I am a very amateur photographer and have just bought an sx40. I found your tutorials fantastic and very informative, thanks for those. I am very lucky to be going to Rwanda in July to visit the mountain gorillas, I then go to Zambia and Botswana to see very different open plain animals. Do you have any advice for me to get the best out this experience. I was thinking using my colors setting for the gorillas under green to get the most of the rain forest? Do you have any tips for a beginner for this trip please? Thanks again for the tutorials.
Wow that trip sounds amazing! That's a good idea to use the green enhancers to get the most out of the greenery.
I shoot a lot of my photography on the SX40 with Vivid colours activated as I find this does a great job at bringing out the important colours in the scene.
The great thing is that you can quickly switch between colour modes with the shortcut button which means you can experiment whilst you're there.
Get to know your manual controls if you can as I can imagine that in some of the forestry, it may be quite dark so if you can understand the best way to manipulate light, you will get a lot more out of your pictures.
Vice Versa, out in the open plains, you don't want your images to come out too bright so get to know your ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture if you are up for it.
If Manual is too much for you to start out with, have a go at using AV (Aperture Value) and TV (Time Value) modes as these are semi-manual which means that you can introduce yourself to manual controls slowly.
I would definitely get to understand your shutter speed if you can as when taking pictures of animals you need to be as quick as possible because of how unpredictable their movement is.
Maybe go out to some woodland areas where you live and test out the different light settings and colour settings to get to know it better so that when you get to these places you will be more tuned in to what your camera is doing.
Thanks, that helps a lot. Got a great shot of the moon last night due to your tutorial. I also got one of Jupiter, it's quite prominent at the moment. My friends can't believ that I got them handheld with no tripod. Thanks again
I was trying out the slow motion movie setting yesterday, I tried filming a woodpecker at our bird feeder but couldn't get the focus right, I don't know how to find a spot on the screen that sets that. Can you help please?
There's not a huge variety of settings on filming with the SX40. You can manually focus so perhaps you would want to set up the camera on a tripod and set the focus to be on the bird feeder. Then all you need to do is hit record when the bird is there.
Thanks. I just tried that, I set the camera to high speed in order to play back in slow motion, went to manual and pressed record, it filmed in normal speed. Am I doing something wrong?
Unfortunately you can't set up any vid options from settings done in manual etc. The only changes you can make to video have to be done when your on the movie mode option.
If you set up your slow motion in the video setting - then you can also set up your manual focus in that option too, you don't need to be in manual to use manual focus :)
Practicing practicing practicing. Ok I have a question, I have set up my C1 setting on TV with a shutter speed of 1000 and the iso set at auto. I have it set for a sunny day. When I shoot anything in the sun it's fine, when I then move to shoot something in shadow it goes darker, am I doing something wrong or should I have my settings different. I am concerned that when I am in Africa I won't have a great deal of time to re-set the dials before an animal is gone when I see it in shadow.
If you have saved settings to C1 then they won't change for you depending on the light - they will always stay as the settings you told it to be for C1.
If you are just on TV, then it should change for you.
If you wanted to make a pre-set for sunny day, and then a pre-set for shadow, then set up C1 with the settings that work for you in bright light and set up C2 for darker rooms by either using a slower shutter speed or increasing your ISO (Or a little tweak on both).
I am a very amateur photographer and have just bought an sx40. I found your tutorials fantastic and very informative, thanks for those. I am very lucky to be going to Rwanda in July to visit the mountain gorillas, I then go to Zambia and Botswana to see very different open plain animals. Do you have any advice for me to get the best out this experience. I was thinking using my colors setting for the gorillas under green to get the most of the rain forest? Do you have any tips for a beginner for this trip please? Thanks again for the tutorials.
ReplyDeleteWow that trip sounds amazing! That's a good idea to use the green enhancers to get the most out of the greenery.
DeleteI shoot a lot of my photography on the SX40 with Vivid colours activated as I find this does a great job at bringing out the important colours in the scene.
The great thing is that you can quickly switch between colour modes with the shortcut button which means you can experiment whilst you're there.
Get to know your manual controls if you can as I can imagine that in some of the forestry, it may be quite dark so if you can understand the best way to manipulate light, you will get a lot more out of your pictures.
Vice Versa, out in the open plains, you don't want your images to come out too bright so get to know your ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture if you are up for it.
If Manual is too much for you to start out with, have a go at using AV (Aperture Value) and TV (Time Value) modes as these are semi-manual which means that you can introduce yourself to manual controls slowly.
I would definitely get to understand your shutter speed if you can as when taking pictures of animals you need to be as quick as possible because of how unpredictable their movement is.
Maybe go out to some woodland areas where you live and test out the different light settings and colour settings to get to know it better so that when you get to these places you will be more tuned in to what your camera is doing.
I hope that helps ;)
Thanks, that helps a lot. Got a great shot of the moon last night due to your tutorial. I also got one of Jupiter, it's quite prominent at the moment. My friends can't believ that I got them handheld with no tripod. Thanks again
DeleteI was trying out the slow motion movie setting yesterday, I tried filming a woodpecker at our bird feeder but couldn't get the focus right, I don't know how to find a spot on the screen that sets that. Can you help please?
ReplyDeleteThanks
There's not a huge variety of settings on filming with the SX40. You can manually focus so perhaps you would want to set up the camera on a tripod and set the focus to be on the bird feeder. Then all you need to do is hit record when the bird is there.
DeleteThanks. I just tried that, I set the camera to high speed in order to play back in slow motion, went to manual and pressed record, it filmed in normal speed. Am I doing something wrong?
DeleteUnfortunately you can't set up any vid options from settings done in manual etc. The only changes you can make to video have to be done when your on the movie mode option.
DeleteIf you set up your slow motion in the video setting - then you can also set up your manual focus in that option too, you don't need to be in manual to use manual focus :)
Let me know how that works out for you.
Practicing practicing practicing. Ok I have a question, I have set up my C1 setting on TV with a shutter speed of 1000 and the iso set at auto. I have it set for a sunny day. When I shoot anything in the sun it's fine, when I then move to shoot something in shadow it goes darker, am I doing something wrong or should I have my settings different. I am concerned that when I am in Africa I won't have a great deal of time to re-set the dials before an animal is gone when I see it in shadow.
DeleteIf you have saved settings to C1 then they won't change for you depending on the light - they will always stay as the settings you told it to be for C1.
DeleteIf you are just on TV, then it should change for you.
If you wanted to make a pre-set for sunny day, and then a pre-set for shadow, then set up C1 with the settings that work for you in bright light and set up C2 for darker rooms by either using a slower shutter speed or increasing your ISO (Or a little tweak on both).
Does that make sense?