What mode should i use if its sunny? SLR CAMERA?
Nikon d5000
MANUAL…
.
Learn it and use YOUR computer. Your brain.
Nothing wrong with sun… But if the sun is high in the sky it can make your photos look really harsh, lots of hard shadows.
Learning how to use your camera manually is a worthwhile task. It will help you understand photography and move you beyond being just a happy snapper. Honestly, it's not rocket science. People in my fathers generation did everything manually. It's really only the last 30 or so years that program modes have become the norm in photography.
That's one thing. Another thing is thinking about the light and where it's coming from. If you are serious about photography, there are 2 items you can buy which are brilliant things to have in your kit. A circular diffuser, and a circular reflector. They fold up and fit into a pouch about 2 feet in diameter but when they are unfolded they are about 4 or maybe 5 feet diameter.
The diffuser is a big disk of a cloudy mesh. You put it between the sun and your subject and it softens the light.
Fleckys are gold foil on one side, silver foil on the other and you use them to reflect light on to your subject.
If you don't want to go down that path, put yourself in places where the light is naturally diffused… Under trees or awnings and the like.
You now own a fully adjustable camera, NOT a big P&S camera.
Just use the light meter on your camera to determine the correct exposure.
You may at some point want to attend a photo class.
What is this question? And what about your status in photographic field, how long you are doing this.these things helps to answer. By the way below are the possible conditions
1. If it is sunny, use the color balance, sunny, and if you are shooting in shade in a sunny day then use the color balance shade and also shoot raw+jpegs.
2. If it is mid day the shadows would be so harsh so try to bracket your images or just over expose by 1 stop to avoid harsh shadows, then correct in photoshop.
3. All the settings entirely changes if your purpose of photography changes, means are you shooting portraits, landscapes, fashion shoot, cars, sports or pets.every situation have a different setting to use. So there you have to decide, what effects do you like. Just play with your camera it will tell you every thing.
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Really that has very little to do with what mode you should use. The pre-programed camera modes are mostly about your subject, not the lighting conditions as such. For example, action setting defaults to a higher shutter speed at the expense of depth of field while portrait mode defaults to a slow ISO and a shallow depth of field on most cameras.
This guide will explain step by step what some of the most common preset modes actually do.
http://photography.about.com/od/camerabasics/ss/camerapresets.htm
Shift to M
and lower your shutter speed to about 1/160 and Aperture 3.5 or 4.
Take a shot, see how it comes it. Increase decrease the setting to get best result.
Also use Spot metering. If the subject is backlit, try placing the sun behind the subject etc. Try and you will get better.
Sunny f 16 rule comes to mind.
Shooting a DSLR on full auto just turns a potentially useful machine into a giant point and shoot.
You should at least be shooting in Aperture or Shutter priority to gain a bit of control over exposure/DoF.
Take a photo class though, seriously.