Yesterday we rented a wide angle lense – the Tamron 14mm F2.8 for my Canon 50D. Needless to say I intended to get up this morning and take pictures on my way to work (I live in the Niagara region with lots of farmers fields). So there I was standing in a field, looking at a nice sunrise with a wee bit of mist to add a little atmosphere.

I am definitely a novice photographer but with enough knowledge to be dangerous and confusing to others. Nevertheless I wanted to share with you what I was thinking based on the knowledge I have and the lense chosen. This all happened over a few minutes:

Ok I want a good picture, lets start off on AV (Aperture Priority), I want the image to be sharp, there is a lot of light coming from the sun, I’ll set the F-stop to F11, everything will be sharp (so long as I hold the camera steady), the camera will take care of the shutter speed. White balance is set the sun. Take a picture. The picture is too bright, ok what else can I check. ISO, it’s set to 400 right now, I want that to be 100 because I’m not in a low-light and I want my image to be crisp, maybe I’ll set my F-Stop up some more… F18. Take a picture, not bad but still too bright around the sun. Maybe it’s the metering mode, crap, I forgot what the little icons meant again. Spot, Partial, Centre-weighted and Evaluative. Maybe I should choose centre-weighted. Take Picture; still a little bright. What am I aiming at? the horizion trees… but those are dark, if they are mainly dark, then the camera will want to brighten everything up, which basically means the sky will be too bright (known in tech speak as clipping). Ok, I know about this nice little feature called AE-Lock (Auto-Exposure lock). I’ll point my camera at the sky, get the exposure, lock that it by pressing the * (star) button, then refocus on the horizon, hold the shutter down partially, then frame the picture as I want it; take picture. I think this looks good. The picture looks slightly dark on the camera screen, but we’ll see out it turns out. Yikes!

I will post some pictures once I get home.

We own a Canon 50D and it is an amazing camera (at least in my non-expert opnion). The reason I love digital SLR’s is that you have control over how the shot looks. In time I hope to share my tips and tricks as I become an “expert”.