Help Required - Looking for a New Lens

[Breinke]

Okay so where do you suggest I start off? May I remind you I know how to take amazing pictures, I just don't understand the camera.

[tilde531]

It sounds like you're very frustrated and just flipping things in different combinations to try everything without being too deliberate about it?

If it's black, then you either need to adjust the speed OR maybe even the ISO or maybe even both.
There's not enough light getting to the sensor, one way or the other.

And close-ups are very tricky because there is a point at which it'll go very blurry if you're TOO CLOSE... as well as if you're too FAR away from the subject.

As frustrated as you sound (and understandably so... believe me... every one here has had to learn this, some... like me... the tough-way, by doing-failing-trying again-failing until we get it!), it might be wise to put the camera down for a day or two. Use your down time to read the manual and do some more reading here and other online resources....

and come back to it when you are calmer and feel more confident.

You CAN and you WILL do it.
I promise you.
But you have to invest more energy in learning your gear and less energy flying all over the place without direction because you're so frustrated.

You've vented and you've received valid and helpful responses here.
We DO understand.

(IF, on the off-chance you still think that it's your lens... then why not take it to the nearest Best Buy or other similar electronics store, and ask them to check it out for you by taking a test close-up shot? That would help you see whether it's something you are in control of and just not doing correctly.... or if it's a failure on the part of your camera and/or lens.)

Offered in a genuine effort to help you, with respect...

T~

I can't really practice when nobody is helping me understand the functions of my camera. All my photos are coming out black, I can't turn the flash off, when I take a close up, it only gives me a clear picture one time out of 100 shots. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I took 2 pages of notes on how to set up the camera to get a good picture and it's not working. If you want a close up, you're supposed to take a picture with a fast shutter speed and an aperture close to 3.5 or so, correct? Then how come when i do, my photos come out blurry?

[Glenn NK]

I've read all the posts and quickly realized the problem. I strongly recommend that Brianna starts here:

http://www.amazon.ca/Understanding-E.../dp/0817439390

http://digital-photography-school.co...-reader-review

The book covers far more than the topic of exposure, and that in essence what is needed.

Glenn

[Melkus]

Oh my god. Turn that mode dail to where it say Auto (It's in green with the camera icon under that word) then take ton of photos while you learn about other things. Or if you must set the mode dail to "A" (Aperture Priority ) and play around with adjusting it to see what it dose and allow the camera to do the rest. I feel your trying to do to much at one time and getting confuse and frustrated, slow down take your time, you can't learn everything over night. I been at this for over eight years now and I don't understand everything and I'm still learning new things.

[Breinke]

Thanks for all the help and support, but I feel like either the camera is having difficulty or it's just too advanced for me. I've had it for two years nd have had it sent in twice. I think I'm just going to sell it and buy a different one, one more suitable for someone not better experienced with the confusing cameras.

[rawill]

Here's an idea. Just leave it on Auto mode for now and work on your composition. Do you know what the “Rule of Thirds” are, if not then check this out.
http://digital-photography-school.com/rule-of-thirds

Exactly, as above, well said.

And when you have taken your shots on auto, take a look at the information to see what the auto settings were.
There is heaps to learn.

And like others have said, I think your auto focus settings are not set properly.
The focus points must be wrong to have the background in focus, and not the foreground, or vice versa.

The problem is not likely to be your lense.
Rbn (I am a newbie too)

[Melkus]

Could be a problem with it but in any case the D5100 is a entry-level DSLR and is a very easy camera to use and understand none the less.

[Manfred M]

Hi Brianna - if you are getting "black" images, then there is obviously a problem with your exposure. This mean you are simply not getting enough light hitting the sensor and the cause is likely a combination of factors like lighting, low ISO, too high a shutter speed and too low an aperture setting. The problem is that we would have to see one of your images and look at the metadata to figure out what might be happening.

Please post an image so that we can download it and check it out.

