On the chipmunk, I took the photo a fast as i could, the little
bugger would not sit still very long. You would think he did not want
his picture taken...lol
For moving subjects like this, you'll probably find that continuous focusing will help. Also, set the focusing point to the one over the little bugger's eye, that way you don't have to recompose before snapping. And, use continuous shooting mode (either slow or fast) to up your chances of getting a keeper. Fire off a burst of 3 or 5.
When learning, it's often helpful to shoot RAW+lg/fn JPEG so you can compare the two. This way you know exactly what the camera settings are adding to a shot. You should be shooting to get the RAW as close as possible without much adjustment. It can often help to go back to basics in full manual mode, or my favorite is Av mode with liberal use of EC based on the overall tone of the image.
Finally, stopping down will ensure you get less blur due to focusing errors, as you get more DoF. However, it can increase motion blur because it lengthens the shutter speed. Which means you have to pump ISO up, which adds noise. (Noise, by the way, is not necessarily a bad thing. For some shots, it can add emotional impact, and it will make photos appear sharper. In those cases where I've had a really great shot that was slightly OOF--or maybe blurry due to an extreme crop--if it suits the subject I find adding tons of noise in PS can bring back perceived sharpness to an extent.)
On the peacock, i did focus on its head.
Guess what i am tyring learn is what what settings to use for verious
subjects/lighting situations.
Welcome to the life-long study of photography, my friend.
Both photos were taken in the early afternoon. The peacock was in
direct sunlight and the chipmunk was in the shade. I had attempted to
use a flash for fill and drag the sutter to pickup the background but
those did not turn out like i thought they should.
Flash adds another level of complexity. Planet Neil has some of the best info on flash photography I've ever read:
http://planetneil.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/ . And then there's the canonical EOS flash manual:
http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/ .
The main thing to understand about flash, particularly when combining with slower shutter speeds, is that: (1) a flash burst is very, very brief and bright--the entire contribution from a flash can be made to an image in 1/10,000 or shorter, and (2) light from flash falls off as the distance increases.
The implication of (1) is that you must actively balance ambient light with flash intelligently to get predictable results. Flash will only freeze motion in total darkness--any ambient light will be recorded over the length of the exposure and result in motion blur (or the subject or due to camera shake). The implication of (2) is that you must not only balance flash and ambient, but you have to do so as a function of distance. So, one situation (of many) where dragging the shutter is effective is when the foreground subject is in total darkness and the background is far away and lit. You expose for the background, and let the flash add the right contribution to the foreground, and you end up with good results. Any other situation requires your creative intervention to infer the right settings for the result you're after.
After all that effort learning how to use flash properly, you'll promptly be told your pictures suck because direct flash obliterates shadows which our brains use to infer dimensionality. So now you have to add to the mix bouncing and diffusing, and if you're bouncing you pick up color casts from whatever you're bouncing off of. Fun stuff!
What would you consider the slowest sutter speed for a handheld shot
on a subject like these?
Typically, still subjects require 1/effective focal length. This is a rule of thumb and should be regarded as approximate. Also, since our 40Ds have a crop sensor, our effective focal length is 1.6x what it says on the lens. IS can give you a couple of stops leeway. You can also use continuous drive here--for long handheld exposures, it's much more difficult to hold the camera steady for the first frame than subsequent frames, so put it on high- or low-speed drive and the subsequent frames will invariably be better than the first one.
This only accounts for blur due to camera shake, though. It doesn't account for freezing a moving subject--shutter speeds have to be based on the type of motion (across the frame requires faster speeds than toward or away) and distance (far-off subjects have to be moving faster to show blur than close subjects, which cover a greater percentage of the frame because they're closer to you).
Again, flash complicates things. You know those famous images of a bullet piercing an apple and shredding a playing card, taking by Harold Edgarton in his MIT lab? Those were all taken with the shutter left open. The trick: it was in total darkness. The shutter speed isn't what froze the motion, it was the extremely bright and extremely short burst of light he timed with the event that froze the motion. Slow-sync photography does the same thing for you--so you can get everything from Edgarton-style flash freeze effects to blur trails with a sharp main subject depending on how you use it.
