Digital SLR photography — learning from examples
Published April 19, 2009
In the first article we covered the basic ways SLRs (and other cameras) work. Because when you understand that stuff you’ll start getting a feel for which settings to choose. Now I’ll run through a couple of examples to show it in action. Needless to say, this is just the start to experiencing the fun of taking control of your camera.
PART 1 | PART 2
Bird sitting still in bright sunlight
When your subject isn’t moving it makes things so much easier. First of all, it gives you some time to think about what you’re doing. So instead of worrying about just getting a shot, you can figure out how to make it a good one.
In the picture above, I’d seen a Great Cormorant sitting quietly at the edge of a lake in full sunlight. A strong breeze was making a bit of a mess of distracting waves in the lake behind it (you can see how strong the breeze was by the way those crest feathers are being ruffled) and so I wanted to blur those waves away.
What’s the main priority?
You want to reduce the depth of field, to make the bird stand out and the mess going on behind it to blur away. And you control depth of field with your aperture setting. So there’s your main decision made for you: aperture priority mode.
So you select aperture priority in your mode dial — AV or A or whatever your camera calls it — and choose a small number. Because a small f-number will give you a small depth of field. In this example I opened my lens up to the smallest f-number it could manage, which was f/5.6.
If you look carefully, you can even tell that I chose a big aperture, because I wasn’t able to get the whole bird in focus. I focused on the bird’s eye, which meant that the feathers below its shoulders went a bit soft. But that didn’t worry me, because it also meant those distracting ripples were completely blurred away.
What about the theory?
f/5.6 lets a lot of light through the lens, especially in bright sunlight, so to ensure you don’t over-expose your shot you’d expect the camera to only keep the shutter open for a very short time. And sure enough, it chose 1/2000 of a second, which is mighty fast. This had the added benefit of stopping even the slightest motion blur in that bird’s head.
Fast-moving dragonfly in bright light
In my opinion, the best dragonfly shots show the wings, even if the insect is flying. Now, a flying dragonfly isn’t the easiest photographic subject to work with, but the same rules apply.
First of all, what’s your main priority?
We want to clearly see the dragonfly, including the wings. Those wings are moving quickly so then our priority in this case is to prevent motion blur.
What does that mean for your camera settings?
You want to freeze the action with a fast exposure. That means shutter speed. So your first setting is decided for you: Select shutter speed priority on the mode dial. That might be called TV (Time Value) or it might be an S setting or maybe your camera calls it something different. Once I had flicked the mode dial around to shutter speed priority I chose 1/1250 second for the shot. The camera then took care of the aperture settings for me.
What about the theory?
1/1,250 of a second might be fast enough to freeze the action of a dragonfly wing, but it’s not much time for your camera’s sensor to collect enough light. So your camera’s going to open its lens aperture up a real lot to make up for it, even in bright sunlight. Big aperture (small f-number) means small depth of field, which means the background blurred away. Which was fine by me.
PART 1 | PART 2
