Q

[eeoconne]

Hi everyone, I'm very excited to find this forum!!! I have always loved taking pictures, but am now trying to really understand my camera and all it's functions. I'm very interested in portrait photography!!! I have 2 young sons and love to capture their personalities as they grow. I am also the one that my friends come to around Christmas time to ask to take pics of their families or children. I mostly have been taking these pics outside. I really enjoy it, but want to learn to get better. So here goes with a few questions:
Q1: I have been using my Cannon 50 mm lense and love it. The only thing I'm finding is that I seem to get quite a few blurry pics, especially with the little kids. I have my camera set to AV mode and usually use f-stop of 5.6. I haven't been confident enough to try to set the shutter speed.
Does anyone have any tips to help me out. I know I have a lot to learn.
Q2: What is the photo editing software people use most?
Q3: I hear of people shooting in Raw. At what point should I consider shooting in this mode (I'm clueless here) and what is the benefit to me??
Thanks so much for all your help!!!

 

[white]

Q1: I have been using my Cannon 50 mm lense and love it. The only thing I'm finding is that I seem to get quite a few blurry pics, especially with the little kids. I have my camera set to AV mode and usually use f-stop of 5.6. I haven't been confident enough to try to set the shutter speed.

Shutter and aperture is a give and take relationship. In AV mode, you're telling the camera you want to control the aperture, and the shutter is left up to the camera to decide. What's happening is your camera is trying to create a well exposed photo for you, but since you're shooting at f/5.6, in order to make that well exposed photo, the camera has to choose a slow shutter speed, depending on the light. You can try a couple things: 1. use a wider f/stop, like 2.8; or 2. switch to shutter priority and leave it on 1/60 or 1/25.

Q2: What is the photo editing software people use most?

Photoshop.

Q3: I hear of people shooting in Raw. At what point should I consider shooting in this mode?

When you want to sell your work, and when you know what you're doing, and when you want a high quality image, and when you have the software to work with RAW files.

JPEG is totally fine for family snaps, and for learning.

Thanks so much for all your help!!!

 

[kassad]

#1 Since you mentioned small kids specifically I'm guessing you mean motion blur as opposed to being out of focus. I would recommend going to a lower f stop and or increasing your ISO. This will increase your shutter speed.

#2 I use ACDSee Pro for most things and am learning Gimp for more advanced work.

#3 Shooting in Raw gives you more flexibility in post processing. I consider myself still a beginner so use mostly jpeg. As I get more experienced with processing I'll shoot more in RAW

 

[Vinny]

1) Blurry photos happen because of different reasons - motion blur from the subject moving, motion blur from the camera moving and out of focus focusing.

What Canon camera are you using? I'm not a Canon person but there are lots here that may be able to help you out with Canon specific questions.

What ISO are you using? Are you using Auto Focus or trying to focus manually? Have you tried the camera on something stationary?

2) I would say that 95% or more people use either Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. There are freebies out there such as GIMP, Picasa and Photoscape. There are less expensive software such as Adobe Elements, Corel Paintshop, AcDsee and others but the "Best" is probably the Adobe lightroom and Photoshop. Photoshop, Lightroom and GIMP probably have the highest learning curve but do the most.

3) RAW is an uncompressed and untouched file that the camera has taken. JPEG is what most people are accustomed to and the camera has done things to the photo. By shooting RAW you have more control over what the software can do to the photo and ultimately how it looks. Benefit ... it depends - better picture quality but you have to tweak the photo vs shooting JPEG. If your shooting family snapshots - probably not much benefit other than if a photo came out horrible you may be able to save it. You also may bog down your computer if you shoot in RAW; a RAW file is larger than a JPEG and older computers will chug along (I had one and it did chug at times!). If you decide to shoot RAW I believe GIMP is the only free one that will really work, all the paid ones will work. I wouldn't worry about the processing end until you are comfortable using your camera; trying to learn too many things at once will be difficult.

 

[eeoconne]

Thanks so much for your advice!!!