Help with good photo's

[tanneuby]

I am very new to this whole photography thing. I was wondering if someone had some good basic info or knows of a web site. What I am looking for is the basics such as what shutter speed/aperture/ISO speed to use for different shots. I know there are a lot of combos and such, but just some basics to start out with in the advanced settings of my 10D so I can go practice.

[barnold999]

crazy I wrote about this for someone on another forum the otherday...

Someone posted a link to: http://photonotes.org/articles/beginner-faq/

But I wrote a quick background...
you can read it below, its not great but well it gives you an idea.
-------------------------

Well I dont know what you need... but let me give a quick run down.

*Aperture (AKA f-stop)*
This is how big the opening of your lens is... the bigger the opening, the more light that can enter your camera. The smaller numbers (such as 4.0) will be a larger opening, where as F16 will be a small opening. But, also with a larger opening, the background will be blured... so if you want a portrait with a softbackground (which you see a lot) you may want to try F4.0 or a larger aperture... whereas if you are taking a landscae you want something closer to F16, so you can capture all the detail.

*ISO*
ISO is usually how sensitive the film is to light, but sense it is digital, it is how sensitive the sensor is... I always call it a theoeretical ISO on a digital camera. The smaller the number (such as iso50 or iso100) the more sensitive the sensor will be to light, fording a larger aperture / longer shutter speed... but if you are in lots of light, you will want a low ISO... the lower the ISO the less grain... always try to shoot as low as possible... but at night you will have to shoot higher a lot of times.

*Shutter Speed*
Is how quick the shutter opens and closes... this is where a lot of your control will come from... if you are taking a photo of water, and you want it to look soft, you will do a longer shutter speed (1/10 sec) whereas if you want to be able to see every little drop you will want something faster (1/200 or quicker). If you are shooting with anything under 1/30 of a second I suggest you use a tripod... though... the rule for handholding is 1/focal length... focal length is that thing in milimiters, such as zoom... so if you are at 50mm you dont want to hand hold if it is longer than 1/50... but this is just a general rule, depends how steady you are.


My best advice is just to play around with the settings... sit down in your room... be in some kind of light that dosent change, set up a few objects... keep everything the same, except just vary one thing, such as aperture, or shutter speed... and see what it does... to play around with shutter speed you really need a moving object... hands are always fun... or get some friends to move around for you... just have them wave their hands... and see what happens if you take the photo at 1/10 (it looks cool their hand will be blurry) but if you do it at 1/200 it will be pretty sharp.