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Hi all, OK, so I've recently dived headfirst into the world of DSLR Photography and I've been tinkering with my new D70 for the last couple of weeks. Also picked up Photoshop CS2 and a couple of "for dummies books". I've produced a few good pictures so far but most of them with the Auto setting. I'm starting to learn more about White Balance & ISO etc but struggling to understand really how to set up Aperture & Shutter Speed for different situation. I've been reading a few books but for some reason it's just not sinking in as fast as I'd like. I'm really keen to get the most out of the camera in manual mode and really get to learn how to take good pictures where I've controlled what they look like. I haven't really got the time for a photography course atm. Any tips...perhaps a few suggestions on settings for dark, sunny, cloudy, indoor, close up etc. I'd really appreciate it. |
Help mastering the D70
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pistol 13,018 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 19 years ago -
Definitely one thing at a time.
For now, stick the white balance onto Auto. It's reasonably accurate most of the time (although when you shoot in RAW mode it doesn't matter coz you can change it later but let's leave that for now!).
White Balance:
White balance is to do with the inherent colours in various types of light (such as Daylight or Tungsten or Fluorescent etc), and removes those colours so that white stays white. Daylight has blue in it. Tungsten has orange. Also known as colour 'temperature'. Like I say, AUTO for this.
Aperture:
The physics of the aperture aren't something you need to worry about too much just yet, but Aperture is the f-stop, and is how big the hole is that lets the light into the sensor when the shutter opens.
Small hole = not much light getting in = high f-stop number = very deep depth of field (things close and far away look in focus) = longer/slower shutter speed.
Big hole = lots of light getting in = low f-stop number = very shallow depth of field (only one 'plane' will be in focus - everything else is soft) = shorter/faster shutter speed.
Shutter speed:
When you take your lens off and look inside, there's a mirror - this is the shutter. Behind it is the sensor/film. When you have a fast shutter, this mirror pops up and down really quickly to let bugger all light hit the sensor. If the aperture is wide open and/or there is LOADS of light in your scene, this results in all motion being captured without blur (ideally).
If you set the shutter speed to quite slow, the mirror pops up and down again slower, lets more light in, and results in motion blur (if there is any in the picture).
So, what rhythm said: stick to A or S mode for now (I usually do) and only try M mode when you're confident that you NEED to use it. Go into A mode, set your f-stop number as low as possible (and hence opening the aperture really wide), watch that shutter speed get really fast when you take light readings (through the viewfinder) and then focus on something really close up with some background behind it and take the picture. Then set the aperture to a higher f-stop, such as 9, or even 22 if there's loads of light in the area (the shutter will get much slower so steady the camera), and take the same picture.
See how the first has a soft background and the second/third has much sharper backgrounds? That's the f-stop effect.
However, as a result of closing the aperture (higher f-stop number) to get the sharper backgrounds you let less light in when the shutter opened. Hence the shutter became reaaaally slow. This is not a problem if you're on a tripod and there's nothing moving in the scene. As such, most landscape photographers use a higher f-stop number so that they get everything looking sharp.
Of course, sometimes you WANT soft backgrounds AND motion blur in the background - that's when you might use M mode - to set both up the way you want them.
People also use M mode to get their exposure a bit brighter or darker than the camera gives you - the D70 notoriously underexposes in all it's automatic settings, the theory being that it's easier to bring detail back into a slightly underexposed photo in post-processing than it is to fix blown highlights in an overexposed photo. So don't worry if things look a little darker than you expected. There's ways round that but ask if you want to know....gif)
ISO:
In film, ISO refers to how sensitive the film is to light. Higher sensitivity had the side-effect of grainier film. The higher the number, the more sensitive to light. You would typically use 200-ish in daylight and 1600 in really dark bar or a cave or something
Digital cameras don't have nearly as much grain in their high ISOs than film cameras. You can also change the ISO with each digital picture, as opposed to being stuck with the same ISO for a whole reel of film. If you set it yourself (I do, as I'm not sure how likely the Auto ISO is to pick higher ISOs than I might want) then just remember to turn DOWN your ISO after using a high one if you go outside again! I've taken loads with 1600 without meaning to. Doh!
