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Lens Nikkor Tip: How to Set up your digital slr camera.

Posted by Captain on Dec 20, 2009 |

Lens Nikkor Tip: How to Set up your digital slr camera.

A few important adjustments will make for much better close-up photos. Don’t sweat it if your camera doesn’t have any of the settings mentioned. Check your manual if you don’t know where to find these settings.
Switch your camera to macro mode if you’re using a compact camera. This is usually indicated by a flower icon on your mode dial.
Don’t use this mode if you’re using a digital SLR; on at least some Canon digital SLRs, for example, this will be worse than useless, in that it’s more-or-less equivalent to point-and-shoot noob-mode — disallowing changing the aperture, popping the flash without asking, and so on. Instead,
switch it to aperture priority on such cameras
Which you’ll need to do if you’re using any of the improvised-macro-lens methods. If you’ve got a dedicated macro lens designed for your camera, programmed automatic (P) works fine, too, if it allows you to shift the program.
Kick up the ISO as far as you dare if you’re hand-holding. It was said earlier, but don’t hand-hold unless you have no choice in the matter. If you have to, a higher ISO will allow you to use smaller apertures than you would otherwise.
Set it to the lowest ISO you have if you’re photographing things that don’t move from a tripod.
Turn off your flash, if you don’t have a macro ring flash and if you’re the kind of person that does, you probably don’t need to read any of this.
Set a small aperture on your camera or digital slr lens. Depth-of-field is very shallow, often a few millimeters or less, as you get very close to things. More than likely, you’ll want to use the smallest aperture you have; defocus is a much greater worry than the diffraction effects caused by very small apertures and is much harder to correct in software.
It’ll also eliminate any corner unsharpness, spherical aberration, light fall-off, and chromatic aberrations that come from shooting most SLR lenses at their widest aperture.
Enable your mirror lock-up and self timer, if you’re shooting in controlled conditions on a tripod. Mirror lock-up will result in less vibration from your camera’s mirror if you’re using a digital SLR, and the self-timer will give physics a chance to damp the camera movement caused by you pressing the shutter button.
This will result in sharper pictures.