need help getting my head round the numbers

[thes3raph1m]

ok so i have the camera, it has the options, i have no clue

ok not true i get the concept of DOF and how the aperture width changes it, i get the shutter speed and how it affects exposure and also camera wobble, i get all of that

yet my photos are poor...

i have a 28-300mm fixed lens fuji finepix s9600 with 9million effective pixels, 80-1600 iso, focal length 50cm, macro 10cm, super macro 1cm, max shutter 30seconds with bulb option (upto 30seconds) min 1/4000 seconds, aperture f2.8-f11 at wide, f5.6-f11 at full tele, autofocus or manual focus, 18ft effective range on the flash, 256 segment, CW-average or Spot metering (dont get the difference but im sure it explains in the manual)

now if im trying to photograph a bird at say, 40ft, 10 ft, and 5ft, what settings would you recommend (im trying to get a range of ideas... i dont get much daytime to practice you see so im only getting indoor shots in poor light at the moment) and also what about for say insect macro's do you think i could manage some with this equipment?

ive seen willing to learn's photos of the nuthatch and the other 2... how could i go about taking a similar photo with my equipment, i know my camera has nothing on the 350 or 400d, but im sure it can do something right?

i have a few hours off during daylight hours tomorrow (11am to about 3pm) i know thats not great with direct sun and all but its supposed to be overcast all day (yay!)... ill take some photos and see what i can get... btw its all handheld at the minute, i have no tripod, but i may get one tomorrow.

[wildmanofthewoods]

patience, alot of people make the misconception that a good camera or long lens is going to get you good photographs(it does help)but at the end of the day its the person with the camera that gets the shots. if your new to photography you will get better as you learn to understand your camera and the wildlife you wish to photograph......
if your wishing to photograph small birds with your camera you will have to get really close i'd say within six feet... this is the hard part, go somewhere where the birds are fed regularly a feeding station is ideal, if the birds are used to people even better. if they're not a hide will help. you are on your way... practice with your camera at home on inanimate objects first, get used to it... small birds are one of the most difficult things on earth to photograph they rarely stay still for a second so you will not have much time to focus, compose and press the shutter.
i would advise you practice on inanimate subjects first, with spring just around the corner wildflowers will be a great subject to learn on as you can take a shot, then another and another and so on... remember you dont have to photograph everything tomorrow you have the rest of your life. good luck, i'll look forward to seeing your pics soon...al.

[eeyore]

Its very difficult to give an ideal camera setting because every situation is different.

however for photographing small birds - which tend to flit arround quite a bit , I would suggest that you need to keep the shutter speed up as much as possible or you will wind up with a lot of motion blur. - I'd suggest that you aim for 1/250th or faster (these are fractions of a second so the larger the bottom number the faster the speed)

with a lot of bird photography it is also a good idea to blur the background by having a relatively small depth of field (abreviated to dof) - the dof is the portion of the photo which will be in focus (assuming you dont have camera wobble or subject movement). This is controlled largely by the apperture (yes experienced people i know there are other factors but i'm trying to keep this simple for a beginer) - the wider the apperture (ie the hole the light gets through to the sensor) the smaller the dof - the apperture is meassured in f numbers (e.g from 5.6 to f11) in this case the smaller the number the wider the apperture and they double each time (ie f5.6 is twice as wide as f8 etc) so for small bird photography i would set either f5.6 or f8.

The apperture also has a relation with the shutter speed as the wider the apperture is the more light gets in during exposure and thus the faster the shutter speed can be for a given exposure. Most cameras have an AV (apperture priority) mode where you set the apperture and the camera sets the shutter speed, TV (shutter priority) where you pick the speed and the camera selects the coresponding apperture, a mannual mode (M) where you pick both advised by the camera meter - and a range of scene modes where the camera picks both. My advice would be to put the camera in AV and select f5.6.

