Help and Advice

[The Tea Boy]

Im off to Dove Dale, Derbyshire tomorrow for a walk and to try and take some good pics and work out how to use my blummin camera, so if i hope/pray and im lucky i may return with some pics, it should happen as its a very nice place but the person behind the camera has no clue what he is doing!! does anyone have any advice on the best kind of set up for landscape pictures, weather forcast is sunny, there is some water (small river) so am planning of taking shots of the surrounding dales and also going to try and do some moving water pics which is punching well above my weight but its a sharp learning curve im hopeing to crack!!

So main question is what is the best set up ISO wise and apperture etc for landscape in brightish) conditions? My camera is a sony A200 if thats any help? and if anyone is around there tomorrow i will be the one with my head in the instruction manual and swearing alot!!

Matt

[andy-xr]

First off, you'll need either a tripod or something to set the camera against to hold it steady. The nook of your arm generally doesnt cut it, and finding a rock or wall can cock up a composition.

On the settings, try a low ISO, somewhere around 100-200, slow shutter speed but nothing really more than 5 seconds for water, when there's trees and other bits of greenery around they tend to move in the most gentle of breezes

[SamHH]

I disagree on needing a tripod; a tripod might make your photos sharper and allow you to do a few things you can't do without, but it's perfectly possible to take good landscape photos handheld IMO. Regarding settings; I usually use an aperture a couple of stops down from wide open where the lens performs at its best and the lowest ISO I can that still gives me an acceptably fast shutter speed (as a very rough rule, 1/40 for wide angle to 'normal' focal lengths hand held). When taking moving water photos, I find it's easy to focus (ho ho) only on getting the bluriness right and forget about all the other factors that make a photo good.

[andy-xr]

SamHH said:

When taking moving water photos, I find it's easy to focus (ho ho) only on getting the bluriness right and forget about all the other factors that make a photo good.

Thats kind of where I was going with the tripod thing, I find it much easier to get blur on the water and time to set the shot up for how you want everything else. I've never had much success with handheld and moving water, must be the caffeine

[GetCarter]

I wouldn't worry too much about tripods (don't rush out and buy one - trees work fine as do rocks and telegraph poles). I'd just take as many shots as you can, and see what they turn out like. The chances are they they'll be crap, don't worry. The MOST important thing about a photo is composition, get that right first, then worry about depth of field and the nuances of exposure later.

I'd set everything to auto and snap away. If you can set the camera to 'bracket', then do so (I never, ever, ever take one photograph - I always take one slightly under exposed and one over as well as the main shot - this has got me out of trouble SO many times). But I don't know if your Sony does that sort of thing! If you are feeling brave, put it into Apature Priority mode and take the same shot wth a low 'f' number and a high 'f' number... this is where it gets fun.

Main thing is to enjoy it... if you expect good photos, you'll often be disappointed.

My approach to landscape photography is different from many on here (I'm not a perfectionist - I'll often go out with no tripod and only one lens just for the hell of it), so feel free to ignore. I move about a lot, once I've seen a shot I'll take it from 10 or 12 slightly different angles... and I'm nearly always wrong about the one I think I'll like once it's on the screen.

My main rule is, if it looks really good, put the fking camera away and look at it!

IMHO

[The Tea Boy]

GetCarter said:

I wouldn't worry too much about tripods (don't rush out and buy one - trees work fine as do rocks and telegraph poles). I'd just take as many shots as you can, and see what they turn out like. The chances are they they'll be crap, don't worry. The MOST important thing about a photo is composition, get that right first, then worry about depth of field and the nuances of exposure later.

I'd set everything to auto and snap away. If you can set the camera to 'bracket', then do so (I never, ever, ever take one photograph - I always take one slightly under exposed and one over as well as the main shot - this has got me out of trouble SO many times). But I don't know if your Sony does that sort of thing! If you are feeling brave, put it into Apature Priority mode and take the same shot wth a low 'f' number and a high 'f' number... this is where it gets fun.

