Settings and my camera

sgtchiefapone

sgtchiefapone

Suspended / Banned
Messages
9
Name
Terry
Edit My Images
Yes
Okay so there is a wealth of knowledge on this site on using your camera and so on but I'm lost and confused and want to see if I can start with making sense of my camera settings.
I own a Fuji Finepix S4300. I'm going to go through settings on there that I don't get or fully understand on my camera.
White Balance, I sort of understand this but I tend to use it on auto, is this something that I should learn now or is it fine on auto until I have the hang of other settings?
Sharpness setting, Hard, Standard or Soft. I'm not seeing much difference in this setting and I use it on Standard but there must be a reason for the other 2 settings?
Photometry?? in the settings you have multi, spot and average. This means nothing to me so would really like to know what its for.
AF mode. 5 settings and have never touched them.
AE BKT EV Steps?? now this one has really lost me, +1/3 EV, +2/3 EV and +1 EV??
And I can change the Flash setting, why would I do this?
What is the F number? I've tried it but all it seems to do is make the brightness go up or down and it works along side the exposure time which I assume is the shutter speed??

Lots of questions, being a proper newbie so sorry for that. If it helps I like to do a lot of close up's and me and my partner make handmade jewellery which I take photos off. Here is one, this is how I do a lot of my jewellery photo's. Would adjusting any of the above settings make the photo better?



Thanks
 
What you have asked is basicly the very fundamentals of photography, so rather than type out a massive answer here, I suggest you do some serious reading over the next few weeks to get to grips with the basics of photography and exposure.

There are several great tutorials on here like this

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/th...ure-theory-but-were-afraid-to-ask-101.440126/

This

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/the-basics-of-photography.154225/

And this


http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/beginners-guide-to-exposure.418671/

Also if you search youtube you'll find loads of videos demonstrating the basic principles.

Once you have the basics down like aperture and shutter speed etc, come back and ask again about some of the more technical stuff like metering modes, or photometry as fuji call it. Some of the stuff you mentioned is just adjusting the processing the camera will do to the image, this is the various sharpness settings and can be left alone for now.

Other stuff like the autofocus, and bracketing is a bit more in depth and needs a basic understanding of photography really before it can be explained.
 
Last edited:
hi terry i'll start with an easy one the f number is the size of the aperture in your lens f=fraction 2.8 /5.6/8/11/16/etc hth mike.welcome to tp by the way :thumbs:

just to help as you are using an auto mode changing e.g. the f number (size of the aperture) will let in more light so the camera knows this will make the picture to bright and reduces the light(makes the shutter speed faster) to get a correct exposure.
 
Last edited:
If you are only really interested taking the product photos just carry on as you are

I thought the bracelet photo looked ok for your purposes, maybe a better background would help though to avoid the burnt out white patches. Not sure if you are using one, but a tripod also helps a lot to get a less blur free shot.

Compact cameras are really good for macro type stuff and you can expend a lot of time and effort for not that much improvement. Might be better off trying to make improvements such as sharpening with software.
 
Last edited:
Learn the exposure triangle which is how aperture (F number), shutter speed (S mode) and ISO work together.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top