This is all probably just as confusing as your books, and not as well written, but I think it's all you need to start learning yourself by experimenting with ONE setting at a time.
Edited by Owen-B at 20:24:46 22-06-2006 -
Carlo 21,801 posts
Seen 3 days ago
Registered 16 years agoOMG Pistol, Nikon do short courses!!! Call them up for the love of God!!!
Look see!
Edited by Carlo at 20:27:15 22-06-2006 -
Carlo wrote:
I'm really against giving people money to learn this sort of thing. I found I worked out a lot of the principles by playing with the settings myself, asking questions on sites like this and dpreview.com when I got stuck, and visiting photoblogs such as chromasia.com to get inspiration to replicate techniques myself.
OMG Pistol, Nikon do short courses!!! Call them up for the love of God!!!
Edited by Owen-B at 20:27:12 22-06-2006 -
Carlo 21,801 posts
Seen 3 days ago
Registered 16 years agoOwen-B wrote:
Awww comon Owen! The 1/2 day is only £65! A full day course is £120... You're far better off spending a whole day and £120 geting your foundation of understanding sorted!
Carlo wrote:
I'm really against giving people money to learn this sort of thing. I found I worked out a lot of the principles by playing with the settings myself, asking questions on sites like this and dpreview.com when I got stuck, and visiting photoblogs such as chromasia.com to get inspiration to replicate techniques myself.
OMG Pistol, Nikon do short courses!!! Call them up for the love of God!!!
Edited by Owen-B at 20:27:12 22-06-2006 -
HOW MUCH!?
Well... I suppose it depends how little you know, how quickly you want to learn, how much you feel the course would benefit you, etc.
I guess if you know NOTHING then you may feel like you're banging your head against a brick wall. But then I look at that £120 and see a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens... -
Carlo 21,801 posts
Seen 3 days ago
Registered 16 years agoOwen-B wrote:
I get what you're saying Owen, but what good is that fine prime lens (which I have BTW and it is fine!) without the understanding of how to use it?
HOW MUCH!?
Well... I suppose it depends how little you know, how quickly you want to learn, how much you feel the course would benefit you, etc.
I guess if you know NOTHING then you may feel like you're banging your head against a brick wall. But then I look at that £120 and see a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens...
Pay the money and get a short-cut on how to get the best out of the camera you own, by the people who made it.
Or... Stumble around for (possibly) weeks while you learn it all, possibly get the wrong understanding of it, and possibly with a few 'holes' in your knowledge.
Then again, some of the worlds best photographers freely admit they don't understand the principles either, so maybe they isn't a need for it
Edited by Carlo at 20:46:24 22-06-2006 -
deem 31,667 posts
Seen 8 months ago
Registered 18 years ago -
Spose so... I guess only he knows how much benefit he'll get from it... Also depends what they actually teach you. Worth looking into I guess! -
deem wrote:
Fucks sake. As ever deem wanders into a thread and sums up everything in a few pithy lines.
Simple tips that helped me.
ISO - Darker rooms need higher ISO, at the compromise of quality.
Aperture - Imagine a line of people standing in front of you going off into the distance. Low F numbers mean a couple of people in focus, high number means lots of people in focus.
Shutter Speed - fast for freezing the action, slow for blur.
The most important thing to do is just fuck around.
I talk way too much. Still, that's me!
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CerealKey 2,860 posts
Seen 13 years ago
Registered 19 years agoTake lots of pics, look at the ones you don't like and figure out what you don't like and how you can fix it.
Also take lots of pictures of the same thing so you can see what works, so you'll know what to do with those one shot deals. -
Carlo 21,801 posts
Seen 3 days ago
Registered 16 years agoOK how I see it.
