Newbie Questions-- Please Help

[yanksfan]

First Off I am VERY New to Photography, I have a Fuji S700, I believe Its like a Point and Shoot Camera.. So if anyone can get me set on the RIGHT settings for the best photos, I would love it... :hail:

So Here are my Questions:

1. I Love Shooting Wildlife Photography, so anyway I live in West Virginia and all we have here is mountains, so I ride a ATV to access my point of interest. Do you all recommended riding the ATV for wildlife photography?


2. Which Setting Should My Camera Be On?
--Quality ( Options: 03M, 2M, 4M, 3:2M, 7MN, 7MF)

 

[jbushee]

I don't know about your particular camera, but my take has always been to capture at the highest resolution possible, because you can always downsize in Photoshop or Elements, but you can't add resolution.

I set my camera to the max it can give me.

 

[sjjustus]

If you are shooting for nature photography, I'd suggest setting in to a "landscape" mode. This will bring out the rich blue and green tones you'll find outside.

Also, the higher the resolution, the better. Try setting the photo quality to "fine" or the equivalent on your camera.

 

[mrodgers]

As a Fuji S700/5700 shooter myself, how did I miss this one?

Do not go beyond setting the ISO past 400. With a bright sunny day, you can use ISO64 or 100. As the clouds move in, up the ISO to 200.

Inside the house or a building, using the S700 can be difficult. ISO400 gets some pretty good noise in it, but it's still somewhat tolerable. You can fix the noise from ISO400 fairly easily in post processing. ISO 800 or 1600 is useless. Inside a house, unless very very well lit with lights or sunlight through the window, you are going to have some slow shutter speeds around 1/60. This can be tough to shoot handheld as you will easily get camera shake.

I have found that in A (aperture priority) or S (shutter priority) modes, I set the exposure compensation value to -2/3 (shown on the little scale on the LCD). When shooting in Manual mode, I usually put my settings for aperture and shutter to show -2/3 on the display for the light metering (same little scale as the exposure compensation in the other modes).

A nice trick I learned when outside is to turn 90 degrees or more from the sun, use Manual mode, and meter the sky (again, using the -2/3 on the display) and set my aperture and shutter settings from that. Or, I will do the same, except use the palm of my hand or meter on the grass (I'm usually shooting the kids playing in the yard.) I find it works well allowing you to set the camera, then leave it with periodically checking the settings as the sun moves across the sky changing the light conditions.

Set the quality option to 7MF. That is the best resolution and the best image quality the camera will produce. If you need to make images smaller for email or uploading on the web, you can do it in software on the computer.

No, I don't recommend riding an ATV for wildlife photography. I rode ATV's in my younger days, and there has been countless times I've seen wildlife in the distance running away. I also rode mountain bikes and hiked in the woods. There has been countless times that I've ridden the mountain bike around a corner in the trail only to find myself stumbling into the middle of a herd of deer or turkey. If you were an animal in the woods, would you be content to continue on with your foraging or whatever you were doing with a loud screaming ATV blasting towards you? They aren't exactly quite machinery.

The Fuji S700/5700 is a real nice camera. It just takes a lot more work and thought to get anything decent out of it in comparison to a dSLR which is much better for the hobby of photography. I do love my little Fuji though.