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Contents
How To Use Your DSLR - From Taking Snapshots To Shooting Like A Pro .................................................... 3
Different Brands Of DSLR's............................................................................................................................ 3
Exposure Modes ........................................................................................................................................... 3
Aperture ........................................................................................................................................................ 4
Shutter Speed ............................................................................................................................................... 5
Exposure........................................................................................................................................................ 6
Using Exposure Modes .................................................................................................................................. 7
Proper Exposure In Manual Mode ................................................................................................................ 7
ISO ................................................................................................................................................................. 8
Depth Of Field ............................................................................................................................................... 9
Image Sharpness ......................................................................................................................................... 10
Sensor Size and Crop Factor........................................................................................................................ 12
White Balance ............................................................................................................................................. 12
RAW vs. JPEG .............................................................................................................................................. 13
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 13
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How To Use Your DSLR - From Taking
Snapshots To Shooting Like A ProSo you've bought this shiny new digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera, and you've
paid good money for it. Since the camera cost so much more than your old point andshoot camera it should take better pictures, right? I mean, that's what you bought it for,
isn't it?
If you are like most people you will find that just because you have a new camera with
all the bells and whistles you won't be taking pictures that are all that much better...that
is unless you know how to use it right. When you learn how to take your camera out of
'P' mode and make the camera work for you, everyone will be able to notice a vast
improvement in the quality of your pictures.
Different Brands Of DSLR'sThere are many brands of DSLR cameras. The most popular are Canon and Nikon.
There are other brands as well, but these two are the most common. I happen to use a
Canon. If you haven't chosen a DSLR yet it is important to consider what you will be
purchasing.
One of the main considerations is the choice of lenses. You can't put a Canon lens on a
Nikon camera. If you are just starting out the chances are your camera will come with a
lens. But one of the major benefits of using a SLR is being able to change the lens to fit
different conditions.
If you choose either Canon or Nikon you will likely be happy with your choice. But this
report will be somewhat generic. Some of the modes may be different than what is on
your camera, but the concepts will be the same.
Exposure ModesThe exposure mode is set by the dial
on top of your camera. The main
modes to understand are:
P - Program Mode - This is
the mode that most amateurs
use, but it's the mode you
should almost never use. It
may be OK to use when you
are in a rush, but you shouldn't expect great results in this mode.
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Tv - Shutter Priority - The Tv can be confusing as it stands for Time Value, but
most people call it Shutter Priority. In this mode you set the desired shutter
speed, and the camera will automatically give you the needed aperture (we'll
discuss aperture later). For Nikon cameras this will be the "S" setting.
Av -Aperture Prior ity - The Av stands for aperture value. In this mode you set
the desired aperture, and the camera automatically adjusts the shutter speed to
give you the proper exposure. For Nikon cameras this will be the "A" setting.
M - Manual - This is the mode of professionals! When you understand how
aperture and priority work together it becomes easy to use Manual mode. In this
mode you set the aperture and shutter speed. But when you know what to look
for your camera will tell you the right settings.
ApertureThe definition of aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. When we
discus aperture settings we're talking about the size of that opening or how much light it
is allowing to hit your image sensor.
Common aperture settings (sometimes called f-stops) are 1.4, 2.0, 2.8, 4.0, 5.6, 8.0,
11, 16 and 22. You can see that every other number is doubled in value. Each of these
movements is a complete stop. We will cover this more when we discus exposure. Butit is good to understand that from 4.0 to 5.6 is 1/2 stop. From 4.0 to 8.0 is one stop.
As you can see in the picture above, the smaller the f-stop number the larger the
opening...meaning more light can come in. The higher the number, less light is allowed
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on to your image sensor. It can seem confusing since the smaller number is actually
the larger aperture.
Aperture size is one of the major advantages in owning a DSLR. Point and shoot
cameras are usually small and cheap. They almost always have very small apertures.
