Looking for advice

[Dead Head]

I've done B&W photography for years, in fact I have my own darkroom in my home.
I just purchased a D-30 and look forward to learning this new (to me) medium. I tried to shoot some moving water yesterday and the shots came out overexposed. I shot on TV with a slow shutter speed and small aperture. My question is: do these auto focus cameras react the same as my standard A-1 and F-1 when set up to shoot long exposures? Do the cameras have a tendancy to shake on a tripod more than a conventional camera?

[Mark Kemp]

Shouldn't be a problem.

If you are used to a film camera it should be much the same - at least as close as these things ever are. Certainly no worse than if you went to say a Nikon or Minolta film slr instead of a Canon.

The ISO equivalent 'speed' settings are pretty close to a film of the same speed.

You can usually trust the D30 exposure meter - when I override mine its usually right and me wrong (except the usual snow, bright skies etc.)

So the same settings for a film slr or a Dslr should give pretty much the same result, certainly there should be no shake on a tripod unless one leg is shorter than the rest!!!!

Try a few test shots in program mode and see what the exposure is like.

Remember you have 3 advantages now you are digital

1) You can try the shot over and over and just delete it until you get what you want.

2) You can change the ISO speed for every frame not just roll by roll.

3) You have a histogram on the LCD that tells you a lot of info about exposures.

Autofocus is never 100% reliable, but canons is supposed to be the best and I certainly trust it for most shots

[Dead Head]

Mark Kemp wrote:
Shouldn't be a problem.

If you are used to a film camera it should be much the same - at least as close as these things ever are. Certainly no worse than if you went to say a Nikon or Minolta film slr instead of a Canon.

The ISO equivalent 'speed' settings are pretty close to a film of the same speed.

You can usually trust the D30 exposure meter - when I override mine its usually right and me wrong (except the usual snow, bright skies etc.)

So the same settings for a film slr or a Dslr should give pretty much the same result, certainly there should be no shake on a tripod unless one leg is shorter than the rest!!!!

Try a few test shots in program mode and see what the exposure is like.

Remember you have 3 advantages now you are digital

1) You can try the shot over and over and just delete it until you get what you want.

2) You can change the ISO speed for every frame not just roll by roll.

3) You have a histogram on the LCD that tells you a lot of info about exposures.

Autofocus is never 100% reliable, but canons is supposed to be the best and I certainly trust it for most shots



Mark,
Thanks for you input.....actually I did forget about the histogram I'm so used to keeping a notebook.

[Motorsports Photo]

Mark Kemp wrote:
You can usually trust the D30 exposure meter - when I override mine its usually right and me wrong (except the usual snow, bright skies etc.)


Not my experience. My D30 has been to canon a couple of times and has spent most of its life on manual control becasue of exposure error. I hope your experience is better.

Learn to use the histogram. You can easily see skews one way or the other in exposure and quickly compensate to get it right.

Another little detail is the center autofocus sensor can sense horzontal and vertical. Not the case with the outer sensors. If you have trouble autofocusing just use the center sensor.

-Pete

[dtrayers]

The conventional wisdom is that shooting digital is like shooting slides. There isn't as much exposure latitude as color print. I'm sure you are used to push processing and doing adjustments in the darkroom. Some of the same techniques can be found in the digitial relm.

I highly recommend you check out the following web sites:

www.luminious-landscape.com

www.photo.net

www.photonotes.org

The first two have excellent information of working digitally. Photonotes.org has a lot of info about EOS cameras.