Day 6 - Splash!!!by
JLCComment by violinist123: Ok, you need to take the camera off Aperture Priority. I'm going to try and keep this short and, hopefully, clear. I'm skipping some of the finer nuances in the process, but this should get you going:
Aperture - how much of the scene is in focus between just in front of what you have focused on and the horizon. Shoot this splash at F2.8, maybe just the splash is in focus and the stream is slightly blurred, the bank behind even blurrier, etc. Shoot it at F22 as you did and just about everything from the splash to Saturn is in focus.
The higher the F number, the less light is being let in the camera.
Shutter speed - To freeze the splash, you need a fast shutter speed. Think of blinking your eye rapidly as a car drives past - you freeze the cars motion into little 'frames' of movement. The camera is doing the same thing. A long shutter speed will hold the camera's eye open longer as the car drives past - so it will be a blur across the frame.
Fast shutter speed (fast blink) means less light comes in the camera. Longer shutter speed means more light is let in. Because your aperture was F22 in this shot (higher F number = less light) your camera had to drag the shutter speed way, way down so enough light would be let in to properly expose the shot. 1/10th second is fairly slow, and certainly slow enough to get a blurry shot of pretty much anything moving (not to mention the slight tremor of your hands on the camera causing a bit of blur on their own).
ISO - how sensitive the camera is to light. Low numbers = less sensitive. Higher numbers = more sensitive and a brighter shot all else being equal.
That's it. Those are the only three things to know, and they are all combined to expose the shot properly. In aperture priority mode, you control Aperture and the camera controls everything else. In Shutter Priority, you control shutter speed the camera controls the rest. Your camera may or may not auto-adjust ISO, I don't know and it doesn't matter really.
So, try changing your mode to Shutter Priority (Tv I think) and take some pictures that way. If you find yourself having to use a very slow shutter speed, you can increase the ISO to make the camera more sensitive to light, thereby allowing you to use a faster shutter speed to avoid unwanted blur.
Alright, not nearly as concise as I hoped but hopefully that gives you the basics. Bottom line - for general walking around taking pictures of things, shutter priority is what you want to be using.
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