Professionals love the ability to choose their aperture size. There are times when largeis best, and there are times when small is best. The point is knowing when you need
each one, and we will discuss this later.
One factor that determines the cost of a lens is its maximum aperture. A cheap lens
may have a maximum aperture of 5.6. A professional lens may have a maximum
aperture of 2.8 or even 1.4. You can expect to pay big bucks for a quality 2.8 lens. But
for a professional it's worth it.
Shutter SpeedThe shutter speed is measured in seconds, or fraction of a second. The shutter speed
works in conjunction with the aperture in order to get the proper exposure.
There are times when you are shooting something in action like someone running, and
you want to stop motion. For this you would need a faster shutter speed. Maybe
1/2000. There are other times where you want a slower exposure. Taking a picture of
a waterfall is a good
example. Taking the
exposure over time will
cause the water to flow
while the shutter is
open giving you a nice,
smooth image of the
water showing motion.
In this picture of a
creek I was able to
capture the flowing
nature of the water by
setting my shutter
speed to 1/8 of a
second.
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Most of the time you will be more concerned about aperture, and you adjust your shutter
speed to match the aperture for proper exposure. But there are times where the shutter
speed is most important.
The thing to remember with exposure is that the longer the shutter speed the more light
your sensor gets. With a shorter speed you will get the less light.
When we are dealing with fractions of a second, the larger the second number the
faster the shutter opens and closes. For example, 1/100 is 10 times slower than
1/1000. A setting of 1/2000
is somewhat fast, and
1/60 is fairly slow.
I captured this picture at
a football game shooting
at 1/4000 of a second.That is an extremely fast
shutter speed. Notice
how he is stopped in mid
air without any motion
blurring? If you want to
stop action and have a
sharp picture of your
subject then focus on
using a fast shutter
speed.
ExposureNow that you know about shutter speed and aperture we need to learn how they work
together.
A photograph is properly exposed by having the right amount of light hit your image
sensor. If too much light hits your sensor your picture will look too bright and be over-
exposed. If you don't get enough light your picture will look dark and under-exposed.
Proper exposure is critical to the quality of your image.
In years past it was necessary to purchase extra equipment to measure the light falling
on whatever you wanted to photograph. Lucky for you, all DSLR's come fully equipped
with an exposure meter. If you learn to use it right you will get a properly exposed
picture every time.
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Your camera will tell you the settings you need for aperture and shutter speed. If you
take that setting and speed up the shutter speed you will get an under-exposed
photograph since less light is getting in. If you have a slower shutter speed you will get
an over-exposed picture. If you close down the aperture (higher f-stop number like 22)
your aperture will be smaller, letting in less light and you'll get an under-exposed picture.
If you open up the aperture (lower f-stop number like 4.0) you will let in more light with a
larger opening, and you will get an over-exposed picture.
Using Exposure ModesAs I mentioned earlier most amateurs us the P mode. This lets the camera choose the
aperture and shutter speed. That makes it easy, but it also gives you the least
interesting photos. You might as well be using a cheap point & shoot camera.
Somewhat more advanced and useful are the Av (A) and Tv (S) modes. In Av (A)
mode, you are telling the camera what aperture you are going to use. Let's say it's 2.8.
Your camera's light meter will determine what shutter speed it needs to properly
expose. As the amount of available light on your subject changes so will the shutter
speed to compensate. But your aperture will stay wherever you set it. The same can
be said about Tv (S). The difference is you set the shutter speed while the camera
automatically adjusts the aperture setting.
There are some professionals that will use Av (A) and Tv (S) modes. There is a simple
reason why I don't use these modes. Consistency. Your camera will check and changethe exposure for each picture you take. Sometimes if your sensor is reading a slightly
brighter or darker object in the frame your exposure can change from image to image. I
prefer to set it once for a set of pictures of the same scene. This way the exposure is
the same for all of them. If consistency within a set of pictures isn't critical for you or
you are constantly changing scenes then Av/Tv (A/S) modes may work fine for you.
