Completely new to photography

[Thuc]

I'll start by introducing myself. I'm Thuc Vu, 13 years old,and totally brand new to photography. I took my brother's canon AE-1 since he left it at home in his closet. Recently bought 200 iso film for it (i've already setted the ASA to 200.), I plan on doing a lot of portrait photography ( of cars). But I've recently ran into a problem. I wanted to take a portrait photo of a mug indoors, and my light meter is telling me to use an f stop of 12 and its flashing red. I've setted my shutter speed to 60. Since i don't have a tripod i can't really go lower or else i'll have camera shake. But my main problem is , I wanted a much more shallow depth of field , and to bring out my subject more (mug). But I can't really do that if my f stop is set to about 11. Can I compensate for that by setting my shutter speed to about 1/250, and let my f stop be 4 so I can bring out my subject more and also at the same time let in less light by using a higher shutter speed but also getting a good exposure? Thanks in advance =).

 

[Steve01]

Hi Thuc and welcome to Photography and to this forum.
I don't know how you're metering but the meter isn't telling you you "must" use f12.
It's telling you f12 and 1/60 is a good combination.

As you open up 1 full f stop you can double the shutter speed.
f8.0 & 1/125
f5.6 & 1/250
f4.0 & 1/500
f2.8 & 1/1000

 

[dxqcanada]

Do you have the Canon AE-1 or the AE-1 Program ?

Is the lens aperture set to A ?

The AE-1 meter was based on the shutter speed ... so if you increase your shutter speed your aperture will go down (as Steve01 pointed out).