Photography Cheat Sheet?

Posted on April 13, 2012 by
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I'm just starting out with my Nikon D5100… I have no idea but all you G+ photo people inspire me so… The settings are still very confusing to me.. So I came across this little cheat sheet.How good is it?

You might need to click the image to read some.. its pretty "tall".

#photography #nikonD5100

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135 comments on “Photography Cheat Sheet?”

  7. I turned Auto ISO On on my camera, and use P mode most of the time, S 100(or higher) to freeze a subject. To isolate a subject with a big aperture, you might need to get a prime lens (50mm f/1.8 is a great to do that)

    I don't worry too much on technical details, I focus more on composition. A technically sound photo with nothing interesting going on is pretty boring.

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  9. I do hear the "just keep shooting things" a fair amount.. but then im forgetting what settings i shot on.. and i also had no idea that certain things would produce lighter or darker… Guess im kinda visual to see it person.. Maybe thats why I like G+ so much O_o I'll keep shooting though.. :)

    +William Wells yuppers… extra lens… still no idea what im doing.

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  10. I'm going to have to give this a whirl with the vintage '43 Kodak camera I have sitting on the shelf at home.
    With no training whatsoever (Just dropped some B/W film into it and guessed), I got some pretty decent vintage shots from a WWII Re-enactment I attended…
    http://goo.gl/fr3SW
    I was astonished when I got the prints. I thought they definitely had a "war correspondent" thing going on, when it was really just an "I got this camera yesterday" thing. =)

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  13. Pretty good although I think it's missing tips about shutter speeds as far as stopping action vs long exposures for "smoothing" effects. Although now that I'm writing this post I see that it could be just a problem of trying to word it the right way.

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  16. I took a class of classic photo (B&W 35mm) at the Community College I graduated from. That class was worth every penny because not only do they explain how these settings determine one another, they gave me lab time too (professional darkrooms are not the cheapest things).
    I found it easiest to start with ISO and go from there.

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  19. +Don DeCaire advice is good, but +Amanda Blain will want to download Picasa to manage and view your pics on big screen, so you can better observe the effects of changing aperture and speed. Start by setting it to "Auto", then bring your camera with you wherever you go, and shoot away.

    Upload the pics from your camera to Picasa, view each picture on big screen, and note the metadata information of each shot, displayed by Picasa on right column. Don't obsess with the technicals, just enjoy the occasional shots that really stood out, and delete the 'duh' ones. After a while, you will get a sense of what aperture and speed functions do.

    Then, you can experiment by switching from "Auto" to "A" for aperture. Take pictures at different aperture settings and note the background. You will begin to see some pictures will have a nice blurry background that you like. It is called "bokeh", and soon you will appreciate what aperture settings do to change the "mood" or "depth of field" of a picture. So the same for the "S" or speed settings, only, try this out in a sporting event. Photography is one helluva personal enjoyable past time, and when you get a great shot and share it, you will feel really good about yourself. Enjoy, and I apologize for the long post.

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  23. I agree with +Chee Yow and I greatly appreciate his "Start by setting it to "Auto", then bring your camera with you wherever you go, and shoot away." advice.

    So very true. I take my digital Canon camera with me literally everywhere I go. Even if I just take my dog for a walk, I've got my camera on me.

    You learn this lesson eventually, due to missed opportunities. Several weeks ago, a jet airplane flew over my house so low I could have thrown a potato at it and hit almost.

    It was truly bizarre. It was at night and I could actually see the guys in the cockpit and the plane was all lit up from its lights. I called the airport and asked them WTF was going on. Got an evasive reply of course.

    If I had a photo of that jet, I would have an amazing picture.

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  25. +Amanda Blain Even "simple" tools like Picasa lets you see what settings you used for a photo. (It's stored as exif information in the image file, and most photo-viewing software can show that information)

    Depending on which camera you have I'm pretty certain you can attach your camera directly to your Android tablet and have all photos show instantly on the tablet for a portable big screen to see your photos on.

    One problem with learning to take good photos is that you have to keep on doing it, or else you just forget everything you have learned… :-)

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  26. +Runar Bell – So true! I am trying to break myself of the Auto presets on my Canon and trying to learn to use manual settings. I will tinker and play, get a couple decent shots and then completely forget what I did to get the shot.

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  34. That chart is good and all but it doesn't really tell you anything – it is like a ruler, if you know what you are measuring it makes more sense.

    I haven't really taken pictures since 35mm was the ruling camera of choice, but here I go…

    I miss the days of taking pictures outside in the summer with ISO 100 film – that was beautiful color and pictures. AND no more Kodachrome :(
    is there even an ISO on a digital camera? i thought that ISO was a film characteristic. high iso film is a lot more sensitive to light, but it gets grainy fast – it also can get hazed by airport xrays.

    Some simple rules I keep in my head:

    * shutter speed = how long is the apeture open.

    You can't hold a camera steady (by hand) if the shutter speed is slower than about 1/30 of a second (and 1/30 is pushing it).
    If something is moving, you will probably need something faster than 1/30 of a second to 'capture' it.