Main thing is to enjoy it... if you expect good photos, you'll often be disappointed.

My approach to landscape photography is different from many on here (I'm not a perfectionist - I'll often go out with no tripod and only one lens just for the hell of it), so feel free to ignore. I move about a lot, once I've seen a shot I'll take it from 10 or 12 slightly different angles... and I'm nearly always wrong about the one I think I'll like once it's on the screen.

My main rule is, if it looks really good, put the fking camera away and look at it!

IMHO

GetCarter said:

The chances are they they'll be crap

sorry but

sums up mos things i try

As to Appature priority, is this the A mode on the camera? as i have; Auto, no flash (i what these are!!) P, A, S and M (i dont know what any of these are, can anyone help with these? i also have a load of other settings like landscape and night, sunset and macro modes, but havent used them yet!

Thanks again guys, even if half the time i dont know what you mean i enjoy trying to understand and trying to learn how to use this thing, atleast if i had spent £300 on a crap car i would have known what to do with it!! but as ive spent the money on the camera i have no car to take me to places to take pics!! (sure im doing all this backwards )

Matt

[RobDickinson]

Tripod is somewhat beyond where we need to be here I think, handy once you know what you want to shoot and how, and want the best out of the shot.


Theres 2 sides to getting a shot.

The mechanics - in auto modes you can let the camera take control of this , or stick it in Av mode and dial in f8 for landscapes & let the meetering sort it out.


The 'art' - Think about whats in the frame, try and follow the 'rules' of photography, they usualy work (3rds, paths, diagonls etc). Try and find points of intrest or something that leads the eye through the frame etc.

[The Tea Boy]

right another quick question for you, may seem very somple (but some say i am!!) Im having a little play with said camera now after reading what you guys have put. Now i have my camera in P 'mode' if takeing pics in a very light room shutter only opens quickly, if in a darker room opens for longer and if even darker takes longer i would sy circa 5 seconds, now is this what you guys are talking about? am i finally getting somewhere?

Thanks and im sorry im being so trivial and simple!!

matt

[Simpo Two]

The Tea Boy said:

As to Appature priority

For your own good and personal wholesomeness, I have no option but to step in at this point and advise that the mode to which you are referring is officially called Aperture Priority. An aperture is a hole. Now you can start to figure out exactly what's going on inside the magic box

[SamHH]

andy-xr said:

SamHH said:

When taking moving water photos, I find it's easy to focus (ho ho) only on getting the bluriness right and forget about all the other factors that make a photo good.

Thats kind of where I was going with the tripod thing, I find it much easier to get blur on the water and time to set the shot up for how you want everything else. I've never had much success with handheld and moving water, must be the caffeine

Sorry; thought you were talking about landscapes generally. Agree that a tripod is good for moving water stuff .

[john185k]

I have taken 12000 photos this year.

I reckon about 50 are to a highish standard.

Have fun snapping away

[SamHH]

The Tea Boy said:

right another quick question for you, may seem very somple (but some say i am!!) Im having a little play with said camera now after reading what you guys have put. Now i have my camera in P 'mode' if takeing pics in a very light room shutter only opens quickly, if in a darker room opens for longer and if even darker takes longer i would sy circa 5 seconds, now is this what you guys are talking about? am i finally getting somewhere?

Thanks and im sorry im being so trivial and simple!!

matt

The less light you have, the longer the shutter is going to have to stay open (all else being the same). I started writing a long explanation about exposure, but I'm sure if you do a 'Google' you'll find it all put much more eloquently, or there's a million books that explain everything. Alternatively, put the camera in fully automatic mode and experiment. Like 'GetCarter' says, the camera can take care of all the technical stuff until you know more about it, allowing you to do the artistic bits.

