Now I have no intention in this blog to concentrate on equipment at all but I would urge every beginner with a DSLR to get a fast 50mm lens because they are very versatile, even though there's no zoom, and they are very cheap. My Canon lens is £75 at Amazon, UK or around $100 in Amazon, USA, which does mean we're paying extra in the UK as usual but it's still a bargain. The build quality isn't that great but if it breaks it's cheap to replace. The Nikon 50mm f1.8 is slightly more expensive and both companies also make and f1.4 and Canon make an f1.2 but these are not so cheap and probably not worth it unless you're a professional. In a later post I will probably go back to look at things you can do with this lens and I will link forward from here when I have posted.
Anyhow back to the testing. The method, not very scientific, was to find a place to stand and then take a shot of the same scene using each of the picture style settings in turn. The first place I stood was in a old lane under the trees so it was even darker than out in the open and the camera would have to work to get enough light. On the fully automatic setting the camera opened the aperture a bit, increased the sensitivity and used a fairly fast shutter speed. In portrait mode the camera opened the aperture to almost fully wide open as expected, dropped the sensitivity back down and had a slightly slower shutter speed. In landscape mode the camera closed down the aperture to get the wider depth of field, put the sensitivity back up and dropped the shutter speed down to the minimum for the focal length. Interestingly in macro mode the aperture was between what the camera had set for landscape and portrait. I guess the camera was after a medium depth of field which makes sense I suppose because if you're taking a macro shot you probably need a bit more depth of field than for a portrait. On the sports or action mode the camera opened the aperture up wide again and increased the sensitivity so that it could set a faster shutter speed.
On my second set of shots I was out in the open and taking shots of a tree with the murky sky behind. This time the fully automatic mode closed down the aperture a bit more than before, had the same sensitivity and had a much faster shutter speed. The portrait mode again opened the aperture to almost fully open, dropped the sensitivity again but this time had an even faster shutter speed. In landscape mode the aperture was the same as in the fully automatic mode but this time the sensitivity was reduced and also the shutter speed. The macro setting had the same aperture as before, dropped the sensitivity slightly and also had a faster shutter speed. In the sports mode the aperture was the same as for macro but the sensitivity and shutter speed were higher.
Overall I believe that this more or less agrees with what I wrote last time except that I didn't think there would be much difference between portrait and macro modes. On reflection I can understand why the macro settings would want a greater depth of field so that's something I have learnt. The one thing that I did find interesting was how in the second set of tests the camera seemed to keep the aperture and sensitivity settings fairly similar to the first set but increased the shutter speed quite significantly. I'm not entirely sure that I agree with this approach and I will discuss this in the next post when I start to cover exposure.
One last set of tests were straight comparisons between portrait and macro modes when taking a close up of some holly berries. Strangely in the test shots that I took the camera used exactly the same settings for each shot in both portrait and macro modes. This threw me to begin with but then I realised that in the portrait mode the camera had determined that the subject was very close and therefore decided to increase the depth of field. I said that the camera was very good at recognising the situations and adjusting the settings to suit.
I think that in conclusion I'm very impressed with how my camera used not only the picture mode that I have chosen but also everything else it can deduce from the scene when it makes its settings. As I keep saying the next post will be starting to look at exposure and hopefully this will help to explain a bit more about the settings that the camera decides upon.
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