Another important number is the ISO this ranges from 100- 1600 on most cameras (though some have less) this controls the sensitivity of the sensor , the higher the number the more sensitive and thus the faster the available shutter speed for a given aperture and light. However before you rush to set 1600 there is a drawback.

the higher the ISo the more noise (ie wrongly coloured pixeks in the dark areas) you get - I would tend to select iSO400 unless you are in very dark conditions where it might be worth going up to 800.

CW average metering decides the exposure based on the amount of light in the whole frame - though it is weighted towards the center (CW=centre weighted) , this is generally good but can be fooled if you have a lot of very light or dark in the photo (as when photographing a bird in the snow) Spot metering works out the exposure based on a much smaller area (the circle in the middle of the view finder on most cameras - though some pro spec DSLRs can do it on any focusing point) which is good for tricky situations but you do have to make sure that the spot is on the subject.

One other thing I'd mention would be what sort of file you have selected - you will have a range of jpegs plus RAW to chose from. As a beginer i'd advise you to go to the largest jpeg available (normally known as jpeg large or jpeg fine), when you get more experienced you might prefer to swap to raw (we have whole threads on jpeg vs raw so i'm not going into this now).

I hope this helps and look forward to seeing the results - feel free to pm me if theres anything here you'd like clarified.

good luck and have fun.

[nightshade]

Like he said practice and practice some more,it is not as if you have to pay for processing, a walk in the park yield can lots of oppertunities

[Bub-les]

Then look at the info the camera stores about each photo .. exif data found by looking at the properties and compare it to what eeyore has said to see where you can improve as you go along. Its a huge learning curve at first and I would say that although the curve flattens you never actually stop learning!
Above all have fun, learning about your camera and the wildlife you photograph.
Barbara

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Bub-les

Then look at the info the camera stores about each photo .. exif data found by looking at the properties and compare it to what eeyore has said to see where you can improve as you go along. Its a huge learning curve at first and I would say that although the curve flattens you never actually stop learning!
Above all have fun, learning about your camera and the wildlife you photograph.
Barbara

... and look at the exif for the pics you like in the Gallery here or i details given in books by pros such as andy rouse and chris gomersal - try to work out what they did that was different to your attempts at similar shots then try that next time.

[Geoff F]

Show us your photos! The ones that went wrong but you don't know why, and include all the shooting data. Then someone will be able to work out what is going wrong.

At a guess, I would suggest shutter speed too low or faulty focus. I can't remember if that camera has a proper manual focus; with most of that type of camera, manual isn't good enough for clear focus. When using autofocus make absolutely certain that it is actually focusing on the subject, bird etc, not the background. Also, use the spot metering as centre weighted will be influenced by the background. Even then you may have to add or subtract a little bit of exposure compensation.

The tripod will help, especially when using a longer lens range.

It will be a slow learning curve at first, but don't worry you will get there eventually.

[The Black Rabbit]

Originally Posted by eeyore

Its very difficult to give an ideal camera setting because every situation is different.

however for photographing small birds - which tend to flit arround quite a bit , I would suggest that you need to keep the shutter speed up as much as possible or you will wind up with a lot of motion blur. - I'd suggest that you aim for 1/250th or faster (these are fractions of a second so the larger the bottom number the faster the speed)

with a lot of bird photography it is also a good idea to blur the background by having a relatively small depth of field (abreviated to dof) - the dof is the portion of the photo which will be in focus (assuming you dont have camera wobble or subject movement). This is controlled largely by the apperture (yes experienced people i know there are other factors but i'm trying to keep this simple for a beginer) - the wider the apperture (ie the hole the light gets through to the sensor) the smaller the dof - the apperture is meassured in f numbers (e.g from 5.6 to f11) in this case the smaller the number the wider the apperture and they double each time (ie f5.6 is twice as wide as f8 etc) so for small bird photography i would set either f5.6 or f8.

The apperture also has a relation with the shutter speed as the wider the apperture is the more light gets in during exposure and thus the faster the shutter speed can be for a given exposure. Most cameras have an AV (apperture priority) mode where you set the apperture and the camera sets the shutter speed, TV (shutter priority) where you pick the speed and the camera selects the coresponding apperture, a mannual mode (M) where you pick both advised by the camera meter - and a range of scene modes where the camera picks both. My advice would be to put the camera in AV and select f5.6.

