Author Topic: David's Shutter Bug Club  (Read 497049 times)

Offline Kelda

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Re: David's Shutter Bug Club
« Reply #140 on: January 12, 2008, 09:47:54 pm »
Hey David - I've had a quick 10 minute read of this thread and its really interesting.

I am another mainly auto user. Although since I got my new camera and during my holiday in Crete I did try to use non auto settings - I found using the night setting hard as often it was very blurry.

EDIT - Having looked at my camera - there is a manual setting but I've never used that - I've used the settings like party, landscape, beach, nighttime,  sunset etc, which I guess changes the settings a bit.

I guess if I was taking photos of skimble I should generally put it on sport - I wonder how i take black and white photos?

One other problem I have is I can never take a good photo of Skimble - he either moves or closes his eyes - I guess this has to sdo with the shutter speed.

I love black and white photos but I'm not sure I can do it on my camera.

My camera is a Fujifilm Finepix F20 LE

My photos are not back on my laptop yet - once they are I'll post a few that I like and ones that have gone wrong and you can see what you think.
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Offline David In Indy

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Re: David's Shutter Bug Club
« Reply #141 on: January 12, 2008, 10:45:39 pm »
Hey David - I've had a quick 10 minute read of this thread and its really interesting.

I am another mainly auto user. Although since I got my new camera and during my holiday in Crete I did try to use non auto settings - I found using the night setting hard as often it was very blurry.

EDIT - Having looked at my camera - there is a manual setting but I've never used that - I've used the settings like party, landscape, beach, nighttime,  sunset etc, which I guess changes the settings a bit.

I guess if I was taking photos of skimble I should generally put it on sport - I wonder how i take black and white photos?

One other problem I have is I can never take a good photo of Skimble - he either moves or closes his eyes - I guess this has to sdo with the shutter speed.

I love black and white photos but I'm not sure I can do it on my camera.

My camera is a Fujifilm Finepix F20 LE

My photos are not back on my laptop yet - once they are I'll post a few that I like and ones that have gone wrong and you can see what you think.


Hey Kelda!! :D

Is this your camera?

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2007_reviews/fuji_f20.html

I looked it over a bit and it appears you have a very nice and capable camera. According to Steve, you can shoot B&W phogoraphs. You can access the B&W filter by pressing the blue "F" button on the back of your camera and then following this path: F Mode Menu ---> Finepix Color ---> Color Mode: B&W.

When photographing Skimble the cat, you should probably set your shutter speed to at least 1/250; 1/500 would be ideal. Animals and children have a tendancy to make sudden moves and setting a faster shutter speed will help "freeze" their actions. If the picture turns out too dark, try switiching on some lights inside the room, turning on your flash and setting it to low or mid burst (using a low burst will help to keep the animal from becoming startled by the sudden flash of light), or moving the cat to a different area with brighter lighting conditions. Opening up your aperture to a wider setting (f/2.0 - f/3.6) will allow more light to enter the camera, but you may lose some depth of field in the process. Using a higher ISO setting may also help, but I don't recommend anything above ISO 400 for indoor photos, otherwise you may end up with some unwanted image noise.

Do you have a "children and pets" scene mode in your camera? If so I would suggest giving it a try. If not, try the suggestions above and let me know how your skimble pictures turned out, okay? :)

Read through Steve's review of your camera. He does a very good job of explaining many of the camera's features and I'll be happy to help you in any way I can, Kelda.



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Re: David's Shutter Bug Club
« Reply #142 on: January 12, 2008, 10:46:36 pm »
of the hundred pics I took today this is my favorite...



it was taken using Auto and the Macro filter. But I am taking Davids advice and NOT zooming in on macro but holding the camera closer....

Offline Kelda

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Re: David's Shutter Bug Club
« Reply #143 on: January 12, 2008, 10:52:55 pm »

Hey Kelda!! :D

Is this your camera?

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2007_reviews/fuji_f20.html

I looked it over a bit and it appears you have a very nice and capable camera. According to Steve, you can shoot B&W phogoraphs. You can access the B&W filter by pressing the blue "F" button on the back of your camera and then following this path: F Mode Menu ---> Finepix Color ---> Color Mode: B&W.

When photographing Skimble the cat, you should probably set your shutter speed to at least 1/250; 1/500 would be ideal. Animals and children have a tendancy to make sudden moves and setting a faster shutter speed will help "freeze" their actions. If the picture turns out too dark, try switiching on some lights inside the room, turning on your flash and setting it to low or mid burst (using a low burst will help to keep the animal from becoming startled by the sudden flash of light), or moving the cat to a different area with brighter lighting conditions. Opening up your aperture to a wider setting (f/2.0 - f/3.6) will allow more light to enter the camera, but you may lose some depth of field in the process. Using a higher ISO setting may also help, but I don't recommend anything above ISO 400 for indoor photos, otherwise you may end up with some unwanted image noise.

