Digital Photography

Since I have a new Canon SD700IS from Freepay, I've really wanted to get into photography, but I'm not the most knowledgable with the advanced settings and taking better pictures. I've been trying to read the manuals to get a better feel for it, but it seems to still be very technical. I have no idea what ISO speed would be best for different situations. Does anyone have any good tips or places to go to read up about this?

dpreview.com

I like to keep my manual mode at ISO 200 with No Flash with Custom Color setting and Auto White Balance or Custom when I have time to calibrate it to a pure white. I thought this thread[=http//www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24016]this thread was pretty useful. Good luck.

EDIT Kinda useful stuff for newbies to photography like me[=http//www.photoxels.com/digital-photography-tutorials.html]Kinda useful stuff for newbies to photography like me

sweet, because I was taking pictures outside of the foilage since it was soo nice, but the pictures were coming out grainy.

Yeah usually over 400 ISO and your pictures are noisey. There's a plug-in for Photoshop called NeatImage that'll get rid of it for you.

For sports or moving objects, you want a fast shutter speed. Also, if you're taking a picture of a Humming Bird for example, they're in one place, but their wings are moving really fast, so you'd want a fast shutter speed. However, since the shutter isn't open as long, less light gets in. That's where you change the ISO and Aperture. The higher the ISO, the brighter the picture. The lower the aperture, the more light gets in.

Your pictures are supposed to be their sharpest at an aperture of between 11 and 14 I think.

WHat exactly can you change, settings-wise, on your camera?

ISO, Flash, White Balance, My Color, Size and such. No Apeture or Shutter Speed control so yeah... SD700 IS is pretty limited in terms of manual settings.

[quoted882c62390="Aurelius"]ISO, Flash, White Balance, My Color, Size and such. No Apeture or Shutter Speed control so yeah... SD700 IS is pretty limited in terms of manual settings.[/quoted882c62390]

Yeah not exactly the most versatile camera.

I am taking this digital photography course in school. We don't learn very much because the teacher is pretty stupid. Here is a website we use sometimes for answering questions/homework. Most of the stuff is simple, I dont know if it will help you at all.

http//www.shortcourses.com/[]http//www.shortcourses.com/

[quote73d929dbd4="johnjimjones"]Since I have a new Canon SD700IS from Freepay, I've really wanted to get into photography, but I'm not the most knowledgable with the advanced settings and taking better pictures. I've been trying to read the manuals to get a better feel for it, but it seems to still be very technical. I have no idea what ISO speed would be best for different situations. Does anyone have any good tips or places to go to read up about this?[/quote73d929dbd4]

Even though you can't adjust shutter speed or aperature, you can still do a few things. Most cameras have some sort of "exposure adjustment", that lets you underexpose or overexpose your shot, compared to what the camera thinks the correct exposure is.

Other than that, I'm not sure what else you can do as far as camera settings. Use it as a good opportunity to develop your eye for shots, and see if you may want to buy a dSLR or something later. I spent $400 on a nice Olympus point-and-shoot, and sold it for $200 a few years later to buy my dSLR.