[rtbaum]

Brianna- It is a new day, I am hoping that you have had an opportunity to review the manual for your dslr. What I found to be useful, when first learning to use my camera and lens, was to take a number of shots of a stationary subject and varying different settings. You should make sure the camera is stabilized, preferably with a tripod. In my case it was my very accomodating cat. The first shot was at full auto, let the camera do all the thinking. It is important that your have good lighting and that there is a lot of contrast between the subject and background. Looking through the viewfinder center the box on the area that you most desire to be in focus, depress shutter halfway to allow camera to acquire the proper focus and take the shot.

Now it is time to experiment, refer back to the manual and you will note that it has different modes (A, S, M). 'A' stands for Aperture priority and it allows you to to manually set the aperture, which is the size of the opening of the lens. The camera will automatically set the other settings. For now, I recommend that you go to the menu in your camera and set the iso to 800 so that the only thing that the camera is determining is the shutter speed. Now go ahead and shoot at different aperture settings, note how the depth of focus changes. Note that at the largest aperture ( it is somewhat counter intuitive that the largest aperture is the smallest f-number) has the fastest shutter speed, very useful for moving subjects, and the shallowest depth of focus. Smallest aperture ( largest f-number) will yield a slower shutter speed and deeper depth of focus.

Now set at 'S' and repeat. This allows you to set the shutter speed and the camera sets the aperture. You will find that most photographers have a favorite between the two modes, figure out which is your favorite.

[Scott Stephen]

Look on this site, or Google for it on the web, for the "photographic triangle." Basically it is the whole theory of photography rolled into one easy-to-understand simple diagram.
Basically everything in photography is a compromise about light. You need to get enough light onto the sensor to get a correct exposure.
You can control how long the light is shining into the camera with the shutter.
You can control how wide the camera opens to allow light into the camera with aperature.
And finally, you can control how sensitive the camera is to the light coming in (ISO).

But there are trade-offs. Always.
Shutter: The slower you set the shutter, the more light you let into the camera, but the more blur you can get from the subject moving, or the camera shaking. But as you set the shutter faster to eliminate blur, you are allowing less and less light into the camera. Moving objects need faster shutter. Fast moving objects need an even faster shutter to freeze them, but the fast shutter robs you of light.

Aperature: Wide aperature (low f-number) opens wide and lets a lot of light in, but it also makes your depth of field very shallow, so you can only get part of the scene to be in-focus. Narrow aperature (high f-number like f/16 or f/22) lets you get pretty much everything in the whole scene in focus, but it lets very little light in through the tiny hole, so you would have to compensate with slower shutter or a more sensitive ISO setting.

ISO: You can make the camera more sensitive to light, so you can get by with a faster shutter time and/or a narrower aperature, but it comes at the expense of poorer image quality. ISO 100 and ISO 200 look fantastic. ISO 800 probably looks pretty grainy and washed out if you blow it up much. ISO 3200 or 6400 may be so grainy and bad you won't want to use it, even with extensive post-processing. Anything higher than that is almost certainly garbage unless you have an $8,000.00 camera.

These compromises can be maddening, but there is also something very cool about it. (Or maybe I am sick in the head.) It is always different depending on where you are, and when you are there, because the light is different every time, and your subject is different every time. There is no way you can "memorize" a setting ahead of time and then expect it to work when you go try to take a photo. You have to see what the light is like and what your subject is, and then come up with the right setting on the spot.

Also, read your manual on "focus points". There are little boxes you can see on the screen as you are focusing. You can control which one (or ones, or all of them) will be the place where the camera focuses. Be sure to place an active focus point over what you want to focus on, or else the camera won't know what you want to be in focus.

Good luck!

[Melkus]

Remember also this should be a fun and relexing hobby

[rawill]

I make a silly mistake recently on auto. Not the green auto setting but the portrait auto setting, I had the focus set to multipoint (i think) and so sometimes my background was sharp and sometimes the main subject was in focus. It was only later reviewing the photos, (of our granddaughters 1st birthday!) that I found my mistake.