Do you have a "children and pets" scene mode in your camera? If so I would suggest giving it a try. If not, try the suggestions above and let me know how your skimble pictures turned out, okay? :)

Read through Steve's review of your camera. He does a very good job of explaining many of the camera's features and I'll be happy to help you in any way I can, Kelda.





It is David! i will hgave a proper read of the website tomorrow - its alsmost 3am here and I'm still wide awake - I need to go to bed.

You know I never pressed the f button until now and now I see i can have chrome and b&w and there is also ISO choices - which is shutter speed yes? Hmm maybe not, I'll need to reread this thread.

Thanks for telling me that David!!!! I should really read the instruction manual more!!!

I dont have kids and animals but I might try sport the next time and see how that works before fiddling with the shutter speeds and stuff. 

Once I ahve soem time I'm going to get involved in this - I like taking interesting photos but I'm not very good at it.



Jess - love the photo you took!
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Offline Kerry

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Re: David's Shutter Bug Club
« Reply #144 on: January 12, 2008, 11:03:40 pm »
of the hundred pics I took today this is my favorite...



it was taken using Auto and the Macro filter. But I am taking Davids advice and NOT zooming in on macro but holding the camera closer....

Stunning pic, Jess.  :D

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Re: David's Shutter Bug Club
« Reply #145 on: January 12, 2008, 11:12:59 pm »
thank you Kerry!

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Re: David's Shutter Bug Club
« Reply #146 on: January 12, 2008, 11:18:36 pm »
ok here is one I am NOT happy with....there was a very interesting vine...I was trying to figure out how to photograph it to highlight the twisty way it was growing..

first I tried this angle



blah

then I went around and looked at it from different angles and picked this section (seeing that there was no way to get the whole thing in the shot..)


and it was a little better but

so I turned on the macro again and got really close

and while this is not EXACTLY what I had in mind, I think it is the best I could do...


Offline David In Indy

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Re: David's Shutter Bug Club
« Reply #147 on: January 13, 2008, 12:12:06 am »
It is David! i will hgave a proper read of the website tomorrow - its alsmost 3am here and I'm still wide awake - I need to go to bed.

You know I never pressed the f button until now and now I see i can have chrome and b&w and there is also ISO choices - which is shutter speed yes? Hmm maybe not, I'll need to reread this thread.

Thanks for telling me that David!!!! I should really read the instruction manual more!!!

I dont have kids and animals but I might try sport the next time and see how that works before fiddling with the shutter speeds and stuff. 

Once I ahve soem time I'm going to get involved in this - I like taking interesting photos but I'm not very good at it.



Jess - love the photo you took!

Hi Kelda! Yes, the sports scene mode might work with animals. Try it and see what happens!

The ISO setting determines how sensitive your camera is to light. The camera becomes more sensitive to light as the ISO number increases. So, higher ISO settings allow you to set faster shutter speeds and narrower apertures in dim light. So, the ISO is different than the shutter and shutter speed, but they work together as a system. Does that make sense?

But... (there's ALWAYS a "but" isn't there?) as you increase the ISO you also increase the risk of image noise. Image noise is all those little blotches, blobs, fringes and other unwanted anomalies in the picture. Some cameras handle high ISO settings better than others. According to Steve, your camera does a very good job with ISO. He said in the review that your camera can take clean pictures with ISO settings as high as 800, which is very good for a digital camera. For those of us with Canon cameras, we start running into problems above ISO 600. This is not to say that Canon isn't a good camera. They are excellent cameras and they excel in many other areas, it's just that ISO happens NOT to be one of them! :)

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Offline David In Indy

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Re: David's Shutter Bug Club
« Reply #148 on: January 13, 2008, 12:18:41 am »
Jess, I think all three of those pictures are excellent! Why are you not happy with them? Maybe I don't understand what your goals were. In other words, maybe there is much more to the vine (many other parts) that I am not aware of, but the pictures are in focus and they show off quite a bit of detail. I very much like the third picture you took in macro. It almost looks like it's in 3D!! :D

Please explain to me again why you are not happy with the pictures.

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Re: David's Shutter Bug Club
« Reply #149 on: January 13, 2008, 12:22:13 am »
well looking at them here (instead of the small window I have on my camera window on my computer I DO like them a bit...but the size and the length is lost...in order to get the detail I had to zoom in so close that you cant see the whole length and size of it...

it seems blah to me..