eeran wrote:
Yes, I saw a recommendation to his guide in other several places.
it seems to be the right way, and so I will go and read it.
it seems very long, I hope i can remember everything altogether
I'm sure the Friedman book is great.
I was in your situation a couple of years ago - it can be overwhelming getting used to all the parameters and terminology! this is my personal take on the NEX, copied/pasted from a previous post:
I would suggest that you quickly get out of iAuto mode, which can take nice shots for you, but is a kind of alienating experience as you don't know what it's deciding or why. My recommendation is Aperture priority, "A" mode, which gives you 'artistic' control over aperture. I use it 99% of the time.
In A mode turn the wheel to set the aperture you desire, and the camera automatically and almost instantly selects the appropriate shutter speed for that aperture. Wider apertures (smaller numbers) let in more light, allow faster shutter speeds, and crucially helps to reduce depth of field and blur out foreground/background, if you like that kind of thing! This is what point & shoots can't do easily except very close-up, and is why I love my NEX! This example is fairly wide at f2 (this wide isn't available on your zoom, but on primes like the e-mount 35mm f1.8 and 50mm f1.8) on a 35mm lens:
View:
original size
Select smaller apertures, down to f8 or f11, if you want more of the whole scene to be in focus. F5.6 on a lot of lenses is the "sweet spot" of best sharpness (at the focus point, that is, not necessarily most sharpness in depth through the scene). Play around to see the effect of different apertures on the look and on shutter speed.
In A mode one click down on the wheel allows you to select EV, exposure compensation, which is essentially an instruction to the camera to how much to expose the overall scene, but 99% of the time you can leave it at 0 (= normal exposure - increase it a little if e.g. your subject is darker than the scene, and normal 0 might leave the subject a bit dark, decrease it if lighter etc).
Set up the camera to use highest quality JPG + RAW (even if you don't use RAW now, you might later and will be glad to have them stored). Centre metering and focus is a good place to start. Turn off focus assist light. Try focus peaking and Digital Manual Focus, which lets you fine-tune focus - after auto-locking focus with a shutter half-press, touch the lens focus ring and the screen auto-magnifies the focus area and allows you to manually tweak the focus point. Peaking highlights the most in-focus areas on screen. Auto White Balance is pretty good most of the time.
In good light leave ISO at lowest (100, or 200 on some cameras) or maybe auto-ISO to allow the camera to turn it up if needed. ISO is like a gain/volume setting that turns up the sensors sensitivity for low light scenes, but the trade-off is it adds visual noise (blotchy grain and colour speckles) into the image. Up to maybe 1600 looks acceptable on the NEX.
If using the LCD stabilise the camera by tilting the screen up, looking down, press the camera to your torso, elbows pressed to your sides, left hand cradling the lens mount, press shutter down with right thumb on a gentle exhale of breath. Some claim this is as good or even better than pressing the EVF camera to your face.
You can also consider getting a fast (meaning wide aperture - not wide angle!) prime (meaning fixed focal length like 35mm etc) lens like the ones I mentioned earlier, for typically great sharpness (fewer design compromises than a do-everything zoom), more control over depth of field, and crucially better low light performance due to the wide aperture.
One last thing - I didn't anticipate this initially, but I discovered that my new NEX could work with older manual focus used SLR etc lenses, with a simple cheap adapter ring (one for each brand/mount type). I got one on ebay just to see, and it opened up the whole pleasure and understanding of photography for me. The whole process just clicked, and I now use them almost exclusively. There are cheap and expensive options, excellent and mediocre quality, but do a little research and you can get very decent lenses at a good price, typically well-made and a pleasure to use compared to contemporary plastic auto-focus lenses, in my opinion. YMMV!
Have fun with your new camera(s)!
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Regards,
Alan
my Flickr