    * f/stop ~= how much light the camera lets in while the shutter is open. also how much is in focus.

    a big f stop lets in more light so you need less shutter speed to capture the same image. BUT…
    if you have a big f stop (like f/2) ONLY what you have focused on will be in focus

    Using big f/stops makes what you have focused on the focus of the picture – everything closer OR farther away will be blurry.

    If you use a small f/stop, mostly everything will be in focus, but you will need a longer shutter speed to get enough light to be able to get a good photo of your subject.

    * You have to trade focus depth for light and vice versa. You can have both light and focus depth, but then NOTHING can move or you will see 'ghosts'
    REALLY old school cameras only had a big f/stop so that is why everything is out of focus that the camera wasn't focused on. Closer or farther away is out of focus.

    Note that all of these things that appear to be rules can be used to create neat effects if used effectively.

    You might want to throw a polarizing filter on that lens too. taking out the 'crooked' light makes better pictures!

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  39. This is a very practical and useful #cheatsheet for #photographers who are in the beginning phases of their career, or for the easy going enthusiast looking to capture the perfect moment.

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  49. I suspect you'll find that the cheat sheet is information you'll have internalized very, very quickly. The way I suggest that most people get started is to start by using Aperture Priority (A). That means you select the aperture, and the camera will select the speed. Controlling the aperture means that you get to control the depth of field; the larger the aperture (meaning the smaller the f/ value) the smaller the range of distances that things will be in focus. This is often a good thing; for example, if you have a lot of clutter in the background — for example, a wedding reception at a hotel ballroom — you can keep your subject sharply in focus, while keeping the rest of the photo nicely blurred so that the viewer focuses her attention on the what's most important. This also means you don't have to worry about the rest of the visual elements being perfect; just the subject of interest.

    In other cases you may want to keep multiple objects at different distances from the camera in focus; in that case you will need a smaller aperture (meaning a larger f/ stop number). Note, however, that if you use too small of an aperture, your pictures may end up getting degraded due to diffraction. This is mostly an issue with DSLR's, where you should try to avoid f/ stop values greater than f/8 — f/11. It's less of an issue on point-and-shoots, because the small sensor means it's almost impossible to avoid diffractive losses anyway.

    As far as the speed is concerned, the reason why I suggest letting the camera select the speed is that unless you are doing sports photography (in which case you might need a fast speed to "stop" the action of a fast-moving subject), shutter speed doesn't matter as much, as long as the shutter speed isn't too slow. A good rule of thumb is that the speed should be faster than the reciprocal of the focal length of the lens in 35mm equivalent. So if you are using a 50mm lens on a Nikon D5100, that's has 1.6 magnification factor and so it has an effective focal length of 80mm. So you will want to make sure the shutter speed is at least 1/80th of a second or faster. Whether it ends up being 1/100th or 1/200th doesn't really matter unless you are doing sports photography.

    If it's too dark and the camera tells you it needs a shutter speed slower than 1/80th of a second, then you will need to use a tripod or some other way of stabilizing your camera so you can minimize camera shake bluring your picture. Or you could use a larger aperture, but that means reducing for depth of field, which might or might not be acceptable.

    If it's a very bright day outdoors, it's possible that for a given aperture value, the required shutter speed is faster than what your camera can handle (1/4000th of a second is the fastest shutter speed on a D5100), so you might need to use a smaller aperture. This has tradeoffs, though — if you're worried about diffractive losses or you want a tight depth of field, you may need to use a Neutral Density (ND) filter to reduce the light entering your camera, so you can continue to use wider aperture.

    A slightly more advanced topic is what happens if the camera misjudges the exposure. In general the camera will try to adjust the exposure (in aperture priority mode, you control the aperture, so the camera will adjust the shutter speed to compensate) so that the average brightness across the entire photo is equivalent to 18% grey. However, if you are taking a picture of snow field, then it's supposed to be mostly bright white, and you may need to tell the auto exposure system that you want to "over expose" the picture, so that the result looks (on average) more white. On the opposite side, you may be taking a picture where everything is supposed to be relatively dark (say, a picture at twilight), and you don't want the camera making the picture look too bright. So in that case you might tell the camera to "under expose" the picture by half a stop or a full stop of light.

    See? Simple!

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  69. The info is accurate. However, if you spend a little time, google or read up on one aspect at a time until you really understand what it is doing…. this will be unnecessary.
    It's how I learned. Just pick one thing at a time… like today : ISO, what it is, and where to find it on my camera and how to set it quickly.
    tomorrow….shutter

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  72. I find it interesting that the ISO rating of the film goes up to 3200. I remember 800 film and heard about 1600 film, but did not know that 3200 film was common enough to put on a chart.

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  91. About: "but then im forgetting what settings i shot on." Google for exif — all the settings used by the camera get saved as part of the image. Many tools can display these for you find one for your system. Also set the clock and date on the camera. You can match notes to the date-time stamps saved in the EXIF info.

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  94. It's a nice sum up, but it misses the "sunny 16" rule to make sense.

    The sunny 16 rule is the relationship between speed, aperture, and iso, and it is usually spelled : outside on a bright sunny day with no clouds in the sky, when the aperture is set at 16 on the lens, the correct speed for normal exposure is 1/iso.

    The more clouds, the more you open the aperture or/and you drop the speed.

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