Got my first (proper) camera ...and a few questions!
Discussion
Picked up my 400D (with 18-55mm lens) on Friday and I had a brief play over the weekend. Some of the results are here,
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/561571466IvhA...
Hardly artistic, but I'm reasonably pleased with the results given I only graudated from a 2 mega pixel camera phone the day before! Was surprised how quickly I gave up on the full auto mode - principally because it seemed to want to use flash everywhere. Outside at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the background was coming out very dark when using the onboard flash. Switching to 'P' mode with control of the ISO number and flash activation seemed to produce perfectly good shots without it, whilst maintaining a natural light level in the background.
I wonder if anyone could give me some pointers on a few issues:
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/561571466IvhA...
Hardly artistic, but I'm reasonably pleased with the results given I only graudated from a 2 mega pixel camera phone the day before! Was surprised how quickly I gave up on the full auto mode - principally because it seemed to want to use flash everywhere. Outside at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the background was coming out very dark when using the onboard flash. Switching to 'P' mode with control of the ISO number and flash activation seemed to produce perfectly good shots without it, whilst maintaining a natural light level in the background.
I wonder if anyone could give me some pointers on a few issues:
- When should you use the flash? It worked well indoors, but at night (on the basic auto modes) it just seemed to illuminate one patch very well and exagerate the darkness elsewhere.
- What is the key benefit of adjusting the appeture? My understanding is that this changes the depth of field. An illustration in the users guide for example, shows a chess board with one piece in sharp focus, yet the shot blurred by the edge of the board. Playing around I could reproduce this effect to a limited extent, but nothing like the example in the book.
- I wear glasses to correct my long distance vision - is it worth using the dioptric adjustment on the lens? I seem to be pretty much on the edge of the adjustment without my specs and things look ok on the neutral setting without.
- I'm sure this is worthy of a topic in its own right, but can you give me a vague idea how you'd take a photograph with a lot of variation in light levels... For example, how would you photograph something like a car at night, where you wanted to capture the (very bright headlamps), the (comparitively dark) side of the car, a (bright-ish) overhead street lamp and the (dark) background? I know you could pick up the low-light parts of the shot with a very long shutter duration, but would that not also cause the headlamps to dazzle the camera? If on the other hand you reduced the shutter speed and sensitivity to light to capture the brighter parts of the shot, the background would presumably be lost in the dark
Hi Chris - lots of questions I see!
Personally I never use the onboard flash - it's harsh and uneven and with half my lenses casts a huge shadow across the image. yuk.
In simple terms, adjusting aperture is typically for one of two reasons - first to be creative (as with the chess piece example you mention) or otherwise to let sufficient light onto the sensor in order for an image to be exposed properly. For example in low light situations and moving subjects you don't chose a wide open aperture for creative reasons - you do it because you have to. IF you want to recreate the image in the book - zoom your lens to 55, open it up to whatever it goes to (f/3.5 I'd guess) then focus on something as close as possible to the lens - whatever is in the background will then have a similar effect to the example.
The diopter is on the viewfinder rather than the lens - I can't help you here, I wear contact lenses and have never touched mine.
Finally - when you refer capturing lots of different light levels, you are talking about dynamic range - the situation you describe would be virtually impossible to capture in a single image, your camera (or any other for that matter) just can't handle it. To get around this you either need lighting (eg flashes, etc.) or use a high dynamic range merge of two or more exposures.
Google HDR and you should see what I mean.
Hope this helps!
Personally I never use the onboard flash - it's harsh and uneven and with half my lenses casts a huge shadow across the image. yuk.
In simple terms, adjusting aperture is typically for one of two reasons - first to be creative (as with the chess piece example you mention) or otherwise to let sufficient light onto the sensor in order for an image to be exposed properly. For example in low light situations and moving subjects you don't chose a wide open aperture for creative reasons - you do it because you have to. IF you want to recreate the image in the book - zoom your lens to 55, open it up to whatever it goes to (f/3.5 I'd guess) then focus on something as close as possible to the lens - whatever is in the background will then have a similar effect to the example.
The diopter is on the viewfinder rather than the lens - I can't help you here, I wear contact lenses and have never touched mine.
Finally - when you refer capturing lots of different light levels, you are talking about dynamic range - the situation you describe would be virtually impossible to capture in a single image, your camera (or any other for that matter) just can't handle it. To get around this you either need lighting (eg flashes, etc.) or use a high dynamic range merge of two or more exposures.
Google HDR and you should see what I mean.
Hope this helps!
Edited by _dobbo_ on Monday 26th November 11:34
Just adding to what Ben said.....
To get the rest of the images well exposed when using the flash at night, you need to read the exposure from the ambient light. You can do this with Canon cameras by selecting Av and use the flash. And DO use the flash for outdoor portraits too. It'll get rid of the shadows on the face and give a nice effect.
As for the dioptre, I think you can buy more powerful ones if the on-camera one's not enough.
Congrats on the purchase and have fun!
Edited by Gemm on Monday 26th November 12:00
Thanks guys.
Had a look into HDR. As with all these things, I don't doubt it's complicated to achieve good results, but in theory it seems all you need is a range of shots with varying shutter durations (everything else being set equal) and a copy of photoshop. Apparently there is a tool to do this automatically in the most recent releases.
Having said that, this example seems to produce a passable night time image just using a single unedited shot:
http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial-night-photograph...
Had a look into HDR. As with all these things, I don't doubt it's complicated to achieve good results, but in theory it seems all you need is a range of shots with varying shutter durations (everything else being set equal) and a copy of photoshop. Apparently there is a tool to do this automatically in the most recent releases.
Having said that, this example seems to produce a passable night time image just using a single unedited shot:
http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial-night-photograph...
Quinny said:
Hi Chris,
Bit of advice my (far more knowledgable) mate gave me that's helped me quite a bit
Try to get into the habit of checking the exposure on the histogram on the LCD screen.
The manual explains how to access it and what the read outs mean, but basically if the graph is very one sided to the left, the picture is under exposed, if it's all to the right it's over exposed. A nice even spread that's raised in the middle means its about right.
It takes a bit of practice to get into using it and understanding it fully, but once you do its a very useful tool
Cheers - that's a useful bit of information. I've read most of the manual, but must have skipped that bit - I've had a look at the histograms after taking shots, but to be honest I wasn't too sure how to interpret them.Bit of advice my (far more knowledgable) mate gave me that's helped me quite a bit
Try to get into the habit of checking the exposure on the histogram on the LCD screen.
The manual explains how to access it and what the read outs mean, but basically if the graph is very one sided to the left, the picture is under exposed, if it's all to the right it's over exposed. A nice even spread that's raised in the middle means its about right.
It takes a bit of practice to get into using it and understanding it fully, but once you do its a very useful tool
I presume there is also a way you can use the camera as a light meter to check before you take the shot (would certainly save time on a 30 second night time exposure!)
Hi Rob - can you explain for the benefit of the uneducated the difference between a fill flash and the regular flash mode? Personally I've just ditched the flash unless it's a handheld and/or very dark shot I can't possibly use a long shutter speed for.
I think I need to get my head round white balancing too. This was my first attempt at night photogrpahy yesterday evening:
http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2950468240102...
To be fair it is a very orange street lamp, but still!
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