[rtbaum]

That type of thing happens to me a disturbing number of times

[Tord]

One detail, often forgotten, is the effect of the physical size of the sensor: The smaller it is, the greater its DOF (depth of field, the distances that are reproduced sharp, in focus, at a certain aperture setting. With a tiny sensor you can take sharp photos from inside a flower, if it can focus at that distance. A camera with a MF sensor (the biggest sensors there are for normal humans — only the military uses bigger) needs a very small aperture to give a useable DOF, that's why a studio has so much light available (either strobes, spotlights, or LED arrays, or both!).

I use mostly FX (full format) and CX (also called 1" format), with m4/3 and APS-C (also known as DX) falling inbetween (DX is exactly half a FX sensor in size). The smaller the sensor is the smaller the lenses often are, as a ¨normal' lens for a FX is 50mm, on a DX 33mm, and on a CX camera just 18.5 mm.

Nikon 1 cameras, like the V1, or the J3, use CX sensors, and can use many of Nikon F Mount lenses, so if you mount your 50mm 'normal' lens on the V1 with the help of a FT1 adapter, it will behave like it was a 135mm lens on the FX!

I often use the AF-S VR 70-300 on my V1 and it works perfectly well. and the number of photo-sensors (normally called, incorrectly, pixels) can be the same, no matter what physical size the sensor have. 20+MP sensors are available in CX, DX and FX size, so why doesn't all cameras use small sensors?!

The problem with small sensors is the fact that light hits the sensors in a rather disorganised way: If the photo-sensors are very small they got an uneven spraying of light quanta, when the light is low, or the aperture very small, or the shutter speed very high. We can easily see this uneven spraying, if we 'pixel-peep'.

This is called noise, and there are various ways to even out the difference between adjacent 'pixels', but the smaller they are, the more computing power is needed for good results, and the more details are lost! With very big sensors, like those used in MF cameras (with sensors about twice the size of a FX sensor), like a Hasselblad, or a PhaseOne, noise is not a big problem, but by then a fast lens, say a f1.4 'normal' lens, will be bulky, heavy and very costly, if it even exists! But noise is a very little problem with a MF camera, especially as they often have a very restricted ISO range - and low ISO means lots of light will need to hit the sensor to produce any useable photos!

The idea of having one camera for all kinds of photography, is not very smart, as in landscape photography you need detail sharpness, while in sports you need a fast-reacting camera, and sometimes you need to have a discreet camera, or a lighter setup. Due to their lower demand on noise processing, FX and MF cameras gives much more details than a compact, which usually have a very small sensor. But the MF cameras lenses are very expensive, as are the best there is for FX.

I normally use a CX camera, and a FX camera, often with a similar lens on both, say a 32/1.2 on my V1, and a Sigma 35/1.4 on my D600. The 32 on the V1 works very well as a portrait lens, and the 35 on the D600 is an excellent street, or landscape, lens. Both extremely sharp, both compact.

If I am going BIF-ing (birds in flight photography), I often use the 30-110 on the V1 and the 80-400 on the D600. The 30-110 equals a 80-300 on the D600, but weighs less than half a pound, while the AF-S VR 80-400 weighs almost three pounds. If the light is good I can get superb shots with the 30-110, but as it gets darker the D600 with the 80-400 shines brighter and brighter. The D600 itself weighs about two pounds, add a monopod, and the weight suddenly is fairly heavy, not least after a day on the beach. The V1 is by no means the lightest camera around, but the total package weighs less than two pounds — a hell of a difference, if you pardon the expression.

If I know a lot of the birds will be on the ground I'll bring the AF-S VR 70-300, which on the V1 equals a 200-800 lens on the D600, and I do have converters too, increasing the focal length further! Not very good for birds flying high above the ground, but for shooting birds on a power line, or standing in water, perfect!