First time post

[TiaS]

I am new to this forum and hope to glean some great info from you all. I have owned my first SLR for less than 3 months and I have one major question about using it.

I live on the coast and most of our days are cloudy. I have the kit lens for my Canon (18-55mm). My problem is this:

-when I want to shoot the landscape I want a very small aperture so that it is all in focus and sharp. But when I do this, I have to make my shutter speed so slow that the pictures have decent exposure. This causes hand shake and the whole shot is slightly blurry.
-when I turn around a moment later to capture a photo of my kids, who are in constant motion, I need a quick shutter speed and an aperture that will allow for their whole body to be in focus.

[FONT=&quot]What I want is very small apertures for landscape photos with a fast enough shutter speed for no hand shake. Or I want to have a very fast shutter speed for the kids and than have an aperture that is not to large because I want to focus on the whole body or even the background too at times. But it seems to always be cloudy lately and I always have to compromise either my aperture, which gives me a very small depth and field, or the shutter speed, which gives my pictures hand shake.[/FONT]I have fiddled with my ISO and it does help, but not enough. When I have my ISO at 400 it seems that the only way I can get proper exposure is to have my aperture as large as possible and am lucky if I can get a shutter speed as fast as 1/80, in order to have my photo not too dark or too light.

I do shoot in RAW which does help, but I can't have my photos too black or they get noisy when I expose them too much on the computer.

So that is my question. Hope it makes sense and that there is some simple solution.

This is my first post and I am looking forward to browsing this board and meeting you all

 

[ann]

first of all this area is for film not digital.

you will get more help in the digital areas; however, with that said, you need to put your camera on a tripod if things are burry.

if the images are too noisy run them with a noise reduction software.

 

[TiaS]

first of all this area is for film not digital.

Oops. Thanks

 

[xjken99]

A tripod or a monopod will solve a lot of your problems. I know how you feel about the gray cloudy days. It has been at least a couple of weeks since we had a totally sunny day around here. Don't let that stop you from shooting and playing with the camera, it's the best way to learn. For instance today was another gray crappy day around here but, I took the camera and my hand held meter out and took a few shots using the camera auto meter. I then used the hand held meter and took the same shot with a few different F stops and shutter speeds. I have so much to learn and so far I have picked up some great information here.

 

[Sangetsu]

There are a few things to consider. First of all, not all DSLR cameras are created equal. The high-end models have much better high ISO quality than the entry level models, meaning that you can shoot faster shutter speeds at smaller apertures.

Also, it really is difficult to get images with a lot of depth of field when you have moving subjects in them. In most cases, the "auto" or "program" setting on your DSLR will probably give you the best results, giving enough depth of field to make as much of the image a sharp as possible while giving a fast enough shutter speed to stop the action.

Personally, I usually use "program" mode when shooting with my DSLR, the only adjustments I make are for white balance or exposure compensation, I let the camera do the rest.

Remember that getting a good picture requires good environmental conditions. Modern cameras can compensate quite a bit for problems in light and such, but the better the conditions, the better your pictures will be.