Manual Camera settings for the layman

Factual Questions
1

I have a digital prosumer camera and want to fiddle with the manual settings. So for the complete layman, when would I use the different settings. While experimenting is great, I’d like a starting point.

So, let me ask the questions this way, assume the picture is a picture of my daughter standing outside. I realize some of these answers may have other scenarios besides my example, like “use it at night, indoors, for scenery”, etc.

Aperature: when should I raise or lower it?
If I use f2 my picture will __________. Therefore I should use a low setting (or would it be high) when taking a picture of ______.
If I use f16 my picture will __________. Therefore I should use a high (low?) setting when taking a picture of ______.

Shutter speed, when should I raise or lower it?
If I use 1/1000 my picture will __________. Therefore I should use a high setting when taking a picture of ______.
If I use 1/8 my picture will __________. Therefore I should use a low setting when taking a picture of ______.
ISO, when should I raise or lower it?
If I use ISO 80 my picture will __________. Therefore I should use a low setting when taking a picture of ______.
If I use ISO 400 my picture will __________. Therefore I should use a high setting when taking a picture of ______.

Exposure, when should I raise or lower it?
If I use -0.7 my picture will __________. Therefore I should use a low setting when taking a picture of ______.
If I use +0.7 my picture will __________. Therefore I should use a high setting when taking a picture of ______.

2

F-stop is a measure of the size of the opening in the lens thru which light is introduced to the film. A smaller f-stop value means a larger diameter opening. Smaller f-stop settings, as a result of the larger opening require a shorter exposure time for a properly balanced photograph. The other effect of a smaller f-stop setting is a decreased depth-of-field; that is, the zone which which will be “in focus” in your photo, is less than it would be if you used a higher value f-stop; background and foreground elements become fuzzy. Think of it in this regard as squinting.

Shutter speed is exactly what you think it is. Using a shorter exposure duration will enable you to obtain sharp, crisp photos of moving objects. Or when the camera itself is moving. Shorter exposure times require wider f-stop settings (lower f-stop values) in order to permit the same amount of light to reach the film.

With rare exceptions for the amatuer, the ISO setting on the camera should be set to match the ISO setting of the film. Films with higher ISO values absorb light more rapidly than films with lower ISO values.

The three of these things above (exposure settings) all combine to yield what’s called an “Exposure Value,” or “EV.” Wikipedia has excellent information about what goes into calculating exposure values - and the means for determining equivalent exposure values. By looking closely at the table there, the interplay of the relationships between exposure settings should become apparent.

These are adjustments generally made only to override a camera’s automatic exposure settings. Typically a “+” setting will result in the introdution of more light to the film than would be necessary for a “balanced” exposure. And a “-” does exactly the opposite. They are additions to, or subtractions from, the calculated EV.

3

Pictures record light. The three basic ways to get more (or less) light is through the
focal length: the ratio of the opening of the iris of the lens to the recording medium;
shutter speed: the length of time the shutter is open to let in light;
film speed: the sensitivity of the medium (typically film, but now electronic recording media in digital cameras.

In beginner (not necessarily correct) terminology, Focal length controls how much of the scene is in focus. An iris that is shut down (f16) lets the whole picture be in soft focus, but makes individual objects in the picture “soft” or fuzzy.
Shutter speed controls how blurry a phot is, because the longer a shutter is open, the more things in the photo might “move” across the recording medium.
Film speed controls how qucick the medium can absorb and record the light. In the olden days (or among the stricter tolerances of professionals, even today), the “slower” the film, using very many tiny beeads of chemicals could give pictures with much greater detail, but required longer shutter speeds or brighter light to capture the scene. “Faster” films could work in less light, but used fewer beadsof chemicals to do the recording, so could not give the very fine detail (and often looked “washed out” if the light was too bright. The digital cameras, today, are bound by the same laws of physics, even though the technology differs, so most of the same rules apply.

f5.6 will give you medium light and medium depth of field. (Probably similar to how the photo looks, now.)
Opening it up to 1.8 or 2.0 will make the focus sharper if you focused on your daughter, but will make the depth of field smaller, meaning the buildings across the water will by blurry (or make your daughter’s face blurry if you focus across the water). Shutting it down to f16 will mean that everything will be in the field of focus (depth of field), but it will make that focus a lot less sharp. At the same time, it will reduce the light coming into the film so that you would have to hold the shutter open longer or have a much darker picture, overall.