Eventually you find some of the best pictures you take are the ones where you see a great oppotunity for an impromteau shot, and you've got about 1 second to get the lens in front of your eye, get the settings dialed in right, and hit the shutter release. The courses are never going to teach you 'instinct' and the only way you'll get that 'fast' is by using you camera and take 1000's of shots until you know what setting you'll need and your fingers are dialing the settings before you've even thought about it.
The courses are to get you started, get ALL the basics and principles into your head as fast as possible, and most importantly, build a solid foundation of understanding for you to continue to develop on. When you look at some 'supposed experts' on forum answering queries incorrectly (or at least, inacurrately), you can see why this is (IMO) important. I'm on a SLR mailing list, and some of the shit some people talk astounds me!
As it's a Nikon course, and for a specific camera model, you'll also learn ALL the functions of that camera, rather than a 'generic' lesson on all DSLRs...
You can learn this just as well from a book too I suppose... I just think a course is a great primer for knowledge.
I still get asked why my DSLR can't take 'video'! Where do you start?!?
Edit: Or what Deem said
Edit2: Err, WTF am I waffling on about? I'm not answering the threads question anymore am I?
Edited by Carlo at 21:24:33 22-06-2006 -
yagisencho 12 posts
Seen 10 years ago
Registered 16 years agoOwen-B has given you some good advice. As for me, I purchased and devoured the 2nd edition of this book (now in 3rd edition):
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1584503564/qid%3D1151007965/026-2958227-6912446#product-details
This should provide you with a solid foundation of the technology and techniques in digital photography. After that, just shoot photos.
Also, if you haven't already, be sure to read the D70 manual. Then read it again. Then use the camera for a bit, come back to the manual, and read it again. -
pistol 13,018 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 19 years agorhythm wrote:
Firstly, the most important thing is to learn one thing at a time :-D
Use the A setting (aperture priority) and watch how the shutter speed alters in conjunction with your amendments to the aperture (aperture governs depth of field and helps you get to the "sweet spot" of a given lens).
Similarly, use the S setting and see how the aperture changes to make sure things are balanced. In very basic terms, the faster the shutter speed the more "frozen" the shot will be, but you'll want to tweak this for effect in certain situations.
Experiment in those modes and see what happens when you take the camera's "auto" reading and adjust elements around it. Check the results on the PC, not just the camera screen - you'll get a much better sense of what you've just done.
Thanks for the advice. Last night I played around with the Aperture & Shutter Priority modes and I'm now starting to understand what's going on. Also tinkered with WB & different shooting modes and you're right, it's great to see what you've done with each setting on the PC. I'm using Photoshop CS2. I think I'm starting to get it...gif)
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pistol 13,018 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 19 years agorhythm wrote:
Firstly, the most important thing is to learn one thing at a time :-D
Use the A setting (aperture priority) and watch how the shutter speed alters in conjunction with your amendments to the aperture (aperture governs depth of field and helps you get to the "sweet spot" of a given lens).
Similarly, use the S setting and see how the aperture changes to make sure things are balanced. In very basic terms, the faster the shutter speed the more "frozen" the shot will be, but you'll want to tweak this for effect in certain situations.
Experiment in those modes and see what happens when you take the camera's "auto" reading and adjust elements around it. Check the results on the PC, not just the camera screen - you'll get a much better sense of what you've just done.
I took a picture of a pigeon in flight using a fast shutter speed and I couldn't believe the detail. It's brill. -
sam_spade 15,745 posts
Seen 5 hours ago
Registered 20 years ago -
pistol 13,018 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 19 years agoOwen-B wrote:
Definitely one thing at a time.
For now, stick the white balance onto Auto. It's reasonably accurate most of the time (although when you shoot in RAW mode it doesn't matter coz you can change it later but let's leave that for now!).
White Balance:
White balance is to do with the inherent colours in various types of light (such as Daylight or Tungsten or Fluorescent etc), and removes those colours so that white stays white. Daylight has blue in it. Tungsten has orange. Also known as colour 'temperature'. Like I say, AUTO for this.
Aperture:
The physics of the aperture aren't something you need to worry about too much just yet, but Aperture is the f-stop, and is how big the hole is that lets the light into the sensor when the shutter opens.
