Your camera settings

[ironkhalid]

Hey guys, I've been looking through the forums and photos thread and saw great pics.
I just wanted to start this thread to see what your camera settings are when you take shots?
I'm not a camera guy so messing around with all these settings is just trial and error for me.
And I know the m8 allows you to set up settings and save them and use for special circumstances for quick access.

How do you have it set up and why? If it's not too much to ask

 

[Rukbat]

That's like asking what you put in the oven to make a great dinner.

For something moving fast you want a fast shutter speed, or you want a slower one if you have a steady enough hand to follow the moving target, and you'll get, say, a horse running with a blurred background.

If it's dark, you want a wide open lens, and that's going to mean no depth of field.

Kodai has tons of pages on how all these things fit together, so if you spend a few hours online, you'll learn what to set how for what kind of shot. For a snapshot setting - kind of one size fits all - fins a camera app that can be told to maintain settings (no automatic anything). With it on automatic, lt it focus on something in medium light (a room with a few windows on a sunny day, maybe) about 6 feet away. Write down those settings - speed, F-stop and focus distance. Then take it out of automatic and use those settings. Then you have a snapshot camera - it'll take kind of decent pictures of anything anywhere.

But a few hours of learning can change a situation from taking a half-decent picture to taking a great one - same camera, same picture, different technique. (I once saw a picture taken through the pickets of a wrought-iron picket fence [stark black] of a large expanse of snow [stark white] at night, with the back of a yellow cab [small area of intense yellow and 2 bright red dots] - cheap camera, great eye, great picture.)

Take a look at Dorothea Lange. (Start with Wikipedia.) She took Depression-era photographs. It wasn't the camera that made them some of the greatest artwork on film. (Look at them and you'll see why.)

 

[ironkhalid]

Awesome, thanks so much.
I know it seems a lot to ask and everybody has their own technique. I just wanted to get a little discussion onto how some of you get their great shots with the m8 camera.
I'll definitely check out what you said.

 

[Mooncatt]

Keep a clean cloth on hand to wipe the lens with before taking a shot. I know the M8 is bad about having lens flares as it is with bright lights, but wiping the lens can greatly reduce them depending on how dirty/oily it is.

 

[ironkhalid]

Yea I've noticed that the lens get dirty sometimes, my fingers always seem to find it when digging in my pockets.

 

[TarekElsakka]

To be honest I only ever use Automatic settings and I just clean the lens every now and then from the dust and that's it.