1/1000 of a second shutter speed will let you “stop” motion, preventing blurring, but will not let as much light get to the film, so that you would need to have a more open shutter. 1/1000 at f16 will nearly always be too dark to see unless you are shooting a white sandy beach in bright sun. For any exposure longer than 1/60 of a second, the natural motion of your hand will probably blur the photo. At 1/8 of a second, you can get some great night shots of lit streets, but you need to have the camera on a tripod (or set on a table or bridge railing) to keep the photo from being blurry. (Fireworks and ferris wheels make nice, but blurred, evening shots at 1/8 second. The same shot taken at 1/1000 of a second will simply come out dark (see next).

Back in the ancient days, film was less tolerant and many of us actually carried multiple roles of film and swapped them out when changing scenes between briagfht and dark days. Recently, the “Gold” series of films have (at least for recreational snapshots) become much more tolerant, so that i actually have some scenes shot on 800 film on sandy beaches that are not terribly rotten. In general, if you are shooting inside (especially with no flash) try to use 400, 800, or even higher. If you are out shooting the waves on a beach, use 200, 100, or lower.

Some real photographer will be by to shred my advice, but that is a beginning.

4

Changing the Aperture (in good light, all things being equal) will adjust the Depth of Field. This is the size of the zone that is “in focus”. This allows you to take a sharp image of your daughters face, with the background fuzzy. Reducing aperture reduces the available light, so shutter speed slows down (thus my good light comment). Digital cameras (as opposed to DSLRs) have small lenses and sensors, so you can’t get the very tight DOF effects a 35mm DSLR can, but I have ruined good photos by having the nose in focus and the rest of the face just out of focus.

Shutter speed controls how much light (and for how long) reaches the sensor. Shutter speed will be short (1/1000 -1/250 of a second) in bright light and longer in low light. A fast shutter speed will freeze the action of a fast moving subject, whereas a slower shutter speed will let it blur. In really low light, your shutter speed may be so slow that your hand shaking will blur the shot. Brace the camera or use a tripod. I used 8 second exposures (on a tripod) to try to take pictures of the lunar eclipse a few weeks ago. Also, open the aperture in low light to get a faster shutter speed.

ISO relates to the sensitivity of the sensor. Low ISO numbers are insensitive, and should only be used in very bright circumstances. 100-200 ISO is normal. Higher ISOs are used in low light - the extra sensitivity allows you to use a faster shutter speed than you would normally. You can also use high ISO to get a very fast shutter speed for something that is moving very fast. But digital cameras use amplification to achieve high ISO speeds, and this introduces noise into your picture, so they won’t always look as good. They may also reduce the maximum resolution and add adjacent pixels together to get more sensitivity.

Exposure is a catchall phrase for all of the above. It measures the light hitting the sensor (at multiple points, usually), and computes an average brightness level for the photo that won’t be too dark or have washed out bright areas. Then, when you adjust the exposure, the camera plays with the shutter speed and aperture to get the result you want -0.7 will be darker, and +0.7 will be brighter. My UZ2100 always needed to be stopped down a bit -0.3 on bright blue-sky days, but bright cloud could be difficult, too. You can usually set your camera to bracket - take three or five photos - at lower, normal and higher exposures. This gives you a point of comparison.

On preview - UncleBeer and TomnDebb have typed faster than me. :rolleyes:

Hope this helps

Si

5

Couple of things:

Not quite. The f stop is the ratio of the focal length of the lens divided by the physical size of the aperture.

Again, not quite. The focal length (ignoring zooms for now) is a fixed dimension of a given lens. The f stop controls the size of the aperture which varies how much light is allowed in. A larger f stop equals a smaller aperture equals a greater depth of field. A smaller f stop equals a larger aperture equals a smaller depth of field. Within the depth of field, regardless of aperture, all objects should be quite sharp unless the lens is crap.