Small hole = not much light getting in = high f-stop number = very deep depth of field (things close and far away look in focus) = longer/slower shutter speed.
Big hole = lots of light getting in = low f-stop number = very shallow depth of field (only one 'plane' will be in focus - everything else is soft) = shorter/faster shutter speed.
Shutter speed:
When you take your lens off and look inside, there's a mirror - this is the shutter. Behind it is the sensor/film. When you have a fast shutter, this mirror pops up and down really quickly to let bugger all light hit the sensor. If the aperture is wide open and/or there is LOADS of light in your scene, this results in all motion being captured without blur (ideally).
If you set the shutter speed to quite slow, the mirror pops up and down again slower, lets more light in, and results in motion blur (if there is any in the picture).
So, what rhythm said: stick to A or S mode for now (I usually do) and only try M mode when you're confident that you NEED to use it. Go into A mode, set your f-stop number as low as possible (and hence opening the aperture really wide), watch that shutter speed get really fast when you take light readings (through the viewfinder) and then focus on something really close up with some background behind it and take the picture. Then set the aperture to a higher f-stop, such as 9, or even 22 if there's loads of light in the area (the shutter will get much slower so steady the camera), and take the same picture.
See how the first has a soft background and the second/third has much sharper backgrounds? That's the f-stop effect.
However, as a result of closing the aperture (higher f-stop number) to get the sharper backgrounds you let less light in when the shutter opened. Hence the shutter became reaaaally slow. This is not a problem if you're on a tripod and there's nothing moving in the scene. As such, most landscape photographers use a higher f-stop number so that they get everything looking sharp.
Of course, sometimes you WANT soft backgrounds AND motion blur in the background - that's when you might use M mode - to set both up the way you want them.
People also use M mode to get their exposure a bit brighter or darker than the camera gives you - the D70 notoriously underexposes in all it's automatic settings, the theory being that it's easier to bring detail back into a slightly underexposed photo in post-processing than it is to fix blown highlights in an overexposed photo. So don't worry if things look a little darker than you expected. There's ways round that but ask if you want to know...
ISO:
In film, ISO refers to how sensitive the film is to light. Higher sensitivity had the side-effect of grainier film. The higher the number, the more sensitive to light. You would typically use 200-ish in daylight and 1600 in really dark bar or a cave or something
Digital cameras don't have nearly as much grain in their high ISOs than film cameras. You can also change the ISO with each digital picture, as opposed to being stuck with the same ISO for a whole reel of film. If you set it yourself (I do, as I'm not sure how likely the Auto ISO is to pick higher ISOs than I might want) then just remember to turn DOWN your ISO after using a high one if you go outside again! I've taken loads with 1600 without meaning to. Doh!
This is all probably just as confusing as your books, and not as well written, but I think it's all you need to start learning yourself by experimenting with ONE setting at a time.
Edited by Owen-B at 20:24:46 22-06-2006
No..quite the contrary. Very well written & easy to understand. The ISO stuff I always understood, it was really playing around with different apertures & shutter speeds. I appreciate you taking the time to write so much. Same goes for everyone else. -
As has been said before, the beauty of digital-SLR is you can play with all the modes etc. and not have to pay for each picture. - You can see the results of what changing the shutter speed by a certain ammount has or using exposure control has.
I use the bracketing settings quite a lot if I'm not sure about the white balance.
My tip is to thouroughly read the manual (quite good on the D70) and just play. Look at the pics in-camera and on the computer and see what effect they have.
I could write about 4000 words on the subject, but it would be badly written and generally rubbish. I recon the best way is to learn by doing, and occasionally referencing the odd book.
I love my D70, but don't use it nearly enough - have also misplaced my 1GB CF card too - grrr. It's. at. home. SOMEWHERE!! -
pistol 13,018 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 19 years agoOwen-B wrote:
HOW MUCH!?
Well... I suppose it depends how little you know, how quickly you want to learn, how much you feel the course would benefit you, etc.
