Saturday, March 17, 2012

DSLR for Dummies, Lesson 1-Shutter Speed

My husband gave me a Canon Rebel T2i for Christmas. I LOVE it. Love. I read the instruction manual 3 times, cover to cover. Well, I skipped the French and Spanish sections. I have played around with different settings, trying to learn as I go.


I have a LOT to learn.


There's no denying it takes beautiful pictures on the automatic setting, but I am determined to learn more about the manual settings. So far, I can only change one thing at a time. I don't know NEAR enough to try to set everything manually and still manage to take a decent picture.


I practiced with shutter speed the other day when the Little Miss was blowing bubbles. I moved my dial to TV and adjusted the knob to different speeds. I let the camera choose the light and AV and all that other stuff that I really don't know anything about.


With a low number (like 1/60), I was able to capture the movement in the picture so that the bubbles look blurry.


With a slightly higher number (1/200), the bubbles appear more clear but they still look like they are moving.


With a very high number (1/1000), the camera shoots so quickly that it "freezes" the movement, so the bubbles appear clear. This picture is a bit darker and I think that's because the shutter speed was so fast, it didn't let as much as light in. Or I could be completely wrong. Because I have no idea what I'm doing here.


I am pleased with how the pictures turned out. Other than a quick "auto fix" on my regular computer program, I didn't edit them. I plan to print a few out to see how clear they are and if there's a difference in the quality between the low and high shutter speeds.

I'm learning.

Baby steps.

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3 comments:

Unknown said...

Three and four are my favorites and HOW is she growing up SO fast!?

Carrie said...

I have a Rebel too. I just took a Superhero online photo class and LOVED LOVED LOVED it. Highly recommend!

Momma@Live. Laugh. Pull your hair out said...

Good job. Teach me when you figure it all out! I love pic #3!