepping back as you zoom in to keep roughly the same body proportions. Then look at the series of images and see if you can detect the difference between wide/close faces and zoom/far faces.
6. Monopod. This handy and inexpensive device will let you create many good images in lower light. It has a thread that connects to the bottom of your SLR. Use lt like a walking stick when out and about, but put the camera on if your shutter speed is below around 1/250 second, and it will keep your camer from moving too much.
To learn about this, get a monopod and experiment with some hand held shots, then put the camera on the stick and take the same images. It works!
7. Anti-shake. It's called many things - Anti-shake, VR (Vibration Reduction), and IS (Image Stabilization) to name a few. Some cameras have it on the body (Sony), and others in the lenses (Canon, Nikon). Some don't have this at all. The trick is that the camera/lens compensates for some amount of camera motion from your holding it, allowing you to get sharp images at much lower speeds.
To learn about this, find out how to turn it on (if you have it), and experiment with hand held images with it on and off. Note that this feature is not useful if your camera is on a tripod.
8. Night Images. If you can keep the camera very still, you can get some amazing images after dark. Usually you use a tripod and sometimes a cable release or a timer release to keep the shutter open and minimize the vibration from the camera's mirror.
To learn about this, put your camera on a tripod after dark and shoot your neighborhood or indoors at various exposure times. Take that next birthday photo only using candle-light, or try "light painting", where you illuminate part of your set with white or colored lights for a creepy effect.
9. Reflectors. You can take some wonderful natural light shots, but sometimes the contrast from bright side to dark side is too high, leading to blown out highlights or black shadows. An external reflector can help to smooth out the contrast and provide highlights.
To learn about this, make a cheap reflector from a flat white object such as foamboard, white cardboard or a ceiling tile. place it to the opposite side of your subject from the bright light source, and let it reflect some of that bright light back on the subject to lighten the shadows. Try another one to divert light from the back or side to provide highlights for hair or the back/side of a subject. Experiment with "negative light", where you place black objects near the subject to reduce the level of light on that side of the subject.
10. Put it all together. Go through these exercises and then build an assignment for yourself. Try to set up and photograph some of these things to show your knowledge and skills with your SLR:
A. Compose a still life with nice side light and narrow depth of field and clean background. Try a fruit basket.
B. Compose a portrait with a subject lit nicely from window light, with and without fill light.
C. Photograph a piece of fruit falling into a container of water. Provide enough light and a short enough shutter to capture water droplets.
D. Take an image of a moving person or animal where the subject is frozen.
E. Take an image of a person or animal where the subject or background is blurred.
F. Compose a portrait in or of your residence and shoot it after dark.
Note that I didn't mention that little flash on the top of your camera. I think of it like a fire extinguisher - use only in emergency! The camera flash will do more to harm your images than it will do to help. Learn to work without it. If you really want to use flash, consider a separate flash unit, especially one that you can remove from your camera and fire from other locations.
With a little constructive play, you can learn a lot about photography, improve your composition and shooting skills, and create some great art!
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