Sunday, March 16, 2008

Auto Setting?

I felt snubbed recently by a couple of people when I told them I was still using my auto setting on my camera. Sure, I know my camera is capable of playing around with the apertures, shutter speed, ISO and the whatevers. But every time I take my photos, I get impatient and don't want to stand there forever fiddling with these variables, which, at the end of the day, don't turn out as nice as my auto. At this point anyway. I promise I will eventually set a time and try to play around with the settings.

But as I was telling a friend, I approach photography more scientifically than artistically, as is my nature. I wish there was some sort of measurement to light. The morning sun streaming into the room is 80/120 and therefore equals to a setting of F1/12 with an ISO of 200. Hahaha... that's why I like maths. 1+1 is always 2.

Then I stumbled upon this blog entry and it really relieved me. I've just got to be patient, take one step at a time, learn the settings before I salivate over the new D60 (which caused the "a DSLR would be a waste on you" reactions).

3 comments:

Kelvin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kelvin said...

Well, at the end of the day your camera is NOT a DSLR and the frustrations that you have with your camera is expected :D So don't worry. The people who are giving you a hard time forget the primary purpose of the camera that you have. It is primarily a point and shoot with the option to manually adjust the apertures and shutter speed should you feel the need to. The real question is if you are happy with your photos because that is ultimately where the art is and not so much your skill on manipulating aperture or shutter speeds.

The reason why you are more likely to go manual in a DSLR is that the settings are readily available to you to do so. With a D70/80 series, it's literally at your fingertips and you can modify it without taking your eye off the camera.

Lastly, it's fairly easy to figure out what settings that you should shoot with when you have a DSLR. The light meter will help you out with that. The idea in general is to get the light meter to come as close to the middle as possible in most situations. There are a tonne of variations and exceptions to this rule once you get better at it and at the end of the day, you'll quickly find that the light meter is just a guide. I usually shoot a little darker than what the light meter tells me too.

Get a DSLR when you know what type of pictures that you want to shoot because it's not the body that will determine the type of shots that you take, it'll be the lens and those things are darn expensive. Happy shooting with your camera :)

Wendy said...

Aiyah...so what, DSLRs have auto settings too these days! And I am still using my P mode...too lazy to adjust this and that as well especially when you need to take some action picture which will be gone in a second! I've not even set up my C mode and have never used it!