[mickporter]

So far I have followed Andy Bright's camera settings on my Nikon 4500 blindly.

I have no intention of questioning the great man, but I more often than not get blurred pictures (not caused by camera shake), I think sometimes it would be good to have a faster shutter speed, which is not possible in Apeture Priority. I suppose I could try Manual Mode, but I am not confident enough to adjust both Apeture and Shutter.

Why should I not use Shutter priority?? Surely with a moving bird (I haven't found one yet that sits still, except for a sleeping owl!) I would have a better chance of less blur with a reasonable shutter speed of at least 1/60??

Andy obviously thinks this is wrong but why??

[Andy Bright]

Hi Mick, sorry to hear that you're struggling. When you are in aperture priority mode (with aperture set at lowesst f#) the shutter speed shown will be the fastest available for correct exposure of the image. As you say, there's nothing to stop you going into full manual and choosing a faster shutter-speed but the resulting image will be under-exposed....you are governed by the amount of light in getting a fast shutter-speed.

I often use full manual and deliberately under-expose at times (judge exposure by the linear meter on the display) to get the all important faster shutter-speed as you can brighten up the image in-computer to some extent and in any case, a dark but sharper photo is better than a bright blurred one, but in general aperture priority is the best option for newcomers in terms of consistant results. Raising the iso setting is the better option for many to achieve a faster shutter-speed....as is zooming back and not having the subject as large in the frame.
regards,
Andy

[Jay Turberville]

Originally Posted by mickporter

Why should I not use Shutter priority?? Surely with a moving bird (I haven't found one yet that sits still, except for a sleeping owl!) I would have a better chance of less blur with a reasonable shutter speed of at least 1/60??

Andy obviously thinks this is wrong but why??

Most digicams have a very limited range of apertures. For instance, at a medium zoom setting, I think the CP4500 has a range from something like f4 to f10 or about three stops. So if you set the camera to a particular shutter speed, the likelihood that there will be a suitable f-number for proper exposure can be rather low depending on what shutter speed you set. To make matters worse, when digiscoping the indicated f-number may not really be the effective f-number.

So Andy is correct. Use aperture priority. If you use a relatively low camera and eyepiece zoom, there should be a fair bit lof light available. But regardless, if you shoot with the camera aperture wide open, you will automatically get the fasted shutter speed that the camera thinks is possible.

I use the +/- control for tweaking exposures. You can always dial in a minus 1 for to force a faster shutter speed at the expense of a somewhat underexposed image. And as Andy says, you can try shooting at ISO 200.