Make it better?

[forceofnature]

Can you explain that to me?

Here are two more that I did. It seriously amazes me how different a shot can look just by changing the settings and/or mode the camera is set in. I have always liked taking pictures but this camera and this forum have taught me so much.

This first shot is with the aperture at F/29. Dumb question? Do I want it higher or lower to open it up more?

To open it up the lower the F stop number the more open it is to receiving light. With that you reduce your depth of field but for landscape photo like that with F stop high or low it doesn't matter much especially since you are using a tripod. If you are not using a tripod then you want as much light as possible to increase shutter speed so you do not get motion blur from camera shake.

Spot metering will help depending on what you want to see in the image. If you want to see a dramatic sunset then meter off the sky. If you want to see more boat then meter off the boat.

With HDR you can get the best of both. Use tripod and set a constant f-stop then in the camera step of and down the stops capturing multiple images. You will then be able to combine the images and get a pretty cool image.

Sometimes HDR is not a good choice, but for a nice sunset like that it works.

 

[hvp05]

I was getting confused and I know what you're talking about...

If you get to close to the brightness of the sun you will end up with a much darker picture overall. If you meter in the shadows you will have a sky that is off the charts bright.

LM, your camera's light meter - and, in turn, your exposure - are on a sliding scale from black to white, shadow to highlight. The key to capturing what you see is, ironically, not 'seeing' it your way, but the camera's way. And the camera's way is to land on middle gray.

If you look at the two originals, the clouds in the first showed nice detail which means they were at or near mid-gray, meanwhile everything else fell into darkness; in the other the scale bumped up so the boats and trees were at mid-gray with detail but the sky was gone.

This takes a great - read, great - deal of practice and more information than I can cram into one post... but you will need to learn what middle gray is and how to find it in a given scene. Once you begin to see the way your camera does you can achieve proper exposure, and play with that scale to acquire a particular look. Then you can work in that "M" mode more often, because that's where the party is.

With that you reduce your depth of field but for landscape photo like that with F stop high or low it doesn't matter much especially since you are using a tripod.

It may not matter much, depending where the focusing point is. If you focus on something 50 or 100 feet away (e.g., those boats) the important stuff will be in focus and the stuff near to you should return a pleasant blur. But if you focus on something near the distant objects will be blurry. If you do have a tripod, focus on the nearest important object, stop down the f-stop (to 16+), and let your shutter speed go where it may (1/20s or whatever).