Newbie with an XT

[Vetteography]

I have been shooting film for 30 years, but I am new to photography. Even my 22year old Canon is mostly automatic so I never learned anything about what real photography is all about. Lots of point - n - click cameras, a few digitals, but nothing that required any real thought or talent.

I recently bought a Rebel XT and I must say I am VERY impressed with the quality of the pictures I have been getting. I have been playing with the different settings, reading the book and experimenting. I have learned more in the last few days than I did in the previous 30 years or so.

The most important thing I learned is how much more I don't know!

It sounds as though there are some very experienced photographers here. If you had to distill all of your experience into a couple of bullet points, what would those be? What tips would you consider the most helpful to a new shutterbug? What words of wisdom would you offer to an old dog who thinks he can learn a few new tricks?

Sign me,

Clueless in Charlotte

[vinnyveez]

1. since youa re shooting digital, take tons and tons of pics of whatever youa re shooting. you can discard the stuff taht doesnt work. Get as many vantage points as possible when you are onsite. when you get home you cant add pictures but you can easily delete them. get out of the "i dont want to waste filma nd money mode" NOW. i cant tell you how many times i have gotten a great shot by accident from shooting tons of pics. Pretend that you are a playboy photographer and just keep shooting.
2. Fill the frame with your subject. if you are shooting a picture of your dog in the living room, show me the dog. fill the frame with the dog, not the old newspapers in the corner or the fireplace. Get on the ground, show me an interesting view of the dog. something outside of what i would see if i walked by your him. thats what makes a photo stand out.
3. turn off your flash unless absolutely neccessary. try and do soem reading on avaialable light techniques. Indirect sun (dusk and dawn) are particularly stunning as the cast great shadows and soft light.

And for soem basic technical stuff here is an excerpt i am stealing from the great PEKKA. His stuff is really good and he gave me this info when i asked a similar type question.

I'll just write quickly some basic stuff to get you started.

Familiarize yourself with you camera. What the aperture does, what does changing shutter speed do, what ISO does. All those three are basic ingredients of an exposure. Controlling exposure is the basic skill needed to enjoy photography.

You'll need a certain amount of shutter speed to overcome camera shake - this is usually "1/ (focal lenght * FoV crop)" which means if you have 100mm lens and 1.6X camera body, then you can be relatively sure that camera shake does not show in small prints when you choose min. 1/160 shutter speed. Then there is the other factor which is other movement (your movement and subject movement). Here the thing to know is that when you get closer to moving subject you will need much faster speeds.

Lowering ISO means lowering sensor sensitivity (less light in) and increasing ISO increases sensor sensitivity (more light in). The thing you should learn is what are the relationships between ISO, shutter speed and aperture. See http://photography-on-the.net/forum...t=shutter+speed (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=57228&highlight=shutter+speed)

Doubling aperture value halves the light coming in. So 1/100 f4 is same exposure than 1/50 f8.

Doubling ISO doubles the sensitivity. So 1/25 ISO 100 is same exposure than 1/50 ISO 200 or 1/200 ISO 800.

All the above can be combined to give your the full control on what you want to achieve.

if a situation gives a good exposure with ISO 400 1/200 f8, you can choose to aim for less ISO noise and use ISO 100 1/50 f8 or less DoF and less noise with ISO 100 1/400 f2.8 or very fast shutter speed with ISO 800 1/3200 f2.8. All those capture identical amount of light, but the end result will be different. That is the exposure choice you can do freely for every shot.

For me, the aperture is the starting point, because it isolates the subject(s).

By choosing M, Av or Tv mode you decide if you need to control it all manually (M), control aperture and let the camera decide the speed (Av), or control speed and let the camera decide the aperture (Tv). If you are in Tv mode and you can not get 1/200 without underexposure, then you'll need to raise ISO until you do, or use a faster lens. Likewise, if you are in Av mode and want to use f4 and camera overexposes you'll need to lower ISO to compensate.

Ev correction allows you to fine tune the whole exposure system up or down (it will force change of aperture or speed) because many times the light metering system of the camera needs your help: in bright scenes use positive Ev and in dark scenes use negative Ev.

Apart from exposure, you'll need to know how focusing is done so that the focus is in where you want it to be. Two choices: manual or AF. AF is different in every camera so you'll need to take time to study how it works. Learn how to lock focus and choose focusing points. Manual focusing is the old way and can work well, too.

Hope this helps a little.

[Jim_T]

Go through the owner's manual and actually DO everything they show you.... Don't gloss over sections because they don't look interesting or a function looks like something you would never use.

Try setting all the different modes, bracketing, AE lock, custom white balances, focus points parameters etc etc etc......... See first hand what they do.. Don't worry about messing anything up because you can reset all the camera parameters back to the factory settingsat any time.

This is the best way to become fully familiar with the camera..

[Vetteography]

Great stuff Vinny! I have copied and pasted your advice into my notes. I have a Pocket PC that I keep lots of info on and I started a section just for stuff like this.

Jim_T: I have been doing just that. The problem is that I honestly don't see a whole lot of difference in some of the settings.... yet. I guess that will take time as I get more familiar with the various techniques.

Thanks to both of you!