6

Exposure is based on the combination of shutter speed, f/stop (aperture, the ratio of focal length to aperture size), and sensitivity.

The basic unit of exposure is often called a “stop”. Increasing exposure by a stop doubles the amount of light forming the picture, decreasing by one stop halves it.

The common (“full”) f/stops are: 1, 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32. Lower f/numbers admit more light than higher f/numbers. 1/2 and 1/3 stops exist. The available f/stops depend on the construction of the lens. Your lowest f/stop is probably around f/4, since it is overwhelming likely to be a zoom lens. Zoom lenses, because of their construction, are not as fast (don’t have lower apertures) as a fixed focal length lens.

Common shutter speeds, in seconds, include: 2, 1, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000, 1/2000. As with f/stops, moving to the next or previous speed halves or doubles the amount of light that enters the camera. 1/2 and 1/3 stops between each also exist.

Film speeds work in the same way. 200 ISO is twice as sensitive as 100 ISO, 400 ISO twice as sensitive as 200 ISO (four times over ISO 100), and so on. The ISO equivelant of a digital camera changes the amount of amplification applied to the signal from the sensor. Increasing the sensitivity often causes the camera to apply increasing amounts of noise reduction, which gives a smeared look to textured surfaces. Many people find the noise reduction effects of higher ISO settings on digital cameras to be worse than the grain of an equivelant film. Therefore, you would want to choose the lowest ISO setting practical for the scene.

Choosing the appropriate settings is based on the camera’s light meter. Once you choose an appropriate ISO speed, adjust the aperture and shutter speed until your meter reads 0.

In general, choose low f/stops when you want to limit depth of field. Depth of field is controlled by 4 factors: the aperture size, the focal length of the lens, the distance to the subject, and the size of the imaging area (sensor or film frame size).

Compared to a 35mm camera, a digital camera will have greater depth of field because the size of the sensor is small and the lens focal length is smaller than a 35mm lens with the same field of view. You will have to experiment to find the best settings for the desired effect. Luckily, you can get instant feedback after you take the picture.

Choose high shutter speeds to freeze action. 1/500 and above give good results with that. Speeds below 1/60 are likely to cause blur from camera shake if you aren’t using a tripod.

Because of the doubling/halving relationship between shutter speeds and f/stops, you have a very large range of possible settings. For example, you might set the camera to f/5.6 and 1/250 and get a proper meter reading, but you want to minimize the depth of field. If you increase the aperture by 2 stops to f/2.8, you would then increase the shutter speed 2 stops to 1/1000, giving you the same exposure, but a different effect.

The EV compensation doesn’t actually change the exposure. Camera meters are designed to assume a scene is a middle tone (18% gray). This is good for most scenes. However, if some part of the scene is greatly off-balance, the meter will be fooled. If the subject is standing in a snowbank, all the snow will make the meter believe there is too much light. The subject will be underexposed. By setting the EV compensation to +1 or thereabouts, you are essentially recalibrating the meter for the scene’s overwhelming brightness. In manual mode, you generally don’t use that. It’s easier and faster to change the aperture or f/stop directly. You can take one shot at the meter-recommended setting, then one or two more with an increased exposure and pick the best one, which is known as bracketing.

7

On my Canon, there is a mode where you can manually set the aperature value, and the camera with adjust the shutter speed based on the light levels. If yours has this feature, try using it with the same subject with different aperature values to get a feel for what happens. The depth of field is most noticable when close to something, like on macro mode (if the lens has that).

To get a feel for slow shutter speeds, find some running water, like a waterfall, and try out different shutter speeds.

8

Keep in mind that the relative small sensor size of most non-SLR digital cameras means that it’s very hard to get a shallow DOF. This makes it more difficult to get the bokah effect (background all blurry, subject in perfect focus) that is very nice for portraits.

9

Without going into the nitty gritty of how aperture, shutter speed, and iso are inter-related, I will try to answer what aesthetically changing these settings will do.