Proper Exposure In Manual ModeNow it's time to start thinking like a pro! The first thing to do is turn that dial to M, andleave it there.
The first step in setting the right exposure is deciding if aperture or shutter speed is
most important to you for this shot. When you decide what either of those should be
you will set that. Then look in your viewfinder to finish your exposure.
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There should be a circle or box in the middle of your frame when you look into your
viewfinder. This is the area the camera uses to determine your exposure. What you do
is point that circle at the subject you want your camera to expose on. I'm a portrait
photographer, so I like to expose off of the person's skin. I will put the circle on my
subject's face and press the shutter button half way down. This will give me an
exposure reading below the picture I'm looking at.
Let's say I set my aperture at 4.0. Your shutter speed is probably too fast or too slow.
There's a chart below your image in the viewfinder that will point to where your
exposure is with your current settings. My camera goes from 2 stops under-exposed to
2 stops over-exposed. The zero in the middle indicates a perfect exposure.
What you do at this point is keep your camera pointed at your subject so that what you
want to expose on has the center over it. My aperture is already set so now I want to
adjust my shutter speed until the indicator on the exposure graph below the picture is
under the 0 mark. Now your exposure is set, and it won't change until you change it.
Not all cameras have their exposure meter calibrated perfectly. You may notice a trend
in your camera's metering. For example, you may find that your camera overexposes
by about a half stop. If that's the case you can simply target -0.5 on the chart to
compensate. But this will take some trial and error as well as time to figure out for your
specific camera. Some cameras have features that will allow you to set this
compensation into your settings, but that is beyond the scope of this book. Read your
owner's manual to discover your options.
ISOISO is another factor in proper exposure. In the film days you would buy film with
different sensitivities, and these sensitivities were rated on the ISO standard. The most
basic and common ISO setting is 100. But if a photographer needed to shoot in low
light and/or high speed conditions he might use 1,000 ISO film.
A higher ISO setting is basically providing a higher sensitive to light....even magnifying
the light. It's basically artificially raising the light level of your subject. If you have your
aperture wide open but your shutter speed would be too slow for your shot all you need
to do is raise your ISO.
There is a drawback. As you increase your ISO you will notice that there is noise in
your picture. Remember in the old TV's when you turned it to a channel where there
wasn't a station? That screen was full of noise. Digital image noise is similar. You will
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get more and more noise as your ISO settings increase. Often times there are ISO
settings on your camera where the noise is just too high to make a clean photo.
On my Canon 5D I find that ISO 800 is very usable, but I do notice some noise. I will
sometimes use ISO 1000 in a tough situation. ISO 400 can show very little noticeable
noise. As technology improves the higher ISO's become more and more useful. Youwill need to run tests with your camera to determine your comfort level with high ISO
settings.
Most of the time my camera is set to 100 or 200, and I adjust as needed in lower light
conditions.
Depth Of FieldThe most important use of aperture to me is depth of field. Depth of field is the range
from your camera that will be in focus. If your subject is 5 feet away from the camera
and something 7 feet away is out of focus then you have a shallow depth of field. This
means that your background (and foreground if there is anything in the foreground) will
be blurry, or out of focus. When you are doing portraits it is great to have the
background out of focus. The person is your subject of interest, not the background.
The color of the background is helpful, but not when it's in sharp focus.
If the lens I'm using for outdoor portraits has
a maximum aperture of 2.8 then I'm going
to have my camera set at 2.8. This will give
me the smallest depth of field possible for
my equipment, and that's great for portraits.
If I'm shooting a landscape then that's a
different story. I will want everything in the
picture to be in focus. For this I would want
a closed down aperture like f16 or f22. This
will make it so that things will be in pretty
good focus from a few feet in front of you to
miles away.
I took this photograph in Sedona, Arizona.
