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Position:Home>Visual Arts> Taken pics...?Question: Taken pics!.!.!.!? i'm not a bad photographer, most ppl tell me i'm good, but all those things on my menu of my digital camera are a mistery to me, the things like ISO and white balance and EV!. i think i could make my pics much better than they already are if i knew how to adjust these myself than letting the camera think for me!. so if you could explane them to me or give me a link to a website that explanes all that, that would be coolWww@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Yeah, changing the settings manually is better!. Leaving a camera on automatic mode is fine for getting okay snapshots!. But if you're really serious about photography, it's better to use manual mode!. In fact, I tell people if they're really serious about wanting to learn more about photography, they should get a completely manual film camera or a digital SLR!. ISO is a measurement of light sensitivity!. How sensitive film or the sensor in a digital camera is to light!. The higher the ISO number, the more the light sensitivity!. So ISO 400 is more sensitive than ISO 200!. A higher ISO means that you can take pictures with less light!. But there's a tradeoff!. A higher ISO also causes more grain in pictures!. In fact, anything above 400 will look pretty bad!. I would recommend leaving the ISO at 200!. For getting pictures in low light, it's better to just use a longer exposure (with a tripod)!. Basically, there are 3 ways to control exposure with a camera, and this applies to both film and digital cameras!. The ISO number, the shutter speed, and the aperture!. The ISO is the light sensitivity!. The shutter speed is how long the shutter stays open when you press the button, and the aperture is the opening in the lens that allows light in!. Obviously, a larger aperture will increase the exposure, and a smaller aperture will decrease the exposure!. The aperture is sort of like the iris in your eye!. It uses settings called "F-stops!." The exposure of a picture is determined by the aperture size and the shutter speed!. How much light you let in, and for how long the shutter stays open!. That's kind of simplifying things a bit, because there is also another factor that comes in, called "depth of field!." But you can read more about that later!. If you really want to get into photography, you will need to learn about these things though!. The problem is, most digital point and shoot cameras don't give you that much control, and they don't have real F-stops or shutter speed settings :( The white balance can also be called the "color temperature!." Think of a spectrum, from blue to red!. Different kinds of light will give a different color tone to your pictures!. An overcast day, for example, might give a very cold tone to your pictures, so you'd want to change the color temperature slightly to the red side of the spectrum to give warmer colors!. also, indoor lighting has a different temperature than outdoor sunlight!. So you might want to adjust the white balance if you take pictures outside!. If you have the white balance set for tungsten lighting, and you take pictures outside, you might notice that all your pictures have a kind of orangish tint!. This is because the camera is picking up the different tone in the lighting!. So you would want to change the white balance on your camera to "sunny," or if you can change it completely manually, just adjust it slightly to the blue spectrum!. I hope some of this makes sense!. But yeah, it will help to read as much as you can!.Www@QuestionHome@Com Your best bet would be to go grab a 'Photography for Dummies' book!. It is an excellent resource for explaining all of your questions about using the camera!. Don't think I'm calling you a dummy!. Those are some of the best reference books available and they are very easy to understand!. I have over 30 of them, myself!. Good luck! :)Www@QuestionHome@Com read the manual that came with the camera!.!.!.!.it will cover all of those topics/iconsWww@QuestionHome@Com |