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This is a good basic discussion, and it works well for digital cameras as well as film cameras. The difference is that you can take 100 digital photos, see the

This is a good basic discussion, and it works well for digital cameras as well as film cameras. The difference is that you can take 100 digital photos, see the differences, and it didn't cost you anything to develop them :-). I encourage new people to photography to try to be disciplined about learning how their camera changes as different settings. Get out of the tyranny of "auto" mode and try all the things. You may find it quite fun.

neogodless 4y ago
> you can take 100 digital photos ... for practice, learning, or stationary, long-lasting subjects. Of course you want to get a good feel for the aperture, shutter speed and sensitivity so that when you see a beautiful bird about to take off for flight, or a butterfly touch down ever so momentarily, you aren't fumbling with settings, and you've already got a good sense of what settings will work. Definitely agree though - many cameras have "priority" modes where you're really only changing the shutter speed or aperture, and it's still doing the rest automatically for you, so you can focus on whatever that one setting does, while also seeing what the smart camera tells you the other settings should be in those situations.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Though for moving objects, the ability to just fire off a rapid sequence on a digital camera can net you a shot which is at least incrementally better--or even the difference between a great shot and a dud. There were motor drives in film days of course but they weren't as fast as modern digital cameras and unless you were a pro, using them much got expensive in a hurry. Early on, digital did have a problem with shutter lag--Sony even had a series of ads touting the fact that their camera was faster than others--but it's not a problem now especially with better cameras.
Ma8ee 4y ago
> it didn’t cost you anything Except the time to sort through 300 photos after just an afternoon with your kids at the beach…
samatman 4y ago
I've had trouble getting out of the local optimum with my mirrorless. For shots that rely on the glass, so to speak, it can't be compared with a phone at all: the shots aren't better, they don't exist on the phone to begin with. But for the kind of picture my phone can take, it frequently does a better job. I can tell going through my collection when I used the mirrorless immediately, because the result is subjectively different, but we're comparing quality equipment with good defaults with very small (nonetheless excellent) equipment with metric boatloads of machine learning applied. Getting past this involves an immediate and very steep learning curve which I've only intellectually engaged with; the practice of adjusting the basic parameters consistently gives me worse results, and I haven't put in the time to get past that.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Turning auto off and making your own, deliberate, choices is indeed the way to build up some intuition on how to capture the same scene in different ways. Shooting digital is easier. But often reviewing what you shot is hard on tiny screens in full sunlight. Depth of field is one of the more obvious things you control with the aperture. But another thing it impacts is sharpness. Depending on your lens, it likely is a little fuzzier wide open than it is stopped down a little. Basically, you are covering part of the lens and controlling the way it distorts the light a little. Wide open it diffuses the light a bit. And it will do so differently in different parts of the photo. Knowing how your lens performs under different conditions is something you need to explore through trial and error. Another thing it impacts is color and contract. Just how, depends on the lens. Some lenses have a clear optimum, others are better across a wider range of apertures. People spend a lot of money on glass to get these effects. In the same way, the shutter speed is not just about controlling the amount of light it is also about motion and motion blur that can both mess up your photo or be something you use creatively. The best tip you can give a beginning photographer to not too slow. Your camera might be able to handle it and you might have steady hands. But stuff still moves in your scene and it will introduce blur. Some types of photography you want to have fast shutter speeds to capture really crisp moving subjects (e.g. sports photography, moving kids). Even on a bright day you might want to shoot at higher ISOs just so you can shoot a little faster. A zoom lens stopped down focused on a fast moving subject will do a lot better if you can shoot at 1/2000s of a second rather than getting a blurry thing at 1/30th. But sometimes that kind of effect is what you want when shooting e.g. a static subject against a waterfall. The ISO dial basically allows you to compensate for loss of light by pretty much multiplying the signal. This is something you can easily do in post as well if you are shooting raw. It just gives you more wiggle room with aperture and exposure. Of course the issue is that you end up boosting the noise along with that as well. More sensitive sensors can be pushed a little further for this. But mostly, lower is better in terms of noise. Basically, you pick the aperture and exposure that produce the effect you want and the iso control allows you to get away with it when that is pushing the limits a bit too far. With some cheaper cameras, you end up trading off noise against creative control. Easier to shoot at night with the lens wide open at a low shutter speed that still works hand held. But less chance of blurry photos if you shoot a bit faster at a higher iso. Then there are different focal lengths that not only "zoom" in the subject but also change the perspective. Using a very wide or zoomed in perspective and compensating with your feet can produce very different photos even if your subject ends up being roughly the same in the picture.

