Common Photography Questions From Beginners, 4-6
04 Why are my shots blurry?
Image Stabilisation (IS) is great for helping to avoid ‘camera shake’ when shooting handheld, as it enables you to use fairly slow shutter speeds to get sharp shots, but to get sharp shots of moving subjects you’ll need a fast shutter speed to freeze your subject’s movement.
This counts for all moving subjects, even if they’re only moving very slightly, such as people, insects, boats in harbours, etc.
The best way to control shutter speed is to shoot using the Shutter Priority mode; you set the shutter speed, and your camera will set the aperture for a sharp shot.
If the lighting conditions are flat and your shutter speeds are still too slow to freeze any action in shot, then increase your ISO setting (try ISO400, 800 or 1600) to obtain a faster shutter speed – eg 1/250 sec instead of 1/25 sec.
05 Why would I want to control depth of field?
Depth of field is one of the most powerful camera effects available to photographers. Being able to decide how to direct people’s eye to certain aspects of a scene, by blurring the foreground and background, can have a dramatic effect on your results.
So how do you control depth of field? With your aperture setting! This varies depending on your lens.
Using a wide aperture (eg f/4 or f/5.6) captures a shallow depth of field, blurring backgrounds to help subjects stand out; conversely, a narrow aperture (eg f/16 or f/22) captures a large depth of field, keeping everything from foreground to background ‘acceptably’ sharp.
Be aware that changing the aperture affects shutter speed. A wide aperture lets in more light, so you need a faster shutter speed for an accurate exposure; a narrow aperture lets in less light, so you’ll need a slower shutter speed.
06 What is an exposure?
An exposure is, most basically, the image that’s captured by your DSLR’s sensor, and its ‘brightness’ is dictated by two main ingredients that you can set – aperture and shutter speed (your ISO setting will also influence your exposure, but don’t worry about ISO unless you’re concerned about shutter speeds, see below).
The combination of aperture and shutter speed will determine how bright or dark your exposure appears.
Your DSLR will take accurate exposures most of the time but, if you’re shooting dark or light subjects, it can overcompensate. If you shoot in Program, Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority mode, you can use Exposure Compensation to manually bright and darken your result.
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