My aperture was f16, and my shutter speed
was 1/20 of a second. Notice the incredible
depth of field I have in this photo. The
stones at the edge of the creek are in focus
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as is the rock formation a few miles away. Notice also the blurring water I got from the
slow shutter speed. This wouldn't look as good if I had stopped the motion of the water.
(You may notice that the trees are somewhat blurred, but that is due to the wind. I only
had one day in Sedona, and I had to take what I was given.)
Your lens focal length also plays a part in depth of field. The focal length is determinedby the distance from the image sensor to the focal point of the lens measured in the
millimeters. For example, you may have a 50mm prime lens or a 24-70 zoom lens.
Lenses below 50mm are considered wide angle while any lens larger than 50mm is
considered telephoto. Larger focal lengths make things look closer than they are. Wide
angle lenses can make things look farther away than reality.
If you are using a wide angle lens at 24mm you should get a lot of depth of field. This
combined with a small aperture will give you great landscape shots.
Consider the following two portraits. Which one do you like better?
I zoomed in tight and used a wide open aperture on the right. Notice how you can still
make out details of the background on the left? The background on the right gives us
color and texture, but it isn't as distracting. The right portrait is much better, and it
draws all of your attention to her face rather than the background.
If you are using a lens at 200mm you will get smaller depth of field. This combined with
a wide open aperture will give you shallow depth of field and make for a great portrait!
Image SharpnessThere are several factors that can impact the sharpness of your photos. If your image
isn't sharp at the point you focused on it won't be a good picture. Who wants to look at
a blurry picture (at least where it isn't supposed to be blurry)?
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The first thing that impacts your image sharpness is the shutter speed. If you have a
slow shutter speed there's more time for your camera to move around a little while the
shutter is open. This will cause your picture to be blurry.
The next thing to consider is your focal length. If you are shooting with a focal length of
200mm you will need some help keeping your picture sharp. As a rule, it's a good ideato try to have your shutter speed at least the equivalent of your focal length, if not faster,
when you are hand holding your DSLR. If you are shooting at 200mm your shutter
speed should be at least 1/200. If you are shooting at 75mm you should be at least
1/75 on shutter speed. But for a sharp picture faster is always better. The faster your
shutter speed is the sharper your image will be.
A tripod can make a huge difference if it's practical. It's not always convenient to drag
around a tripod, but it will give you sharp pictures. If you want to bump even that a
notch more in sharpness you could buy a cable release for your camera. There is a
port in your camera where you can plug it into. Then your shutter button is at the end ofthis cable. You won't even disturb the camera by pressing the shutter button.
There is also an option for a mirror lock. When you look through your viewfinder you
are actually looking through a set of mirrors. When you push the shutter release the
first thing that happens is the first mirror lifts up and out of the way so that the light can
get through to your sensor. This can cause a little vibration called mirror slap. It can be
overkill sometimes to lock the mirror in the up position, but it will give you the ultimate in
sharpness when you need it. J ust read your owner's manual on how to set it up and
use it.
When you hand hold your DSLR it is important to hold it firmly. I hold the side of the
camera with my right hand with my index finger on the shutter button. My left hand is
supporting the bottom of the lens which allows me to easily change the focal length on
zoom lenses. I prefer to then bring my elbows in close to my body. This gives me a
little extra stability as my hands won't want to move as much. If you happen to have
something to lean on or against that can be very helpful in stabilizing you and the
camera as well.
Some lenses come with a feature called Image Stabilization (IS). If you have the option
to buy IS then do it! These lenses have gyroscopes built into them. They can sensethe camera shaking, and they automatically adjust the lens to compensate for your
movement. IS lenses can give you 2-4 extra stops in speed, allowing you to use slower
shutter speeds if necessary.
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Sensor Size and Crop FactorThis isn't critical information to know, but it is good to have an understanding of it. The
35mm cameras are based on the size of the film used in the cameras. This fact is
included in determining the focal length of the lenses. So a 100mm lens is designed for
a 35mm camera.
