I posted this image at Posterous the other day: The images that I post there automatically go to several other places and Facebook is one of them. I added the comment “From my point and shoot then processed on my iPad using Snapseed and PStouch.” That was basically the caption I used when posting the image but the captions don’t post on Facebook. That evening a friend of mine posted a comment, “Vincent…..you seem to be having too much fun not using a DSLR!” I wrote back a quick comment without thinking much about it, “Freedom! That’s what it’s all about. Just…
Tag: camera
Taking control of your camera step by step Part 9
Finally, here we are at Manual Mode. When you are using Manual Mode you have complete control over your camera. You are 100% in charge of everything, aperture, shutter speed, ISO and everything else. You are also 100% responsible for any mistakes that you make! Manual mode is not as scary as it may seem. Once you set your ISO and White Balance you can let those settings go to the back of your mind until you need to changed them again. It does not matter if you choose the aperture or the shutter speed first. You will find yourself…
Taking control of your camera step by step Part 8
Shutter Priority There are some situations where you want to be sure that you are working at the same shutter speed to create motion blur or freeze action. In these cases you will want to use Shutter Priority. When in Shutter Priority you choose the shutter speed and the camera chooses the aperture. One thing you have to keep in mind with Shutter Priority is that your depth of field will change when the aperture changes. Most of the time this will not be a problem. You will have to watch that the camera is not overexposing or underexposing because…
Taking control of your camera step by step Part 7
Aperture Priority Like I said in my last post I walk around with my camera set to Aperture Priority, well, almost all the time. I do this so that I don’t miss any images that come along unexpectedly. With my camera set to Aperture Priority I have already chosen the f-stop that I want to use and the camera chooses the corresponding shutter speed needed to get an exposure that should be acceptable. Why did I say should be acceptable? Well, the camera’s light meter can be fooled (more on this in a later post about metering). Your camera has…
Taking control of your camera step by step Part 6
Exposure Compensation You have a neat little setting that you can use to help your camera make better exposure decisions. It will work in any mode that you choose to be in, expect Manual. That setting is Exposure Compensation. If you are making images and they are coming out overexposed (to bright) or underexposed (to dark) you can use this setting to help bring the exposure inline with what you expect or want it to be. You might even find that you prefer to leave it on a particular setting. For example, I leave the exposure compensation my Nikon D2x…
Taking control of your camera step by step Part 5
Setting White Balance Where ISO deals with the amount of light, White Balance deals with the color of light. The part of the brain that processes the information from our eyes does an excellent job of “white balancing” the light we see. We can walk from outdoors (daylight) to an office building illuminated by fluorescent lights and then into an office illuminated by tungsten bulbs and our eyes will adjust automatically. You may get a glimpse of the green colorcast from the florescent lighting or the orange colorcast from the tungsten but your brain corrects for those color casts in…
Taking control of your camera step by step Part 4
Setting the ISO By setting the ISO you are are taking control of how sensitive the sensor in your camera is to light. It may not sound like much but this is the first real step toward taking full control of your camera. Setting the ISO is as easy as choosing a number in the ISO settings menu. Which number you should choose has to do with the amount of light available to make images. As a rule of thumb 100 – 200 ISO is good for outdoors while 400 – 800 ISO is generally good for indoors. You should…
