I don't understand

[dukeboy1977]

I was finally outside taking photos with my camera ON MY TRIPOD, so I was a little excited to be using it for the 1st time since buying it. I got what I thought were some awesome pics of my (future) wife and my 13 month old son with a bottle of bubbles. When I came to my computer a few minutes ago to post them, I got really disturbed by looking at them on my computer. I used my 55-200mm NIKON lens with the lens hood...What a mistake using the lens hood! Not enough light got to my sensor and they are all kinda "grainy" looking...WTF?!?!? We were outside and it was not really sunny out, but I felt it was bright enough not to make them turn out like this. Any ideas why they did? I'll post a few here but I'm really disappointed in them!

All pics are "shot" in JPEG FINE. 6.1mp is the best my D40 will do

 

[pvclobster]

I'm not sure how to pull EXIF info from posted photos, so I'll just ask.

What kind of settings were these taken on? In particular, what was your iso set to?

 

[white]

I don't suppose you remember trivial things like ... uhm, aperture, shutter, and iso, do you?

 

[bigtwinky]

Why the tripod?

What mode were you shooting in? Auto?

I see you had a shutter of 1/160, f/16. That is a very high f/ stop, and not needed if you are doing portraits. Portraits are nicer with a blurry background (DOF / bokeh), which is achieved partially with a low f/, such as 2.8, 4.0.

What was your ISO?

I see that you also had an EV of -1. So why are you telling your camera to under expose by 1 stop?

 

[white]

Oh jeez. f/16? ISO was probably on the moon.

 

[dukeboy1977]

Why the tripod?

What mode were you shooting in? Auto?

I see you had a shutter of 1/160, f/16. That is a very high f/ stop, and not needed if you are doing portraits. Portraits are nicer with a blurry background (DOF / bokeh), which is achieved partially with a low f/, such as 2.8, 4.0.

What was your ISO?

I see that you also had an EV of -1. So why are you telling your camera to under expose by 1 stop?

I was shooting in shutter mode, trying different things with my camera since I used to use only pre-programmed settings. Should I have used Aperture mode instead? I'll try that next time I get to use my camera. I didn't attempt to use a high f/stop or underexpose anything. I got more to learn I guess

 

[bigtwinky]

And to the OP, would be nice for people reading your threads if you posted the images in the right orientation.

 

[Whootsinator]

"ISO Setting 1,3200"

Well there's 'yer problem. ISO 3200 is a little teensy tiny tad bit ENORMOUS. If I were you I wouldn't ever venture past ISO 800 on a D40. Honestly I wouldn't even venture past ISO 400. Open up that aperture to around f/8 and drop the ISO to 100/200.

 

[Whootsinator]

I swear the lady that writes this blog (or used to write it) should pay me for advertising...


Just read these free exposure lessons on this blog:

Exposure Lessons, in order Stop Shooting Auto!

 

[Robin Usagani]

The beauty of preset setting and auto ISO!

 

[bigtwinky]

"ISO Setting 1,3200"

Well there's 'yer problem. ISO 3200 is a little teensy tiny tad bit ENORMOUS. If I were you I wouldn't ever venture past ISO 800 on a D40. Honestly I wouldn't even venture past ISO 400. Open up that aperture to around f/8 and drop the ISO to 100/200.

Wow...ok...that explains the grainyness. The under exposure is the EV -1.

On a D40, I wouldnt go over 400.

Keep your ISO as low as possible and up it only as your last resort.

 

[Vinny]

The lens hood has nothing to do with how much light falls onto the sensor. It is there to block light from causing lens flare, which are reflections on the elements in the lens.

As others are indicating the shutter speed, f stop and -1 EV had all to do with how the photos came out as does the ISO.

Start back at square 1 and get the camera back to "normal" settings - try ISO at 200, 0 EV. And try aperture priority mode and see how that works.

 

[bigtwinky]

Why the tripod?

