Today's Experiment

[kass617]

These pictures aren't meant to be artistic, or anything like that. This is me sitting on my front steps tonight taking pictures of my neighbors bushes, messing with the manual settings. Does my progression of settings make sense? Or should I have approached it differently after the first picture? Should I have just kept the ISO at 400 for the last one, and maybe had a slower shutter speed, etc.? Just trying to get an idea of how to approach shots better... any tips are appreciated.

1.)Manual mode, 1/320, f11, ISO 400, 105mm

2.)Manual mode, 1/100, f11, ISO 400, 105mm

3.) Manual mode, 1/40, f7.1, ISO 640, 105mm

 

[BuS_RiDeR]

Interesting experiment.

I think the progression is great...

A bit of color enhancement in PP would add a lot to this... Just as an example....

 

[reznap]

Are you using your light meter? If you read it properly you should get a much better starting image (you want it somewhere near the middle ). Also, how do you know to turn up exposure? Are you reading the histogram or just looking at what the photo appears like on the camera's LCD?

 

[Ryan L]

My tip is to shoot in AV and TV (Aperture and Shutter priority), if you haven't already done so. It will help you associate all the settings. Example; You are on AV, you want a shallow depth of field so you change your aperture to F1.8, the shutter speed is say 1/800 and is automatically set for you. Change your aperture to 5.6 and you shutter speed will slow down to let a similar amound of light to say 1/100. (The numbers were all just thrown in for the example). TV is the same concept only you set the shutter speed and it automatically picks the aperture. It's a semi-auto mode that might be easier instead of so much trial and error.

 

[reznap]

My tip is to shoot in AV and TV (Aperture and Shutter priority), if you haven't already done so. It will help you associate all the settings. Example; You are on AV, you want a shallow depth of field so you change your aperture to F1.8, the shutter speed is say 1/800 and is automatically set for you. Change your aperture to 5.6 and you shutter speed will slow down to let a similar amound of light to say 1/100. (The numbers were all just thrown in for the example). TV is the same concept only you set the shutter speed and it automatically picks the aperture. It's a semi-auto mode that might be easier instead of so much trial and error.

On Nikon's it's A for aperture priority mode, S for shutter priority.. unless I'm mistaken, not Av and Tv like on Canon bodies.
(OP shoots a D90)

 

[Ryan L]

On Nikon's it's A for aperture priority mode, S for shutter priority.. unless I'm mistaken, not Av and Tv like on Canon bodies.
(OP shoots a D90)

Yeah I think your right, thats why I put the names in parentheses so they could put 2 and 2 together.

 

[Dominantly]

I would start off with ISO 200, f/5.6, and then dial your shutter in via your light meter.
You'll want the fastest shutter speed you can get when shooting handheld. You'll also want to keep the ISO as low as possible.
So open up your aperture, then dial your Shutter down; if it goes too low then that's when you can start turning your ISO up.

 

[kass617]

Are you using your light meter? If you read it properly you should get a much better starting image (you want it somewhere near the middle ). Also, how do you know to turn up exposure? Are you reading the histogram or just looking at what the photo appears like on the camera's LCD?

Well the first shot, I kinda just shot it and saw it was dark. For the second picture, I made shutter speed adjustments and nothing else (and the light meter seemed to line up), and it came out a little better than the first, but still way too dark, So I decided my changes needed to be more drastic, so I cut the shutter speed again, and then went from f11 to f7.1 and boosted the ISO and got the last shot. Would I have gotten a similar result if would have left the ISO at 400 and just went to 1/20 or 1/10 and? But I figured since this was handheld, It would get blurry.

Thanks for all the input guys.