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Originally Posted by Barewolf
Thanks andy and bender, you both seem to know your stuff on cameras.
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You're welcome! I'm a photographer, so many things on this subject I can help with, but I don't personally use a digital compact anymore, I use a camera phone for snaps and one of my three DSLRs for 'proper' shots!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Barewolf
I am still reading through the manual and have taken a shot of my Birthday cake. I will add 2 pics, you can see they are not too good, i did have zoom on it, its not as crisp as i would like.
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OK, on the two shots you posted I can see from the EXIF data that the first one you used a shutter speed of 1/30th sec and the second one a shutter speed of 1/15th (half as fast again). Realistically you shouldn't have a shutter speed under 1/60th as rule of thumb.
Now, going back to what Bender and I were on about... here's lesson two!
Exposure is measured in stops. f/2.8 is ONE LESS than f1.4 but ONE MORE than f/4. Your first shot was as f/2.8 which is a wide aperture. Your second shot was at f/4.2 (which isn't really an f/ stop, as one less than 4.2 is f/5.6!!!) Confused? It took me a while to grasp this one when I was learning it too.
So, the relationship between aperture and shutter speed is as follows: If you have an aperture of f/4 and shutter speed of 1/30th sec, by increasing the aperture by one stop to f/2.8 (widening the aperture) you also increase the shutter speed by one stop, from 1/30th sec to 1/60th sec.
ISO comes into this to as Bender said...in your first example your camera selected an ISO of 191 (which again is not a true ISO, so lets say it's 200). By increasing the ISO to 400 you are gaining another stop. So if we use the same exmaple of your f/4 aperture increase it again to f/2.8 and now we increase your 200ISO to 400, the shutter speed goes from 1/30th sec, through 1/60th (as increasing aperture got us this) and up to 1/125th sec shutter speed, which is a nice all round speed with no fear of camera shake at most focal lengths on your camera.
Does that make any sense? (Don't worry if it doesn't, it didn't to me for a long time too). If I remember, I will try and fish out my study in first year photography that I (eventually) grasped this relationship.
If your camera has one, try setting it to shutter priority mode and manually set a shutter speed of at least 1/60th, preferably 1/125th sec and let camera sort out ISOs and apertures...see the difference it makes!
Enjoy playing!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart C
It's different if you are planning to print the picture on a large-format printer (A3, A2, A1 or larger), or are planning to work on it within photoshop or a similar image editing application.
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Not really, RAW doesn't add anything extra into an image (aside from potential dynamic range for certain shooting complex shooting conditions). As printing at larger sizes such as A2 upwards would require interpolation, you again would see little if any difference between a RAW shot and a large fine JPEG on a good camera.