for all you photography guru's

[Duff-e]

ever since i got my camera ive been playing around with it....from like day one i took off auto mode and tried setting everything myself

so my question is:

how do you come to decide the shutterspeed and fstop on the fly? do you just remember which settings work best in certain lights...or set profiles in the camera...or what? when i take a picture i have to sit for like a minute and try to adjust to get the right amount of light depending on the situation and by that time i always lose the moment (especially if its a picture of people). i understand everything about apetures and stuff like that...but seeing pictures like toms just makes me wonder if you just like casually take a good guess or actually plan ahead. also any tips/tricks with photography that you use are welcome

[TomWithTheWeather]

The biggest tip is just knowing your camera and how it works. I have a Canon Digital Rebel so my tips might not work well with your camera.

For low light situations, I go manual with the aperture and set it as open as it will go, which would be a smaller number like 2.8 or whatever depending on your lens (lower number means a more open aperture therefore allowing more light into your camera). At the same time I leave the shutter speed set to auto so while I'm controlling the aperture, the camera automatically adjusts the speed to figure out the best exposure. I usually take most of my low light situation pics like this. Sometimes if the lighting is fairly static, I'll pay attention to the average shutter speed the camera seems to like and I'll flip it to full manual and play with the shutter speed.

The only problem with shooting in low light is that most of your pics will be blurry, which can be interesting depending on the subject matter of the picture. For sharp, non-blurry pics, you'd have to use a tripod or prop the camera on something solid. Long exposures are great but you really do need a tripod if you want a clear picture.

I pretty much shoot the same way in bright settings. I usually set the aperture to a standard f/5.6 or something similar and let the camera figure out the shutter speed. I love shooting in sun light because of the natual warm lighting and it's very forgiving of people who shake their cameras while taking pictures.

That's just my generic technique. Hope you get something out of that.

ps. Flash is evil.

[DD]

The biggest tip is just knowing your camera and how it works. I have a Canon Digital Rebel so my tips might not work well with your camera.

Make sure you let everyone know that so we can all hate you.