Don't you just love "What settings should I use" posts?

It may be a trivial thing but I laugh a little bit everytime I see a post asking what settings to use for a particular picture or situation. Maybe they should come up with a camera that a user holds and people on the internet can meter the scene and change the settings via the inter-webz so the user can take a good picture.

 

For beginners that don't know much about what settings do, asking for specific applicable help is a great start to learning the settings.

 

Im not so sure it does help. Its really tough to give people advice as to what settings to use unless you can see the scene. The only sound advice I think one can get about settings would be use fast shutter speeds (1/250 at least) for action and use deep DOF for landscapes (14 at least) but these can be broken with great results. I found it better to understand how aperature, iso, and shutter speed effect one another when I was learning and then mess with the settings myself when shooting.

If one is going to ask "what settings should I use" a photo of the scene in question should be attached.

 

:er:

"What should I use to take a picture of my car?"

That's not a good way to start learning. If by some miracle some one can guesstimate a good enough answer, it just lends them a crutch to stand on. Now if the noobs read about the settings and understand how they relate to each other, they can do it correctly and not get angry when some one tells them ISO 400, 1/250, f/5.6, and the picture doesn't turn out because they were competely off.

 

LOL! cool idea, let's pass it on to the manufacturers

I'm actually going to sit on the fence a bit here (OUCH! my... ), As much as I agree that it can help beginners a little, i'd say it was all part of the experience in getting to grips with your camera by experimenting and fiddling with the settings to see what can be done rather than ask someone what they would do. At the end of the day different things work for different people.

 

I see what you guys are saying about not being able to see the scene. I was thinking more along the lines of "taking action shots in the dark". Helpful recommendations would be, make sure your aperture is large, up the ISO, turn OFF image stabilizing if you need to pan with the subject, etc. Those are all without being too specific, helpful ways to help people learn.

I understand that when people want detailed specs to properly expose the picture without having to think one bit, is a little stupid.

Like you said, the rules can be broken and should be when different things come into play (like using a larger aperture, could cause too narrow DOF for the situation)...we just don't need a thread on here that makes beginners afraid to ask questions.

 

I could have used a personal meter this weekend when i was doing a for fun portrait shoot.

Some reason i forgot i could up my ISO to get faster shutter speeds... Who thinks of ISO anyway? kept it at 100 and got a good handful of motion blurred photos LOL...

As of recent i am so caught up on one thing (ie, learning to use my reflector) i forget about other things

 

Nothing is learned unless you explain exactly WHY the recommended settings are important.

 

It is and it isn't.

New folks, such as me just 4 months ago, have zero knowledge. All they may know is that there is more than just auto mode. All they may know is that they've been reading here and have picked up a little bit about the settings such as shutter can freeze action and aperture can blur or not blur the background.

Thus, they haven't made it to the point of fully understanding the relationship of shutter, aperture, and ISO to the capture of light. Thus, they come here and ask what they think is a very simple question.

They learn from those that make it a friendly forum (Big Mike is a perfect example from what I have seen over the past few months) by being explained about how you can't just ask about settings. They learn from being told why the scene is so important to figuring it out.

The start of this thread is exactly the arrogance that I do not like in this forum and exactly why sometimes this forum is not the friendliest forum around.

Not everyone in the world has perfect knowledge about everything there is in the world. The RC guys get fed up with the "I'm new, what airplane should I get?" The sim racers at my particular choice of PC sim racing get fed up with the constant "Why isn't there real cars and real tracks in this sim?" etc, etc, etc... You just won't get away from this stuff, just like the "Which dSLR should I get?" It will never go away.

 

:thumbup:

:thumbup:

 

+1