Another important number is the ISO this ranges from 100- 1600 on most cameras (though some have less) this controls the sensitivity of the sensor , the higher the number the more sensitive and thus the faster the available shutter speed for a given aperture and light. However before you rush to set 1600 there is a drawback.

the higher the ISo the more noise (ie wrongly coloured pixeks in the dark areas) you get - I would tend to select iSO400 unless you are in very dark conditions where it might be worth going up to 800.

CW average metering decides the exposure based on the amount of light in the whole frame - though it is weighted towards the center (CW=centre weighted) , this is generally good but can be fooled if you have a lot of very light or dark in the photo (as when photographing a bird in the snow) Spot metering works out the exposure based on a much smaller area (the circle in the middle of the view finder on most cameras - though some pro spec DSLRs can do it on any focusing point) which is good for tricky situations but you do have to make sure that the spot is on the subject.

One other thing I'd mention would be what sort of file you have selected - you will have a range of jpegs plus RAW to chose from. As a beginer i'd advise you to go to the largest jpeg available (normally known as jpeg large or jpeg fine), when you get more experienced you might prefer to swap to raw (we have whole threads on jpeg vs raw so i'm not going into this now).

I hope this helps and look forward to seeing the results - feel free to pm me if theres anything here you'd like clarified.

good luck and have fun.

Very good post.
I agree with everything there (especially the "have fun" bit - easy to overlook that), apart from the ISO advice.

Ok, I'm a newbie to digital photography, but have learned a lot in a few months.
One of the things I've learned that with a camera like the s9600 bridge, there's no much point going to ISO400 - too much noise. I'd stick to the lowest ISO you've got with a camera like that - maybez as low as ISO 80.
Thats one BIG difference between bridges and DSLRs. DSLRs may be fine with ISO400 and above, but bridges struggle. Or my FZ20 bridge does anyway, and I'm pretty sure the Fuji s9600 is no different at all.

This will obviously increase your shutter speed to probably more than 1/250th second, unless you've got bright light on your side.
Thats too bad I'm afraid. a £300 bridge is no match for a £400 DSLR body and a £400+ lens.
I have the same issue though - and one can begin to get around it by using a little known skill - fieldcraft.
And of course, PATIENCE!!! (Already mentioned also.)

Doug

[glsammy]

Originally Posted by The Black Rabbit

Very good post.
I agree with everything there (especially the "have fun" bit - easy to overlook that), apart from the ISO advice.

Ok, I'm a newbie to digital photography, but have learned a lot in a few months.
One of the things I've learned that with a camera like the s9600 bridge, there's no much point going to ISO400 - too much noise. I'd stick to the lowest ISO you've got with a camera like that - maybez as low as ISO 80.
Thats one BIG difference between bridges and DSLRs. DSLRs may be fine with ISO400 and above, but bridges struggle. Or my FZ20 bridge does anyway, and I'm pretty sure the Fuji s9600 is no different at all.

This will obviously increase your shutter speed to probably more than 1/250th second, unless you've got bright light on your side.
Thats too bad I'm afraid. a £300 bridge is no match for a £400 DSLR body and a £400+ lens.
I have the same issue though - and one can begin to get around it by using a little known skill - fieldcraft.
And of course, PATIENCE!!! (Already mentioned also.)

Doug

Got to agree with you on this. It was the poor ISO performance that made me change to a DSLR. Anything much above ISO 100 was pretty hopeless.
I'm sure Pete knows this very well, I think he just missed the point the user was using a bridge camera and not a DSLR.

[The Black Rabbit]

Originally Posted by glsammy

Got to agree with you on this. It was the poor ISO performance that made me change to a DSLR. Anything much above ISO 100 was pretty hopeless.
I'm sure Pete knows this very well, I think he just missed the point the user was using a bridge camera and not a DSLR.

Yes. I'm sure he does Graham.
Its Mark's (MH68's) old camera I've got, and he's taught me all I know really...

Doug