[VxDuncan]

The Tea Boy said:

GetCarter said:

I wouldn't worry too much about tripods (don't rush out and buy one - trees work fine as do rocks and telegraph poles). I'd just take as many shots as you can, and see what they turn out like. The chances are they they'll be crap, don't worry. The MOST important thing about a photo is composition, get that right first, then worry about depth of field and the nuances of exposure later.

I'd set everything to auto and snap away. If you can set the camera to 'bracket', then do so (I never, ever, ever take one photograph - I always take one slightly under exposed and one over as well as the main shot - this has got me out of trouble SO many times). But I don't know if your Sony does that sort of thing! If you are feeling brave, put it into Apature Priority mode and take the same shot wth a low 'f' number and a high 'f' number... this is where it gets fun.

Main thing is to enjoy it... if you expect good photos, you'll often be disappointed.

My approach to landscape photography is different from many on here (I'm not a perfectionist - I'll often go out with no tripod and only one lens just for the hell of it), so feel free to ignore. I move about a lot, once I've seen a shot I'll take it from 10 or 12 slightly different angles... and I'm nearly always wrong about the one I think I'll like once it's on the screen.

My main rule is, if it looks really good, put the fking camera away and look at it!

IMHO

GetCarter said:

The chances are they they'll be crap

sorry but

sums up mos things i try

As to Appature priority, is this the A mode on the camera? as i have; Auto, no flash (i what these are!!) P, A, S and M (i dont know what any of these are, can anyone help with these? i also have a load of other settings like landscape and night, sunset and macro modes, but havent used them yet!

Thanks again guys, even if half the time i dont know what you mean i enjoy trying to understand and trying to learn how to use this thing, atleast if i had spent £300 on a crap car i would have known what to do with it!! but as ive spent the money on the camera i have no car to take me to places to take pics!! (sure im doing all this backwards )

Matt

Okay...

Your image is made up of a certain ("metered") amount of light, in units known as stops. You can affect the amount of light units making up the image by adjusting the length the shutter is open, the size of the hole in the lens (the apperture) and the ISO (gain on the sensor, like film speed). You can vary the above to get different results, but should always end up with the same amount of light units to get a correct exposure. Hence if you reduce the shutter speed by half (one stop), you know to open the apperture to twice its area (it's a square law so the numbers are odd, but one stop) or double the ISO to get the same exposure. They are all interlinked.

Apperture priority ("A" or "Av" mode) - you select the apperture (and usually the ISO elsewhere), and the camera selects the shutter speed to make the correct exposure
Shutter priority ("S" Mode) - you select shutter speed (and ISO), camera does apperture
Manual ("M" Mode) - you do everything! With this you can fix settings overide the cameras metering or get more control over the flash/ambient light balance.
Program mode ("P") - Camera suggests apperture and shutter, but you can scroll to change them

Couple of other things - try to use a shutter speed faster than the reciprical of the focal length of lens you are using i ie with a 200mm lens you want to be shooting at 1/200 Sec or faster.

For what it's worth for non-flash stuff I tend to work 95% of the time in apperture priorty mode, adjusting depth of field to suit the subject. But then I don't do a lot of sport.

[richo_i]

The Tea Boy said:

GetCarter said:

I wouldn't worry too much about tripods (don't rush out and buy one - trees work fine as do rocks and telegraph poles). I'd just take as many shots as you can, and see what they turn out like. The chances are they they'll be crap, don't worry. The MOST important thing about a photo is composition, get that right first, then worry about depth of field and the nuances of exposure later.

I'd set everything to auto and snap away. If you can set the camera to 'bracket', then do so (I never, ever, ever take one photograph - I always take one slightly under exposed and one over as well as the main shot - this has got me out of trouble SO many times). But I don't know if your Sony does that sort of thing! If you are feeling brave, put it into Apature Priority mode and take the same shot wth a low 'f' number and a high 'f' number... this is where it gets fun.

Main thing is to enjoy it... if you expect good photos, you'll often be disappointed.

