Newbie Help

[Mattrugby]

Hi All
You can bare with me. Got an EOS 300d for my birthday. Sick of poor photos ffom my previous camera. However, now I feel overwhelmed with all this one can do.

Can you recommend some "trial" photos to take with settings. For example, I tried taking potraits closeup to get the background to be out of focus, but seems to be little difference from auto.

Any suggestion appreciated. Also, totally understand if this is a stupid question.

[Bodryn]

I don't believe there is such a thing as a stupid question. We all start somewhere and have had the good fortune of being helped by others. Congratulations on getting such a fine camera!

I don't have the expertise many people here do but I do know that to defocus the background, you need to open up that aperture, i.e., set the f/ to a lower number value such as 2.8 rather than the other extreme such as f/16. At wide aperture openings the focus on your subject is much more critical so it needs to be much more exact. Naturally, in changing that setting, you will also have to speed up the shutter speed to compensate to avoid overexposure. You could start by using aperture priority setting, and letting the camera decide the shutter speed until you get familiar with it. And don't forget, you can shoot hundreds of photos for FREE! (Other than the cost of battery recharging ) So there is no cost for making mistakes. :)

[dwildone]

Congrats on your new equipment and welcome.

As far as your question regarding bluring the background, you are looking for info on DOF (depth of field). There is a great tutorial at http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/dof.shtml .

Also, see this thread http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=53846 for some other good places to start. The short 10 lesson course at morguefile listed in that thread is a nice all-around intro including lessons and examples to make sure that you understand all that your new equipment is capable of.

[tim]

To start with use the basic zone - ie for portraits put the dial onto the little head. Get close to the person you're taking a photo of, and make sure they're a fair distance from the background - experiment to see how it goes. Also try with you further away from the person.

When the photos are you your PC, you can use many different programs to view the settings that the camera used. ACDsee is one, ULead.com has another, the older version is free. You'd look at the properties of the photos. You want to look at aperture, shutter speed, and ISO mainly.

Hope that helps a little :) The 300D's a great camera but it takes some time to learn how to use it well. One of the best things I did when I got mine was to enrol in an 8 week course, 2 hours per week, which taught me all the basics.

[Mattrugby]

Thats exactly the advice I was looking for. Thanks all