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.

[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...)

[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.

[rhialto]

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