My approach to landscape photography is different from many on here (I'm not a perfectionist - I'll often go out with no tripod and only one lens just for the hell of it), so feel free to ignore. I move about a lot, once I've seen a shot I'll take it from 10 or 12 slightly different angles... and I'm nearly always wrong about the one I think I'll like once it's on the screen.

My main rule is, if it looks really good, put the fking camera away and look at it!

IMHO

GetCarter said:

The chances are they they'll be crap

sorry but

sums up mos things i try

As to Appature priority, is this the A mode on the camera? as i have; Auto, no flash (i what these are!!) P, A, S and M (i dont know what any of these are, can anyone help with these? i also have a load of other settings like landscape and night, sunset and macro modes, but havent used them yet!

Thanks again guys, even if half the time i dont know what you mean i enjoy trying to understand and trying to learn how to use this thing, atleast if i had spent £300 on a crap car i would have known what to do with it!! but as ive spent the money on the camera i have no car to take me to places to take pics!! (sure im doing all this backwards )

Matt

Hi, I also have my first DSLR also a sony mine came with a handy little instruction book which I have read from front to back and back again that combined with this forum has got me up and running my photo's are not any good but I hope that will come with time but the main thing is I am enjoying learning and not stressing about the masses of shots I have to keep deleting.Ian

[The Tea Boy]

richo_i said:

The Tea Boy said:

GetCarter said:

I wouldn't worry too much about tripods (don't rush out and buy one - trees work fine as do rocks and telegraph poles). I'd just take as many shots as you can, and see what they turn out like. The chances are they they'll be crap, don't worry. The MOST important thing about a photo is composition, get that right first, then worry about depth of field and the nuances of exposure later.

I'd set everything to auto and snap away. If you can set the camera to 'bracket', then do so (I never, ever, ever take one photograph - I always take one slightly under exposed and one over as well as the main shot - this has got me out of trouble SO many times). But I don't know if your Sony does that sort of thing! If you are feeling brave, put it into Apature Priority mode and take the same shot wth a low 'f' number and a high 'f' number... this is where it gets fun.

Main thing is to enjoy it... if you expect good photos, you'll often be disappointed.

My approach to landscape photography is different from many on here (I'm not a perfectionist - I'll often go out with no tripod and only one lens just for the hell of it), so feel free to ignore. I move about a lot, once I've seen a shot I'll take it from 10 or 12 slightly different angles... and I'm nearly always wrong about the one I think I'll like once it's on the screen.

My main rule is, if it looks really good, put the fking camera away and look at it!

IMHO

GetCarter said:

The chances are they they'll be crap

sorry but

sums up mos things i try

As to Appature priority, is this the A mode on the camera? as i have; Auto, no flash (i what these are!!) P, A, S and M (i dont know what any of these are, can anyone help with these? i also have a load of other settings like landscape and night, sunset and macro modes, but havent used them yet!

Thanks again guys, even if half the time i dont know what you mean i enjoy trying to understand and trying to learn how to use this thing, atleast if i had spent £300 on a crap car i would have known what to do with it!! but as ive spent the money on the camera i have no car to take me to places to take pics!! (sure im doing all this backwards )

Matt

Hi, I also have my first DSLR also a sony mine came with a handy little instruction book which I have read from front to back and back again that combined with this forum has got me up and running my photo's are not any good but I hope that will come with time but the main thing is I am enjoying learning and not stressing about the masses of shots I have to keep deleting.Ian

Hi Ian, i know where you are coming from with the instruction book, i too have read this but it still makes no sense to me

[The Tea Boy]

Duncan, thankyou for your help, thats bit of info has helped a bit, and i now atleast know that im moving in the right direction, will be having a play later, i may even try camera in a few dfferent modes and see what happens, either way will post photos up in another tread later this evening and i would love you all to comment and give me a few pointers and some c+c.

Thanks again guys i suppose i owe you all a beer (results dependant

Matt