When you want to control the depth of field. Higher f/stop = more depth of field (more in focus), lower f/stop means low depth of field (thin plane of focus). If you want a good all-purpose f/stop, 5.6 or 8 will do fine.

For portraits, use a telephoto, get in close, focus on the eye nearest the camera, and use the lowest f/stop on your lens to get that foreground in focus-background out of focus look.

For landscapes, you often want to be shooting wide, f/16 or higher, to get everything in your scene in focus.

Here’s a good video tutorial that will show you depth of field. Pay attention to the portrait examples.

When you want to stop quick motion (fast shutter speeds, usually at least 1/250 sec) or if you want to play with motion blur (usually at 1/15 of a second or slower.)

For most situations, I decide on an aperture first, and then just use the shutter speed that comes along with it for the correct exposure. Exceptions would be, of course, those situations in which shutter speed is the more important creative consideration (sports, action, motion blur effects, etc…)

In general, use the lowest ISO you can to get the exposure you need and avoid motion blur. Higher ISO = more noise. Lower ISO = less noise (almost always, although 50 ISO on some cameras is slightly noisier than 100 ISO).

If your scene has a lot of black in it, the meter will usually overexpose, and you’ll want to dial back (-EV) the exposure. If your scene has a lot of white areas in it (snow, for instance), it will have a tendency to underexpose and you’ll want to compensate by dialling up (+EV) the exposure. Strongly backlit situations will also often fool your meter, and you’ll want to dial up your exposure on those, too. Use your LCD screen on the back of your camera (and learn how to read histograms) to see what happens.

10

Aperature: when should I raise or lower it?
If I use f2 my picture will have shallow depth of field(DoF = range of distances which appear in focus). Therefore I should use a low setting (or would it be high) when taking a picture of something I wish to isolate from background.
If I use f16 my picture will have large depth of field. Therefore I should use a high (low?) setting when taking a picture of a scene where I want as much as possible in focus.

Shutter speed, when should I raise or lower it?
If I use 1/1000 my picture will freeze moving objects. Therefore I should use a high setting when taking a picture of fast movement which I want frozen - e.g. sports.
If I use 1/8 my picture will show moving objects as blurred. Therefore I should use a low setting when taking a picture of **moving objects to give a sensation of movement OR static scenes where I wish to use a smaller aperture for increased depth of field (see above) - taking care to use a support to avoid camera shake. **
ISO, when should I raise or lower it?
If I use ISO 80 my picture will be at its sharpest. Therefore I should use a low setting when taking a picture of normally anything where I have sufficient light to get sensible speed/aperture combo.
If I use ISO 400 my picture will show increased ‘noise’ (dependant on camera). Therefore I should use a high setting when taking a picture of a scene in lower light where I am unable to use a tripod or need to freeze action. Using film it is sometimes desirable to have grainy pics for artistic reasons but IMHO digital noise is less pleasing in this respect.

Exposure, when should I raise or lower it?
If I use -0.7 my picture will darken. Therefore I should use a low setting when taking a picture of a scene where the highlights are a little too bright and lack detail.
If I use +0.7 my picture will lighten. Therefore I should use a high setting when taking a picture of scenes where I wish to show more detail in the shadow areas.

11

I am simply astounded by the responses. Not a single “take a picture with the different settings and see what looks right.” These are extremely helpful and I can’t wait to experiment with some new knowledge.

Thanks all!

12

True. But I would certainly encourage you to go and try the different settings to see what they do. Go outside and take a portrait at f/2.8, f/8, f/22 (or whatever your maximum and minimum apertures are). Observe the difference. Digital cameras are awesome because they give us unlimited experimentation. This can be both a bane and a curse. Use the power for good, experiment a lot, and learn from your mistakes.
We’re more than happy to give you pointers and rules of thumb, but I really believe you don’t learn until you do it wrong.