neogodless 4y ago

> you can take 100 digital photos ... for practice, learning, or stationary, long-lasting subjects. Of course you want to get a good feel for the aperture, shutter speed and sensitivity so that when you see a beautiful bird about to take off for flight, or a butterfly touch down ever so momentarily, you aren't fumbling with settings, and you've already got a good sense of what settings will work. Definitely agree though - many cameras have "priority" modes where you're really only changing the shutter speed or aperture, and it's still doing the rest automatically for you, so you can focus on whatever that one setting does, while also seeing what the smart camera tells you the other settings should be in those situations.

ghaff 4y ago
Though for moving objects, the ability to just fire off a rapid sequence on a digital camera can net you a shot which is at least incrementally better--or even the difference between a great shot and a dud. There were motor drives in film days of course but they weren't as fast as modern digital cameras and unless you were a pro, using them much got expensive in a hurry. Early on, digital did have a problem with shutter lag--Sony even had a series of ads touting the fact that their camera was faster than others--but it's not a problem now especially with better cameras.

Ma8ee 4y ago

> it didn’t cost you anything Except the time to sort through 300 photos after just an afternoon with your kids at the beach…

samatman 4y ago

I've had trouble getting out of the local optimum with my mirrorless. For shots that rely on the glass, so to speak, it can't be compared with a phone at all: the shots aren't better, they don't exist on the phone to begin with. But for the kind of picture my phone can take, it frequently does a better job. I can tell going through my collection when I used the mirrorless immediately, because the result is subjectively different, but we're comparing quality equipment with good defaults with very small (nonetheless excellent) equipment with metric boatloads of machine learning applied. Getting past this involves an immediate and very steep learning curve which I've only intellectually engaged with; the practice of adjusting the basic parameters consistently gives me worse results, and I haven't put in the time to get past that.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

Turning auto off and making your own, deliberate, choices is indeed the way to build up some intuition on how to capture the same scene in different ways. Shooting digital is easier. But often reviewing what you shot is hard on tiny screens in full sunlight. Depth of field is one of the more obvious things you control with the aperture. But another thing it impacts is sharpness. Depending on your lens, it likely is a little fuzzier wide open than it is stopped down a little. Basically, you are covering part of the lens and controlling the way it distorts the light a little. Wide open it diffuses the light a bit. And it will do so differently in different parts of the photo. Knowing how your lens performs under different conditions is something you need to explore through trial and error. Another thing it impacts is color and contract. Just how, depends on the lens. Some lenses have a clear optimum, others are better across a wider range of apertures. People spend a lot of money on glass to get these effects. In the same way, the shutter speed is not just about controlling the amount of light it is also about motion and motion blur that can both mess up your photo or be something you use creatively. The best tip you can give a beginning photographer to not too slow. Your camera might be able to handle it and you might have steady hands. But stuff still moves in your scene and it will introduce blur. Some types of photography you want to have fast shutter speeds to capture really crisp moving subjects (e.g. sports photography, moving kids). Even on a bright day you might want to shoot at higher ISOs just so you can shoot a little faster. A zoom lens stopped down focused on a fast moving subject will do a lot better if you can shoot at 1/2000s of a second rather than getting a blurry thing at 1/30th. But sometimes that kind of effect is what you want when shooting e.g. a static subject against a waterfall. The ISO dial basically allows you to compensate for loss of light by pretty much multiplying the signal. This is something you can easily do in post as well if you are shooting raw. It just gives you more wiggle room with aperture and exposure. Of course the issue is that you end up boosting the noise along with that as well. More sensitive sensors can be pushed a little further for this. But mostly, lower is better in terms of noise. Basically, you pick the aperture and exposure that produce the effect you want and the iso control allows you to get away with it when that is pushing the limits a bit too far. With some cheaper cameras, you end up trading off noise against creative control. Easier to shoot at night with the lens wide open at a low shutter speed that still works hand held. But less chance of blurry photos if you shoot a bit faster at a higher iso. Then there are different focal lengths that not only "zoom" in the subject but also change the perspective. Using a very wide or zoomed in perspective and compensating with your feet can produce very different photos even if your subject ends up being roughly the same in the picture.