What mode were you shooting in? Auto?

I see you had a shutter of 1/160, f/16. That is a very high f/ stop, and not needed if you are doing portraits. Portraits are nicer with a blurry background (DOF / bokeh), which is achieved partially with a low f/, such as 2.8, 4.0.

What was your ISO?

I see that you also had an EV of -1. So why are you telling your camera to under expose by 1 stop?

I was shooting in shutter mode, trying different things with my camera since I used to use only pre-programmed settings. Should I have used Aperture mode instead? I'll try that next time I get to use my camera. I didn't attempt to use a high f/stop or underexpose anything. I got more to learn I guess

I would highly HIGHLY suggest the book "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson. Easy read, great info. Its all the basics. The book taught me the same thing as most of my first camera class

 

[dukeboy1977]

The lens hood has nothing to do with how much light falls onto the sensor. It is there to block light from causing lens flare, which are reflections on the elements in the lens.

As others are indicating the shutter speed, f stop and -1 EV had all to do with how the photos came out as does the ISO.

Start back at square 1 and get the camera back to "normal" settings - try ISO at 200, 0 EV. And try aperture priority mode and see how that works.

Yes sir, I did just that, thank you! I wasn't aware that that stuff had even changed! I'll try more photos later with my son in my yard. My ISO was on H1!! holy crap! lol I know not to do that on a D40! DUH! lol

 

[pgriz]

Here’s the drill.

Set your ISO to the lowest value (80-100, or whatever it is on your camera). Reason: this is your camera’s “native” sensitivity and the one giving the lowest amount of noise.

Usually, shoot in Aperture-priority, unless you are shooting action-oriented shots needing a fast shutter speed.

Decide if you want the subject AND the background in focus, or ONLY the subject in focus. If the former, choose a high f/stop value like F/11, F/16, or F/22. If the latter, choose a low f/stop value such as 2.0, 2.8, or 4.0. Say you’re following Pierre’s advice and you set your F/stop on your 55-200mm lens on 4.0 (which happens to be the lowest f/stop of your lens).

Zoom in or out until you got the framing you want. Let’s assume for the purpose of this exercise that you were at 100mm.

Take a meter reading of your intended scene using the normal pattern. Do not do any exposure compensation (yet). The camera will give you a suggested shutter speed. Since it was bright, but not sunny enough to throw shadows, you’d probably have a speed of 1/500. With a focal length of 100mm on a crop body, you can probably handhold without visible camera shake down to 1/125 sec. so this speed is above that, and you don’t need to use a tripod.

Now do you need exposure compensation? Your scene is overall “average”, so probably not. If the scene was mostly bright or white, then your camera would underexpose (because it is programmed to see everything as 18% grey), and to compensate you would need to dial in an exposure compensation of maybe 1 stop more. If the scene was mostly dark, then the camera would overexpose and to compensate you would need to dial in an exposure compensation of (say) – 1 stop.

In your case, you told your camera to underexpose by 1 stop (which is why the images were dark), and you used a very high ISO rating (which is why you got camera noise). The lens hood had nothing to do with the darkness of the image.

Using a tripod would be appropriate IF the shutter speed you were getting was below the limit for hand-held shots. This is usually the reciprocal of the focal length you are using, multiplied by the crop factor. So, if you had your lens set to 100mm, on a 1.5x crop body, your lowest shutter speed for hand-held shots would be 1/150 sec. If you had the lens extended to 200mm, the minimum speed would be 1/300 sec.

Now, say you couldn’t use a tripod, and at ISO 100 and F/4.0 you were getting a reading of 1/30 sec. and you wanted to shoot at 200mm. This means you need a minimum shutter speed of 1/300 sec. Your only option here becomes boosting the ISO by 3 ½ stops to ISO 1200. Or use a flash is the subject is close enough.

Piece o cake! (just kidding. It take a while before all of this sinks in and becomes almost automatic. For really good photographers, it does become instinctive).