Talking about a project for the weekend...

[Joe'smom]

Here is an article from the "photoshopelementsight".com
I thought it was pretty cool and gave a good workout for the modes we arent used to using.

Experiment with your camera to see the effect different camera settings have on an image. Try the exercise below, this will help you to realize what your camera is doing.


Program Mode (P)

1) Set your camera on P mode and take a picture and pay attention to what the aperture and shutter speed were that the camera used - write them down.


Manual Mode (M)

2) Set your camera on M (manual) mode and dial in the aperture and shutter speed that you wrote down in step one - take another picture of the same subject...it should look identical to the picture you took in step one.

3) Leave the shutter speed as is and start adjusting the aperture wider and tighter and take a bunch of pictures and watch how the images change.

4) Go back to the original settings in step one and now leave the aperture the same and try different shutter speeds to see how it impacts the image. When adjusting the shutter speed, it will look like a number. If the number is 60 then that means your shutter speed is 1/60th of a second. 500= 1/500th of a second. If you see quotation marks then that means it's now talking in terms of seconds instead of fractions. For example 1"5 = 1.5 seconds, 3" = 3 seconds, "3 = 0.3 seconds.



Aperture Priority Mode (Av)

5) Now switch off from manual mode and switch to aperture priority mode. Set the aperture to the same aperture you recorded in step 1 and start adjusting the aperture up and down and take a few pictures. Each picture SHOULD look the same because as you adjust the aperture, the shutter speed is automatically being set by the camera to give you an 18% gray image.

It shows 6 different scenarios each of which will give you the same amount of light to expose the image.


Exposure Compensation while in Aperture Priority

6) Now...put the aperture back to the step 1 setting, and now adjust the EXPOSURE COMPENSATION and take a few more pictures and observe how your aperture stays the same but your shutter speed is changing. When you do this, your image will either get lighter or darker depending on which way you adjusted the exposure compensation.



Shutter Priority Mode (Tv or Sh)

7) Switch over to shutter priority mode and put the shutter speed to that from step one. Adjust the shutter speed up and down and take a few images. Again, every image should have the same amount of exposure because as you adjust the shutter speed, the aperture is automatically being adjusted by the camera to give you 18% gray.


Exposure Compensation while in Shutter Priority

8) Put the shutter speed back to the step 1 setting, and now adjust the EXPOSURE COMPENSATION and take a few more images and pay attention to what happens to the aperture.


ISO

9) Put your camera back to aperture priority mode and now start adjusting the ISO up and down and observe how the shutter speed can get faster as the ISO gets increased. Again, the higher the ISO, the more sensitive the camera is to light so you no longer need to leave the shutter open as long.

White Balance

10) Put your camera on P mode and now start adjusting the white balance and take a few pics with each adjustment and watch what happens to the color of the image with the different white balance settings.


You've now tested ALL the major functions on a camera...now you just need to practice with it more...

 

[jbr13]

Here are a couple of things to think about while adjusting shutter speeds and apertures.

Shutter speed: Stops are steps in shutter speed and aperture to change your amount of light by doubles or halves from you starting point.

Example: If you take a picture at 1/250 of a second shutter speed to start with, and want to increase your amount of light by one stop, you would change your shutter speed to 1/125. This would keep you shutter open twice as long letting twice the light it. If you want to decrease your light by one stop, you would change your shutter speed from 1/250 to 1/500 of a second. This would let half the light in as at 1/250.

I know there are step in shutter speed in between these when you are changing in your camera but these are the actuall full stops. Anything in between is just 1/3 stops.

1/1000
1/500
1/250
1/125
1/60
1/30
1/15
1/8
1/4
1/2
1 sec



You can do the same thing with your aperture by adjusting it one stop down or one stop up. Again stops are just specific steps. Aperture stops are shown in the attached image. You can see how the opening doubles or halves in size as you go up and down. Remember 2.8 is really a large opening, and f16 is a much smaller opening.

F1.4, F2, F2.8, F4, F5.6, F8, F16 are the aperture steps

These stops work pretty much the same as adjusting the shutter stops. If you start at F5.6 and move to F4 you are going to let double the light in. If you start at F5.6 and move to F8 you are going to cut your light in half.

So how does this help you???

Sometimes you want fast shutter speed or slower one. If you have a good exposure at 1/250 Shutter speed and F4 and you want a faster shutter speed because that setting gave you motion blur, you can move your shutter speed up one stop(1/500) and your aperture down one stop(F2.8) and this would give you the same exposure.

With the exercise above you will see as you adjust your shutter speed up and down the picture gets brighter and darker as you let more and less light in. Then the same thing again as you adjust your aperture.