"I just bought my first digital slr. Tips hints advice?"
Wow! No matter what you got your going to love having an SLR! they are a big step up from a point and shoot, i remember how cool it was discovering all the neat things you could do with it.
I was a little sad last time i upgraded b/c my 1st one is now just collecting dust and acting as a backup. the 7D was a great leap up though, i'd say it's as big of a upgrade for me as the jump from point n shoot to SLR is going to be fore you.
but on to the tips/advice:
your manual is your friend!
the first thing i'd do is get a handle on how to change the shutter speed and aperture in the various modes.
the way they work is you'll let the camera do some of the work for you - in aperture priority you pick the aperture (av mode in canon's cameras) and the camera gives you the "correct" shutter speed to get a "good" picture
then there is shutter priority mode (Tv on canon) in this mode you pick the shutter speed and it picks the aperture for you for a "good" picture
aperture is how big wide the shutter is; it's backwards what what you'd intuitively think was right; the smaller the number the bigger the opening
the bigger the opening the more light you get and the smaller the depth of field
(depth of field is how much of the picture is in focus)
every lens will have a range that it's capable of doing usually if you have a kit lens it's like 3.5 - 5.6 or something like that -- you can go higher with the camera but that is the lower limit)
the speed can be anything you'd like (and with an SLR i do mean ANYTHING most will go up to crazy speeds of like 1/8000 of a second (though be aware if you aren't in really bright sunlight you won't see anything at higher speeds but black) also on the low end be aware that you should be able to hand hold the camera much slower than 1/focal length (so in a 50mm lens only 1/50 of a second) .... basically that means that if you see the shot is going to be slower than 1/60 of a second you probably need to change something or use a tripod/beanbag/ or steady it on something like a rail... at slower speeds even a tiny little jitter or the motion from breathing will probably blur the shot
The 3rd factor to take into account in a photo is ISO; this is how sensitive the sensor is to light; the higher you go the darker you can shoot in; if your indoors and not using a flash it'll probably need to be really high. The downside to high ISO is the pictures get "noisey" little red flecks of color in the photo; you can fix alot of this in post but my goal is always to shoot as low as i can get away with b/c the pictures just look better.
So the first thing i'd do is learn how to change these 3 things in each mode; also how to use/not use the flash when you want to.
My basic formula when shooting is this (at least when i'm not using a external flash): set it to AV mode; pick the aperture i want based on if i want the background to be blurred or not. Aim/Focus on my subject (for living things always focus on the eye). Then raise the ISO until I see that my shutter speed is fast enough that i don't think the picture will be all blurry. Then shoot!
thats the absolute first thing about shooting that pops into my head; I can give you a lecture about flashes and framing with the rule of 3rds or the sunny 16 rule later :)
HAVE FUN!!!! :)
Monday, February 1, 2010 at 10:43AM 