You also have the luxury of digital recording all your settings for you, so you can compare exactly what different settings in the same situation look like. Out of curiosity, what are you shooting with? Is it a dSLR? If so, what lenses do you have for it? Focal length is another very important consideration to shooting, and focal length is not just a matter of how wide or how tight you want the picture to be, but also affects the relationship of the foreground and background. But this might be another lesson for another day.

13

The overwhelming advantage of digital cameras is that it costs the same amount of money to take 100 pictures as it does to take three.

So, try every setting you have in several situations, and subjects. Look at the results. If you find what you like, keep that in mind.

Tris

14

Blessing and a curse, darn it!

15

Also, your camera may have some real tricks up its sleeve.

Mine - a Panasonic FZ30 - has a mode where it computes the optimum exposure (which you can fiddle with), then lets you shift the aperture or shutter speed while keeping the overall exposure the same.

So you can really see the how changing the shutter speed requires changes to the aperture, and vice versa, and how those changes impact the picture.

Read the manual with your new knowledge - you may find your camera does something similar.

Also, the evf/screen should indicate when you have moved something too far for a good shot - usually one of the displays for aperture/shutter speed will turn red, indicating that you have gone too far, and risk a ruined photo. When I have one shot at a photo, I always go back to full auto, composition be damned. If I have more time and a compliant subject, I can try a few things.

Si

16

I just wanted to add my $.02, that one of my biggest frustrations with so much technology is that I am able to learn this kind of thing - but unless I keep doing it on a regular basis, I forget it and need to relearn it the next time I need to use it again.

We have a Canon Rebel XT - really nice digital camera. I spent some time figuring how to get decent pictures of my aquaria - a kinda odd shot because of the lighting, movement of the fish, etc. And the different lighting on my different aquaria required different settings. Well, on a couple of occasions I have spent a couple of hours and gotten some nice shots. But spending the time changing settings, downloading the shots, comparing and culling the images, and then recording the results is not something I consider fun. Usually, by the time I start to narrow in on the best settings, I’m getting tired of the process, which leads to my not adequately documenting my results in a way that I can easily follow up on them at a later date.

I realize this is largely my fault rather than the technology’s. But just wanted to observe that IME, if you are not interested in the hobby of photography and are not willing to do it regularly enough to develop and maintain some expertise, you might experience frustration similar to mine.

17

It’s a Hasselblad H3D

Okay, I use a Kodak Z612 and practice with a Canon XTi

18

Set the shutter speed to 1/ the ISO film speed and set the aperture to f/16 for pictures on a bright sunny day. Increase the shutter speed and open the lens one stop at a time together, and you get the same exposure but better at freezing motion. Go the other way and it’s better at seeing objects at different distances sharply. Open a stop for clouds, another stop or two for heavy clouds, another stop or two for indoors without flash.

19

We played around with those a month or so ago. Friggen $850 just to rent for a day! I simply cannot believe the resolution on those things. You can read individual names on the walk of stars in Hollywood (or whatever it’s called) from a picture taken 500 feet up. Incredible.

The XTi is a great camera. You’ll have fun with it.

20

Excellent advice in this thread.

As usual, I will once again pimp what I consider to be one of the best overall books for understanding what’s going on when you are engaged in photography, Understanding Photography, by Carl Shipman.

There are two versions, a 1974 printing, and reworked 1987 (or 1988) version. Both are good. True, it was written in the days of film photography, but most of the principles are the same. The book is still widely available used, from Amazon, eBay, local library sales, etc…

Mr Shipman explains the hows, whats, and whys of the photographic experience while still maintaining a love for the joy of photography itself. When I taught photography (early 80s), I made sure my students had a copy. Even after I made the switch to mostly digital, I still refer to this marvelous tool from time to time. The language is easy, the diagrams and examples are excellent. Even discussions of the gammas of films is helpful to understand what light is doing beyond the lens. Of course, you’ll need to supplement this book with some modern stuff on digital image manipulation (both in camera and via photo manipulation software.)

The most important thing I want to say is Enjoy Photography. Push yourself, learn, try, learn some more. You won’t regret it. (I say you won’t regret it because the pics I looked thru of what you posted show that it’s already a joy to you.)