Be afraid no more of those camera settings
If you like to tinker around with your camera but are not “into” photography to really figure out what all those manual settings affect, then this one’s for you. Have you always wondered what those weird fractions like f/2.8, f/5.6 meant (they are the aperture values or f-stops), or what that ISO 200 showing up on your camera viewfinder was all about. And how do those shutter speeds matter anyway - 1/125, 1/60 and so on.
So if you shoot on the automatic mode, then believe it or not, all these play together to create the right photo for you, and your camera sensor does all the hard work behind the scenes. But when you really want to create a photograph that is “hatke” - for eg. that dreamy portrait of your loved one with a fuzzy background, or a freeze frame photo of water splashing, well then you’ll need to get your hands dirty with these numbers. So here’s a really effective way to learn those nuances - the SimCam. This virtual camera will programmatically reproduce the effects of those camera settings on a pre-set image. You can compare how two different settings will change the final output. Its a surprisingly good learning tool as you see the results side by side. Check it out and be a pro with those nifty controls!
7 comments July 7th, 2008