learning to use the manual camera settings

[cellio]

When I've taken pictures of the chanukiyah in the past, I've usually been disappointed by how blurry the flames look. Photographing flames in a darkened room is apparently challenging -- it's not just me. I asked a question about it a while back on the Codidact photography community and got some interesting advice.

I've been experimenting this season. Here's one from tonight that came out decently well:

The camera settings were:

• Shutter speed: 1/90
• ISO: 1600
• Exposure: 0 (I don't know what this means; it's a scale from -2 to +2)

The other settings I have available are named:

• White balance: (scale of pictograms of sun, light bulbs, etc)
• Interval(s): scale from 0 to 60
• Focus: picture of flower, 25/50/75%, picture of mountain

I left those set to "auto".

I can make guesses (based on the scales) about white balance and focus, but "interval(s)" has me stumped.

Comments

[dsrtao]

Setting white balance is useful but may not (naively used) get you what you want. You point it at something which you consider to normally be white, in the context of your current lighting, and the camera processor will try to correct color and brightness so that shows up in the picture as white.

The flower-to-mountain focus range is where you want the focus of the lens to be set, from closest to farthest. Objects not at that range will be blurry-er than things at that range.

[cellio]

Thanks!

[goljerp]

I think that the "Exposure" setting is a way to tweak things so that the camera gathers a little more (or less) light than would otherwise be used for the given shutter speed/ISO. Not positive about that, though. (It is a good reminder that I should pullout my digital camera, though...)

[cellio]

I think I still have an ancient digital camera (somewhere), but I've been using my cell phone for years. Only more recently have I gone beyond the baked-in "modes" (like "night" and "portrait") to the individual manual settings. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm learning. Learning is good. :-)

[goljerp]

Yeah, I have a "prosumer" Canon Powershot S95 (sold from 2010-2011), I guess that counts as ancient now. I got it just after its replacement (the S100) came out, so it was much less expensive. It probably takes slghtly better pictures than my phone... but of course the camera you have with you is always better than the camera sitting on a shelf at home. So nowadays I mostly use it when I'm on vacations.

And, yes, learning is good!

[hudebnik]

That's what I recall it meaning the last time I used a camera that wasn't also a phone.

If you're taking a picture of a dark object against a light background, the camera will try to make the average OK, which means your dark subject will be underexposed, so you set "exposure" to +1 or +2 to tell the camera to take in a little more light than it thinks appropriate (at the expense of the background possibly becoming an undifferentiated wall of white). Conversely if the subject is light and the background dark (like, say, a candle flame), set "exposure" to -1 or -2 and the background will become even darker but you'll see more detail in the subject.

If you want to bring out vivid colors, perhaps paradoxically, it often helps to set exposure to -1 or so, which often increases color saturation.

If you're shooting in low-light situations, the camera by default will try to scrounge as much light as it can find, making the whole picture sorta grey. If you would prefer to accept and own the fact that there isn't enough light, set exposure in the negative range and you'll get a more realistic portrayal of what you see.

[cellio]

Huh, lower exposure increasing color saturation would not have occurred to me. Thanks for the explanation. I'll experiment with this.

I guess "exposure" is aperture, as distinct from shutter speed? It seems like one could trade those off against each other; I wonder what the practical considerations are. (Setting aside taking pictures of something moving very quickly, where you'd want a fast shutter to reduce blur.)

[hudebnik]

Right, I'm pretty sure it's aperture (probably on an inverse logarithmic scale, so +1 lets in twice as much light per unit time, +2 four times as much light per unit time, etc. corresponding to dividing the F-stop by 1.4 or 2 respectively).

Which means another effect is on depth of focus: a larger aperture (smaller F-number) will have less depth of focus so the main subject will be in focus while things substantially closer and farther are slightly defocused, and a smaller aperture (larger F-number) will put everything equally in focus. So if you want to make the subject "stand out" from the background, or if you're shooting through a wire fence or smudgy window that you'd rather not see in the photo, use a large aperture; if you want to see a number of subjects at different distances from the camera, all in focus, use a small aperture.

Or it could be that the "exposure adjustment" just changes the total amount of light the camera tries to get, and it then makes its own judgment on what combination of F-stop and shutter speed will achieve it. So +2 might result in both a larger aperture and a slower shutter speed. Only your user manual knows for sure.

[cellio]

It turns out that while I have a slider for "exposure", I can't activate it. Presumably its availability depends on something else that I haven't figured out yet. I'll need to look for documentation.

Thanks for explaining depth of focus, which I would have confused with focal distance otherwise. Different ideas -- one is the target, one is how precise that target is.

[goljerp]

Thank you! That was much more coherent than my reply. :-)

[rhialto]

My guess about "interval" is that it is used when automatically doing multiple exposures.

[cellio]

Ah, that could be it! I keep forgetting that "burst" is a thing.