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Monday, January 11, 2010

Bloggy friends help me out

I know a lot of you love to take pics..so help a girl out. I am very type A I don't like to not do stuff right the first time.

I know there is a learning curve.

I have tried to start off shooting manual. Some are great, some are crap. Some are blue as heck, which I would think would mean, I need to adjust the white balance.

I went outside with Houston today and took a few pics close to sunset, I had the ISO set at 800 I think. I had the f stop at like 5...I am so clueless as when to use what. I got a magic lantern guide and the dang thing tells me nothing for my camera. It did come with a dvd I need to watch.

The camera takes beautiful pics on automatic so it is TOTALLY user error.

Help a girl out...what ISO do you use the most, can you help me out with white balance,f-stop etc.

I know there are no "generic" answers but anything would help.

I have two lenses...

The Kit lense 18-55mm and a 55-200mm f/4-5.6 .

Any pointers :P

4 comments:

Brandy said...

I can't help you out a lot but I can tell you what I do. Typically, I do not go above ISO 400. Most of the time I use ISO 100 or 200. How was the lighting outside? It would depend on what kind of light I had outside as to what I would set my aperature and shutter speed.

Erin Hollis/Lens Envy Photography said...

I leave my ISO at 200-400 when I'm outside and/or in good light. ISO's are like the worker bees that go out and find light for you so you don't need a high ISO when you are already in good light. Use a higher ISO in dim places. The problem with high ISO's is that it creates a lot of noise in your photo--makes it look fuzzy so only use a high number when absolutely necessary. And yes, if your photo looks blue, you need to set the white balance. I usually keep my white balance on an automatic setting because I don't have time to fool around with it throughout a photo shoot.

Ariana Sullivan said...

I highly recommend the book "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson.

For white balance at sunset I use either cloudy white balance or auto. I don't know if your pictures turned out too dark or light so I can't really help you with which ISO and f-stop to use.
If they were too dark then use a lower f-stop number like 3.5 or 2.8.
Keep practicing! It'll take a LOTLOTLOT of practice to get to know that camera!

~~~~~ The House of Big Cheese~~~~ said...

Thanks. Barnes and Noble was supposed to be holding Understanding Exposure book and they had some other Peterson book when I got there, it was in the store they weren't sure where :P

I will upload a blue pic and one I took on sunset mode so you can compare.

I have been keeping it at 200 or so during normal light and they look fine...it's when the lighting is bad that I have issues :P

The pics were too dark so I guess I needed to lower the f-stop.

Yeah, I will take mostly good pics on day in natural light and will be encouraged take some the next day and it looks like I have never used a camera before :P

Thanks ya'll.

The other issue is I wish I could find a field guide for my camera...no luck yet :P