Photography tips (3)

Before moving on to describe how each of the main settings affect the way the camera uses the light falling on your subject (it is this reflected light that makes the photograph) a little word about lenses.
one thing you can do to help make your photographs just that little bit sharper is change your regular zoom lens for a prime (fixed focal length) lens.
There are two advantages a prime lens has over your average zoom.
the first is that a zoom lens is always going to be a compromise especially if it has a wide zoom range. even its maximum aperture changes over the zoom range. This maximum aperture and therefor its ability to capture light is always going to be reduced on a zoom. Why is this important when we could simply either increase the iso on the camera or lower the shutter speed to obtain the required amount of light? well both of these solutions introduce other unwanted effects into the photograph. When we increase the iso we not only make the camera more sensitive to light but introduce unwanted noise into the picture. changing the shutter speed can re introduce camera shake (one of the reasons we are shooting on a tripod in the first place) and we have taken the time to shoot on manual so we can select the appropriate shutter speed we dont want this to be dictated by the available aperture.
the second advantage is that because a prime lens has a wider maximum apeture to start with (lets say F1.8 as opposed to F4.5 on a regular zoom) we can stop the lens down a couple of stops from its maximum without loosing too much light thus finding the sweet spot where the lens is at its sharpest.

now i am not saying you need to spend a lot of money on a super wide long lens but  a standard 50mm F1.8 prime lens will make a lot of difference to your photographs without having to spend too much.

Next time back to those light settings on the camera.