ISO, Apterture, shutter speed setting questions

[HFPhotography]

I am struggling with a couple concepts regarding camera setting. I have a few upcoming family holiday sessions outdoors and probably in the rain and I am nerves about them. So I shoot with a cannon XTI digital that has a 50mm 1.8f lens. If we are shooting in the early evening and in the shade should I be moving my ISO up to 400? to be able to shoot with out camera shake or blur? I usually shoot in aperture mode and shoot with a 1.8f and then it chooses the shutter speed on 100iso. One of my biggest struggles with groups is not everyone is in focus and with family and kids they move to fast. Also sometimes I want everything in focused or most of the background in focused along with the people so I move my f-stop up to a 5.6 or more but then shutter speed slows down and I get a lot of blur, at that point would it tell me to move up my ISO? Is it the lens? Last question if I am doing rain shoots and it gloomy out with not a tone of light but we are still out side would a good starting place be shooting in apt mode or shutter speed with a 400 ISO and then use my flash on fill flash (flash always give me red eye)? I hope this all make since sorry if its jumbled. Any tips or help would be great!

 

[chito beach]

These are very good questions

Your ISO will need to go up, ISO is a hold over from the film days, the higher the number the faster the film. Your camera will be able to shoot at ISO 400 without any big change in grain.

on F stops the basically the larger the number the larger the Depth of Field or the more stuff in the shot is in focus. at 1.8 at 15ft your DOF is only around 3" to 6" at F5.6 it increases into several feet in depth. So you will need to move the ISO up and the F stop into a middle range to increase your DOF and you shold be able to shoot around 1/100 second. Your site conditions will vary what I just said......so play around first with family members and test what happens in different situations, dont wait till the big day!

 

[kundalini]

Your manual and this book, Amazon.com: Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera (9780817439392): Bryan Peterson: Books, will help you get a grip on the concept of proper exposure.

 

[chito beach]

Your manual and this book, Amazon.com: Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera (9780817439392): Bryan Peterson: Books, will help you get a grip on the concept of proper exposure.

experimentation is the best teacher. change 1 perimeter at a time and see the results.

 

[kundalini]

So perusing the manual is not advised?

 

[chito beach]

So perusing the manual is not advised?

Sure it is but until you put into practice what you read you will learn little.

Especially as poorly as most camera manuals are written.

adults learn best buy applying a concept as opposed to reading.

 

[table1349]

Your manual and this book, Amazon.com: Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera (9780817439392): Bryan Peterson: Books, will help you get a grip on the concept of proper exposure.

experimentation is the best teacher. change 1 perimeter at a time and see the results.

That's what they told the first guy to try poisonous toad stools. And the second, and the third.:mrgreen:

 

[table1349]

So perusing the manual is not advised?

Sure it is but until you put into practice what you read you will learn little.

Especially as poorly as most camera manuals are written.

adults learn best buy applying a concept as opposed to reading.

Actually adults and children for that matter learn best by understanding a concept the putting that concept to use.

OP buy the suggested book, read it and apply what you learned. Brian Petterson's book should have a sticky all it's own.

 

[dustin0479]

Your manual and this book, Amazon.com: Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera (9780817439392): Bryan Peterson: Books, will help you get a grip on the concept of proper exposure.

+1 to the recommendation of "Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson"

It is a wonderful book with much information, you will be amazed at the difference in your portraits after reading the book (assuming you take the time to actually absorb the info).

 

[Babs]

Your manual and this book, Amazon.com: Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera (9780817439392): Bryan Peterson: Books, will help you get a grip on the concept of proper exposure.

+1

It's a great book. I've learned so much from it. It's well written and has good exercises that you can put into practice and understand what he's saying. Well worth the money!

 

[o hey tyler]

I'd hold off on any paid shoots until you understand how your camera and the exposure triangle works better.

 

[white]

The 50mm f/1.8 should give you some options in terms of what camera settings to use.

Basically it all boils down to this: when you point your camera at a scene, your camera meter is telling you what settings you need to adjust in order to achieve an average of tones, called middle gray or 18% gray.

You have three choices as to how you want to make those camera adjustments, and they all have drawbacks. You can adjust the shutter, but the lower you go, the higher the potential for motion blur. So 1/60 is a good baseline.

Or you can adjust aperture. That's why your 50mm gives you options, because you can open it all the way up to 1.8, which is big. Lenses that can open up wide like that -- lenses with wide aperture capability -- are said to be "fast" because they enable you to photograph in low-light situations. The drawback to using a wide aperture is that the image tends to be less sharp the wider you go, but it's not a deal breaker.

Finally, you can adjust iso. People like low ISO numbers like 100 because there is little noise. Noise is different from film grain. Noise looks like shit. Film grain is beautiful. Most DSLRs can do 800 ISO with little noise.

In your situation, your shutter will probably have to be locked at 1/125 or even 1/250, because of your moving targets. So right away you know you only have two settings available that can be adjusted.

Since you are shooting three-dimensional things, you will want to make sure you have sufficient depth of field. Depth of field is defined as the range of sharpness in a photo, and the wider your aperture goes, like f/4 down to f/1.8, the smaller that range gets. But depth of field is also determined by lens focal length and camera-subject distance, so your 50mm will enable you to get reasonable depth of field even at f/2.8, provided you are standing far enough away from your subjects to get them all in the frame.

So your settings thus far are f.2.8 @ 1/125.

I personally like to adjust ISO last. I shoot film, so it's the equivalent of swapping out film mid-roll. Not something I want to do unless I have to. So when you meter the scene, if those two settings above are not adequate to give you a good exposure, then you need to adjust the ISO. If your meter says the scene is 2 stops underexposed, and you're at ISO 100, then you will need to increase the ISO sensitivity.

Changing camera settings is easy. You just need to decide early on which settings cannot change, and which ones can be adjusted. In your situation, since you're photographing things that move, you know right away that your shutter will have to be fast enough to stop motion, and that means somewhere around 1/125. That is a locked setting, it can't change. So all you do is tweak the other two settings to suit your needs.

 

[kassad]

+1 on Understanding Exposure

 

[KmH]

Better yet:

Understanding Depth of Field in Photography
Understanding Your Camera Lens's Hyperfocal Distance
Understanding Camera Autofocus

and all the rest too: Digital Photography Tutorials

 

[chito beach]

Better yet:

Understanding Depth of Field in Photography
Understanding Your Camera Lens's Hyperfocal Distance
Understanding Camera Autofocus

and all the rest too: Digital Photography Tutorials

Good job. There are also many, many good videos out there that explain all on youtube for those of us who only retain a small percentage of what we read LOL