Today's DSLR's usually don't have 35mm sensors. They are usually smaller. Canon
does have a couple of cameras that have "full frame" (35mm) sensors, but they aren't
cheap. The least expensive one sells for around $2,500 right now. Most DSLR's have
smaller sensors with a crop factor of 1.5 (Nikon) or 1.6 (Canon). That means that if you
have a 100mm Canon lens on a Rebel with a 1.6 crop factor, you will get the equivalent
magnification of a 160mm lens. J ust take your focal length and multiply by 1.6 (or 1.5).
Having a seemingly longer focal length isn't necessarily great. If you were to take an
image from a full frame camera you could crop it down in size to get the equivalent
picture. With a full frame camera you get more picture to work with. I use a full frame
camera, and I wouldn't want to use anything else.
This crop factor can impact your depth of field. When filling the frame in both the full
frame and 1.6 crop factor camera you will get less depth of field (more out of focus blur)
with the full frame camera. This makes much better portraits.
White BalanceThe color of light varies with different light sources. Have you ever taken a pictureindoors and get an image with a brownish orange cast to it? That is because the color
of the tungsten lights lighting the room is that color, and your camera didn't adjust
properly. Fluorescent lighting and light from the blue sky tend to be bluish. When
clouds cover up the blue sky it changes the color again. If your subject is laying in the
grass you will tend to get a green tone added. Our eyes easily compensate for this, but
our cameras need a little help.
There are probably different settings on your camera to set the white balance. You can
often use the auto white balance and be OK. For some cameras it may not work aswell. You can also set it to your specific need like daylight, tungsten, shade, cloudy, etc.
If you shoot J PEG's you really need to get the white balance right in the camera. But
you can be a bit more flexible by shooting RAW.
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RAW vs. JPEGHaving your DSLR in a mode to create jpeg's is the easiest, but not always the best.
You really need to make sure your exposure and white balance are close to perfect.
Because if you need to make adjustments it will start to damage the image quality. The
farther off your exposure or white balance are the more damage it will do to the image.
Shooting RAW is like shooting with film in a way. You have an exposure that can be
easily manipulated and optimized without damaging the image. It's a little like a digital
negative.
To shoot RAW takes a little more knowledge in knowing how to run the software and
manipulate your image. DSLR's normally come packaged with software to manipulate
RAW files, but most professionals don't use this software. The most common RAW
conversion software is Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw (built into Photoshop)
and Capture One by Phase One. The software isn't cheap, but it will provide you with
the best results.
In RAW converting software there are multiple improvements you can make that the
camera would normally try to make on jpeg's. The difference is that you can see the
improvements being made while the camera is just guessing.
You can adjust things like exposure, white balance, saturation, sharpness and much
more. You can easily recover images that have been over or under exposed by about 2
stops without noticing it was ever a problem. You can also get the right white balance
to get the perfect colors in your image.
There are different schools of thought on RAW vs. J PEG, even among professional
photographers. I shoot RAW, and I like the workflow. But there are plenty of
professional photographers that swear by JPEG. It all comes down to personal
preference. If you are happy with the J PEG's you are creating then maybe you should
stick with it. If you feel like you want more from your images then give RAW a shot.
The important thing for now is to know what it does and that it's available to you.
ConclusionYou made the right decision in purchasing your DSLR. J ust don't waste the potential in
your camera by using it like you would any old point and shoot camera.
Practice. That's how you are going to get better. You have a major advantage over
someone trying to learn even 15 years ago. Every time they pushed the shutter button
they were spending money. They were spending money on the film, and they were
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spending money on the processing. Now pressing the button costs you nothing. Plus
you get instant feedback in the back of the camera on its LCD! If you don't like the
picture you can make instant changes.
You have a great opportunity to learn how to take great pictures. Go out there and
make some good ones!