So you bought a DSLR Part Two Exporsure and your lens!

March 15, 2013  •  Leave a Comment

After reading part one you should have a basic understanding of the AV(A) Aperture, TV(S) Shutter Speed and M the manual modes on your DLSR. The best way to get a better understanding is to get out and shoot. Shoot your dog, kids, husband or wife. Just practice. For me, I often practice by shooting cars driving by in the evening. This will teach you how to combine shutter speed and aperture. Your goal is to get them both correct and get a properly exposed photograph

When you look through the view finder on the bottom (Canon) there is a scale with numbers. It starts a three goes to zero and then back to three. This is shows your exposure and it is indicated by a line. Zero to the camera means that your exposure is correct. If the indicator is to the left that means your underexposed (Not enough light) and if your to the right of zero your overexposed (too much light). If you are off the scale in one direction or the other you will get a flashing indicator by either of the threes. This means your off the scale and you need major adjustments.

Ok, so how do you fix this? The issue is light, either too much or not enough. Let’s say that you don’t have not enough light, you can fix it one of two ways on the camera. You just have to decide what is the more important to you. You can fix it by changing the shutter speed (TV,S), by slowing it down. If your set at 1/250s and you lower it to 1/120s you will add more light but, if you’re shooting a dance recital you may not be able to freeze the dancers. So you may want to change the aperture (AV, A) from f5.6 to f2.8. This will also allow more light into the camera. One downside is you can’t always add light by lowering the aperture because your lens may not go to the aperture you need at the focal length you desire. WOW, I may have lost you..so I am going to explain this a litter better.

Look at your lens, most likely it is a 18-55mm zoom kit lens that came with the camera. There are a few markings on the lens.

18-55mm is the focal length of the lens. The lens 18mm is wide and 55mm is zoomed in.
f2.8-f5.6 is the minimum aperture of the lens.

What that aperture marking is saying is that at 18mm the lowest aperture (Lets in the most light) is f2.8 and at 55mm you lowest aperture is 5.6. Not as good!

You have to give up is your zoom to get more light. Bummer! This is why sports lenses are usually expensive. They typically have a 2.8 or lower at all focal lengths (on your lens 18-55) or they are prime or fixed focal length (one length like 200mm no zooming in or out), we will talk about that at a later date.

So in conclusion you have some need to figure out what is best. I would rather have clearer pictures with enough light and have to zoom in by cropping.

Since we are talking about your lens there are a few other switches
IS means image stabilization – you want that on
Focus M or AF – Manual or Automatic – you want that on AF for now.l  

I hope this was helpful and like I always say I am not writer so I apologize for grammatical errors and I really try to keep things simple and not get all technical!

If you have any questions you can post them here or email me HERE

Have a great day.


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