First Photos

Hi,
Today was my first time experiencing with an all Manual DSLR camera.
My little brother was preforming in his first theater show.
And as expected the images didn't turn out that well... My question is why.
Both photos were taken with
Canon EOS Rebel T6i | Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 | 1/640 | f/10 | ISO-25600

The first problem is the expanse of white wall. It fooled your light meter into underexposing the shot. The light meter thinks everything should be 18% gray. That's exactly what it tried to do. When you see a situation like this, increase the exposure by 1/2 to one f-stop. The other issue is ISO 25600. That contributed to the overall noise or graininess and color dappling. Since you shot at a distance f/10 was overkill. You didn't need that much depth of field. Also 1/640; There was no need to freeze any action, was there? If you shot at 1/125 and f/5.6, you would have been able to lower your ISO.

TheSandValor wrote in post #18544963
Hi,
Today was my first time experiencing with an all Manual DSLR camera.

I'm not sure if I'm reading your intent correctly, but while you can set the camera to manual, it does have other options.

Joe (previous post) offered some good advise.

Thank you for the explanation

There was a lot of movement in these shots so i was afraid that it would be blurred, furthermore, the theater was dark so i didn't want my shots to be underexposed (although it happened anyway..)

What speed is fine for moving?

Is it like a rule to keep ISO as low as possible? I started reading "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson and he suggests to keep the exposure at f/5.6. Why then he suggests doing that if i need to keep my ISO low to reduce noise?

Could it be edited to make the noise disappear ? I tried using Corel PaintShop Pro 2018 but had no luck...

TheSandValor wrote in post #18545001
Thank you for the explanation

There was a lot of movement in these shots so i was afraid that it would be blurred, furthermore, the theater was dark so i didn't want my shots to be underexposed (although it happened anyway..)

What speed is fine for moving?

Is it like a rule to keep ISO as low as possible? I started reading "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson and he suggests to keep the exposure at f/5.6. Why then he suggests doing that if i need to keep my ISO low to reduce noise?

Could it be edited to make the noise disappear ? I tried using Corel PaintShop Pro 2018 but had no luck...

They're not moving as fast as you may think. 1/125s would probably have been fast enough to freeze the action.

f/5.6 would allow you to keep everything in focus when shooting at 35mm. f/10 gives you more depth of field, but you really didn't need that much, while shooting at f/5.6 would allow you to reduce your ISO almost 2 stops with the same exposure. Reducing your shutter speed would allow you to reduce it even more.

Photoshop has some good noise reduction, but shooting with a much lower ISO setting would have been a better solution.

The lower the ISO, the less noise, the better the image quality, so yes, try to keep the ISO as low as possible.

Different types of movement require different shutter speeds. When I photograph a swallow in flight I like a shutter speed of at least 1/2000s. But a foraging blackbird needs less than half that. But that's in ideal conditions. If light doesn't allow these speeds, you start to compromise: open the lens, lower the shutter speed, increase ISO. For me usually in that order.

I don't know how well your lens performs wide open, but if you had opened the aperture to f/5.6 and lowered your shutter speed to 1/200s or even a bit less, you could have lowered your ISO by some 3 stops to 3200 and that would have given you significantly better image quality.

Here's an excellent beginner's guide on the exposure triangle. Well worth the read. https://photographylif​e.com/what-is-iso-in-photography

Thank you all for the help

And thank you for the guide, it really is very helpful

That huge white background could have been very helpful. Look at steps 1-3 in Need an exposure crutch?

If you read further on, the thread should help you with most of your exposure problems.

As another poster above alluded to, depth of field (how big a range is in focus) is related to the aperture, focal length, and distance to the subject. The exact relationship is non-trivial, but you can get an idea from the calculator below.
http://www.dofmaster.c​om/dofjs.html

For example, using the 35mm focal length in your first photo at f/10, if you focused on an object (person) 25 feet away from the camera, everything would be in focus from 11.4 feet in front of the camera to a distance infinitely far away.

Take the aperture down to f/5.6 as someone above suggested with the exact same scenario and you would still get everything in focus from 15 feet in front of the camera to 74.7 feet away from the camera. Way more than enough for that scene.

Also, rather than going straight to manual mode, try both aperture priority (AV) and shutter priority (TV), if you haven't already. It's rare that you need to be in a completely manual mode. Play around with the exposure compensation in each of those modes and figure out where you may like to change that from zero (hint: night time and snow are two examples)

Just to complement the other great advice: Under these circumstances I just would have gone for Tv and start with 1/125, have the exposure compensation up and let the rest float. This gives you a good starting point. Also: Don't be too afraid of low shutter speeds. Having some movement in the frame makes nice dynamic pictures.

s1a1om wrote in post #18545060
Also, rather than going straight to manual mode, try both aperture priority and shutter priority (if you haven't already). It's rare that you need to be in a completely manual mode. Play around with the exposure compensation in each of those modes and figure out where you may like to change that from zero (hint: night time and snow are two examples)

I strongly disagree with this. A beginner should always be in manual mode to learn to properly expose his/her photos. Use a semi-automatic mode if you must only when you know your stuff and it's convenient, but not because you don't know how to do it yourself.

Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #18545063
I strongly disagree with this. A beginner should always be in manual mode to learn to properly expose his/her photos. Use a semi-automatic mode if you must only when you know your stuff and it's convenient, but not because you don't know how to do it yourself.

I agree. The OP is already willing to use Manual, & suggesting that he start chasing the needle with exposure compensation in a simple situation like this one is just taking a big step backwards.

^ Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes! Been waitng for someone to tell a noobie this.

Unlike film, pixels are free. If you're learning, take some time and shoot trying the difference exposure choices mentioned above. You'll find out just how slow you can go, or how thin a DOF you can get away with. We old film shooters also didn't have the opportunity to chimp. Nothing wrong with chimping as you shoot.

PhotosGuy wrote in post #18545069
I agree. The OP is already willing to use Manual, & suggesting that he start chasing the needle with exposure compensation in a simple situation like this one is just taking a big step backwards.

I vehemently disagree. It's good to know the general relationship between all the variables, but there's no need to select all three manually. I started my foray in DSLRs setting everything manually. Then I realized what a waste of time it is and that a good photographer sets their gear in a way that allows them to capture the image they want most easily. In many cases that's AV or TV.

If you care primarily about depth of field, set the camera to aperture priority and let it figure out the necessary shutter speed. If there's a white background or it's on snow, dial in a little +EC. If it's night time or a black background dial in -EC. If you want the water in a waterfall to blur or a propeller to blur, set it to shutter priority. When using a strobe with a max sync speed of 1/200, I find TV to be most convenient.

As for learning, knowing what each control does separately (in AV or TV) makes combining them infinitely easier.