I guess if you know NOTHING then you may feel like you're banging your head against a brick wall. But then I look at that £120 and see a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens...
I just don't have the time for a course and tbh I'm fairly confident I can pick up most from here, web & my own trail & error. I'm fairly technical anyway so.. I'm gonna be a dad in 3 months and with my tennis as well I'd be pushed for time. Maybe sometime in the future. -
deem wrote:
Simple tips that helped me.
ISO - Darker rooms need higher ISO, at the compromise of quality.
Aperture - Imagine a line of people standing in front of you going off into the distance. Low F numbers mean a couple of people in focus, high number means lots of people in focus.
Shutter Speed - fast for freezing the action, slow for blur.
The most important thing to do is just fuck around.
ISO - No mention that "quality" is actually "noise", which is almost unnoticable for certain conditions (so if you know the conditions are OK for it you can use high ISO with no noticable loss of "quality". ISO setting basically changes the sensitivity of the sensor to light, electronically. The digital equivalent of using different film (faster or slower fim).
Aperture - No mention that Low F-numbers (larger Aperture) allows in more light and therefore you can use faster shutter speeds and thereby freeze the action better if that's what you require.
Shutter speed - Slow for low light contitions also. Use of a tripod and a slow shutter would allow great night-time shots of static objects (buildings, landscapes etc) with no blur.
In fact, shutter and apeture are intrinsically linked, and when you use exposure control (either over or under-exposing the shot) they are modified to produce results.
Fuck around - totally agree.
Not disagreeing with deem just elaborating a little as it was a bit simple. -
deem 31,667 posts
Seen 8 months ago
Registered 18 years ago -
pistol 13,018 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 19 years agosam_spade wrote:
Photoshop Tutorials
Digital Photography Tutorials
saved for later
cheers -
pistol 13,018 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 19 years agojamesphilp wrote:
As has been said before, the beauty of digital-SLR is you can play with all the modes etc. and not have to pay for each picture. - You can see the results of what changing the shutter speed by a certain ammount has or using exposure control has.
I use the bracketing settings quite a lot if I'm not sure about the white balance.
My tip is to thouroughly read the manual (quite good on the D70) and just play. Look at the pics in-camera and on the computer and see what effect they have.
I could write about 4000 words on the subject, but it would be badly written and generally rubbish. I recon the best way is to learn by doing, and occasionally referencing the odd book.
I love my D70, but don't use it nearly enough - have also misplaced my 1GB CF card too - grrr. It's. at. home. SOMEWHERE!!
Just picked up
this? and it's bloody excellent -
Flightrisker 18,139 posts
Seen 6 years ago
Registered 16 years agoAs a Nikon employee extraordinairre I recommend Nikon's Digitutor.
But I am biased. -
pistol 13,018 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 19 years agoFlightrisker wrote:
As a Nikon employee extraordinairre I recommend Nikon's Digitutor.
But I am biased.
Cheers - I'll give that a go tonight. Looks excellent. -
Carlo 21,801 posts
Seen 3 days ago
Registered 16 years agoFlightrisker wrote:
Gah! Where is the d50 one?!?!?!
As a Nikon employee extraordinairre I recommend Nikon's Digitutor.
But I am biased.
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pistol 13,018 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 19 years agoFlightrisker wrote:
As a Nikon employee extraordinairre I recommend Nikon's Digitutor.
But I am biased.
Just had a quick look and it's bloody excellent. -
Played around some more over the weekend and I'm now starting to get it. Took loads of pics with fast & slow shutter speeds/different apertures etc. I'm getting more and more confident all the time. Now able to pretty much predict what the pic will look like. Took some good ones of the misses in our pool on fast shutter and the water droplets when she was splashing around were so clear. Don't ask for pics as I'm at work..
I want to fine tune the aperture/fstop settings a bit more now. As in do I use F5 or 5.8 etc.
I can see this becoming quite a hobby.
Also went through some tutorials on Photoshop CS2 which I'm struggling with a bit.
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