Digital Rebel Settings

[Velopilot 0]

I'm borrowing a digital rebel from a nonskydiving friend and I'm wondering if anyone can give me some info on settings to use. I'm not knew to shooting stills but not current either. Any tips on setups for sunny days as well as cloudy but still jumpable days would be appreciated.

[freefalle 0]

Opinions vary about settings. Ill share what has worked well for me.

Sunny days TV 500 ISO 100 Ive frequently bumped the shutter speed as high as 1000 on sunny days just to see what happens, I've had good results with that

Cloudy days I still use the TV setting but I'll bump it down to 250 and Ill bump the ISO to 200.

Play with the camera settings outside during different times of day, look in the view finder and push the button down 1/2 way adjust the shutter speed until the apeture setting stops blinking, that should give you a good shot. When I shoot I try to use settings that will give me a long depth of field. However I've shot some stuff before using a short DOF while using the AV setting and got some really nice results.

have fun and enjoy it. hope this helps.

[MrHips 0]

With the standard lens try stick with a maximum of 320 as your shutter speed (using TV - Time Value). Going for a faster shutter speed than this will force your camera to use a larger apperture (F Stop value - the hole that lets the light through). If your using the stock lens this will only be about F3.5 at the wide end - 18mm. This has many negative consequences for what we use these camera's for. Firstly a larger apperture will shorten the depth of field. That will make things not within the focal plane out of focus, such as the background. Most lenses have a sweet F Stop range that quickly deteriorates the closer you go to the widest apperture. Also if things get a little darker, perhaps a shadow on the subject by a cloud or whatever, the lense will not be able to open the Apperture up enough to let enough light in, and your subject will be underexposed. Sometimes you can salvage this if you shoot using RAW format during RAW conversion on you computer, BUT a better alternative is to use a higher ISO. With these Canon Digital camera's up to ISO 400 will yield very little noticeable difference, unless you are enlarging over A2 size (thats 594mm x 420mm). An ISO above 400 will start to produce 'noise' (that grainy appearance) into your image.

A shutter speed below 320 might start to blur the flutter of jumpsuits, hair etc. Which sometimes you might also want. However if you can stay above 250 your images will remain sharper. 250 was an option (if you used Film and TV Priority) when you were in the plane on the way to height with a ISO 100 film loaded and things got a little too dark near sunset or whatever, but these days with Digital you have much more versatility by being able to change ISO in the plane.

My advice would be to shoot using ISO 100, TV Priority, 320m/s shutter speed, RAW format, which allows you alot of flexibility AFTER you have shot the images using. OR use 320m/s, TV priority, also using ISO 100 for clear bright sunny days but dont be affraid to go up to ISO 400 to keep your lens in the F Stop sweet spot, which is probably around F9 for the standard lens.

The only reason I have wanted to used a shutter speed of around 500m/s or higher is the 'freeze' the moving blades of a helictopter or some planes Props.

By the way I have had good experience using the 'Partial Metering' for exposure control.

I hope this helps.

[CaTo 0]

Do you use the auto-white balancing state, or are you using some custom, or one of the other pre-defined, settings?

Caren

[steveorino 7]

All right, I'm no photographer, but I found out that works for me 99% of the time is the auto features. I use the sport auto feature (looks like a guy running) on sunny days. I use TV 320 or so on cloudy days and full auto (green square) on sunset loads.

Check out my stills on my website and you will see it works pretty good.

steveOrino

[Velopilot 0]

I've set it to auto white balance. Should I set it differently