Getting to know my camera

My Christmas present! 

This is my first digital camera and the first camera that cost me more than a tenner!

Does this mean I have to take good pictures now?

A few Tips

• If you want to get a clear and well lit picture that's being taken in a dark room but don't want to bleach it out with the flash set a higher ISO.

• To get the sharpest portrait of someone - focus on their eye. 

Experimenting

I would have shown the first pictures I took in my elective but made the fatal error of leaving my quality setting on the highest setting of RAW2 which I've now found is incompatible with pretty much everything! So I'm afraid it's all words...

Scary...whats all this about turning my DIGITAL camera to manual? thought cameras had evolved into most aspects of 21st century technology that will do everything for you but press the button?

So many buttons, nozzles, twiddly things and the digital screen of a maze makes me worry if I'll ever find that automatic button again.

We're allowed to venture around the college to have a play with our cameras. 

I set my camera to manual, a low aperture and ISO and take a picture of a lonely plant in the smoking area. This gave me a very dark and grainy photo so having zero patience I reset the ISO to the highest setting 3200 and switched the mode to auto to see what aperture and shutter speed settings it suggests.

In my dark pics I realised my shutter speed was far too low at 8 and should have been between 50-60. My aperture was far too high at 20 and worked better at 5.6.

I also tried adjusting the white balance and used the 'K' setting. In using this I could alter the colour in the photo using colours RGYB. I found the most useful setting to be red as it gave a warm glow to a harsh cold image.

As it got darker I discovered the 'creative' night setting that allowed you to scroll up and down on the shutter speed giving an interesting effect with light. 

This is one effect I got excited about as I could just point and shoot and the result was always a surprise.

On my way home from college I decided to play around with this setting even more and whilst my boyfriend was driving, I randomly snapped away at traffic on the motorway. I carried on doing this whenever I was out and about at night and had my camera with me. 

I enjoyed this as I the surprise you got each time as everyone was so different and so vibrant with colour. But I did eventually get bored

I then thought what it would be like to photograph the traffic on the M62 from the withering heights of suicide bridge! not on my own obviously this place makes me shudder everytime I across it as you contemplate the many that have thrown themselves off it!

Using a tripod and extremely long aperture I got a few interesting images. I even tried moving the camera slightly which gave a slightly drunk effect to the curve of the motorway.