I am now an SLR owner..

[iLuminatae]

Here's some tips.

Shutter speed: A general rule of thumb for sharp pictures is that your shutter speed should equal the focal length of the lens you are using. ie using a lens of 100 mm your shutter speed should be at least 1/100s. When using a support (tripod etc) this negates this "rule". Now when you want to get artsy, you can play with shutter speeds to give specific effects (blur for example)


ISO = essentially the sensitivity of the sensor to light which sort of equats to film speed. This has an effect on shutter speeds. Be careful with using high iso settings because it can induce noise/grain into your picture. However, this is not a bad thing in the cases of artistic photography. Can be adjusted to compensate for low shutter speeds.

Aperture or f stop: this is an interesting one which takes some time to get used to. It is the diameter of the lens opening. f/2.8 is a larger opening than f/11 which allows more light to enter the lens. However the photo taken at f/2.8 will look alot different than that taken at f/11. Google hyperfocal distance for more in depth discussion on this.

My camera is set to aperture priority in probably 95% of the photos I take. Essentially you can isolate the subject from the background using a large (f/2.8) aperture setting whereas a f/11 aperture setting will have more the background in focus. The plane of focus is different.

cheers.

[Astros Fan]

Thanks for the tips, that explains a lot.

[Erkenio]

It comes with an 18-70mm lens, and just about any Kinoca-Minolta lens will fit a Sony DSLR so there are plenty to choice from.

just curious, are those sony DSLR maken by Minolta team? Like brother and sister?

I have my eyes on the entry level Nikon D40x, is it a good DSLR? Any other suggestion?

[Astros Fan]

Finally uploaded some pics from vacation with the camera.

Check out the water droplets on the picture of my daughter. I liked the picture of the fish my wife found when we walked the beach at night, and to keep it game related there's a pic of my son preparing to duel the Elite 4 in his Diamond Pokemon game LOL. The fish picture is cool on my home pc b/c I can blow it up. I should just crop out a pic of him, but these were all taken with the default lens. Since that time I got my 75-200mm lens in which is pretty nice. My wife "accidentally" formatted the CF card after a recent excursion to go pick blueberries and I got some nice pictures of some birds zoomed in and blueberries and stuff...but they are lost