listen to whatever i like rice says without questioning it or even considering thinking for yourself. his avatar has such intense separation i reached out to touch it because it looked 3 dimensional.

Ha I guess thats why I use my 70-200 f/2.8 all the time. I get weird looks from people when I walk by them with it.

Yea Alex listen to I Like Rice, and don't question the guy.

Buy Actuant stock (ATU)

hmmm :looks up ATU:

Awesome thanks for the tip. Only problem is that without IS its harder to shoot at 55mm for me, sometimes I blurr..gotta learn to steady my hands

mmm i think you should go back and learn how to manually set exposure. the only reason 55mm would have camera shake is if you dont understand the basics and are getting camera shake becaue of using too low a shutter speed. its a very easy fix, if you understand how aperture, shutter speed, iso, and ambient light, work together.

Exposure you mean like 1/500 or 1/1000 ratings?? I do that manually all the time, its just when I do slower shutter speed I sometimes get blurr...basically anything longer than 1/2 a second. If I try to make it a faster shutter speed I get less blurr but it comes out underexposed. The only time I have played with apperature was during rolling shots, I keep it at like 11 and it seems to work, but I dont know HOW. Its like if I have it at 11, I get the wheels spinning and a moving background, if I set it to like 8 the wheels dont spin as much and the background is sharper.

yeah... do some reading or take a class... you're not using the tools on your camera properly and there's a whole lot more potential that you have yet to unlock.

If you're new to using a SLR, why are you using manual mode all the time? STOP!!!!!!!!!! Do what Bryan said, take a class. Take 3 classes. Read your manual, and then read it again.

reading some articles online and having a decent knowledge of how a basic camera works will go a long way. You aren't really ready for the M mode. Try playing around with the AV mode. Change the aperture (f stops) and take note of what exposure the camera sets automatically. You'll see a trend. Then it's just up to you to understand why it's doing it. Thats where the info from the articles will help you out. Photography like most things is really based on math.

M, TV, AV are probably the 3 modes most will use, depending on the situation.

For what I shoot, I use TV when I want to control motion, eg drifting, rolling shots

M when I can control the lighting and it stays consistent or night photography

TV for everything else

Read up on the basics on how aperture, shutter speed and ISO are tied together. You'll eventually adjust all three settings to get the type of image you're shooting for.

For rolling shots, you'll probably want to shoot in TV mode and set the shutter speed to about 1/30 or faster. It'll set the aperture based upon your ISO setting and the lighting. There are times when you want to control both the aperture and shutter speed, so the only variable is the lighting. As you get more advanced, you'll learn how to control the lighting if it doesn't allow you to get the settings you want; this is where ND filters come in to play but this is probably way beyond what you want to read about right now.

Most can hand hold down to 1/30-1/45 at 55 mm without IS.

If you're practicing, shoot outdoors during the day and you won't have to worry about having sufficient lighting.

I get that stuff sorta but my dof is not right. I tied around the house with what I read online, ny manual, and what bryan posted and no alas. when I do get that good sharp focus (shallow right) it only focuses on the very middle of the image, never enough to get my whole subject...I know its gona take a while but I kinda want to tear my hair out lol

"If you're practicing, shoot outdoors during the day and you won't have to worry about having sufficient lighting."

This part is really important... I know that shooting inside is convenient but what a lot of people don't realize is that there is only a fraction of light indoors compared to outdoors in daylight. Since light is so important in photography, having a lot of it really opens up the possibilities while shooting indoors or in other low light situations its much more limiting and can often lead to situations like the 'camera shake' you were talking about earlier.

The rule of thumb with handheld shooting is that you dont wan't to shoot at a lower shutter speed than 1/X, where X = the focal length of your lens. So if you have a 50mm lens you want to shoot at 1/50 or faster, if you have a 200mm lens you want to shoot at 1/200 or faster. Of course this is a general rule of thumb and rules are made to be broken, but it may assist you in the future in avoiding your problems with camera shake.

You want what is called a larger depth of field. To do this, you will do one (or several) of three things: 1) stop the aperture down (larger f/number), 2) move closer to the subject, 3) use a wider angle

If you shoot at f/4.0 and want more in focus, you can change the aperture to f/5.6. In doing so, you will need to let more light in because f/5.6 lets in one less f-stop than f/4.0. You will either need to increase the ISO speed and/or go with a slower shutter speed.

For example, previously at f/4.0 you shot at ISO 200, shutter 1/125. You change the aperature to f/5.6. You need to change the ISO to 400 OR change the shutter to 1/60. To keep things simple, I won't go into using half or third stop adjustments.

Never knew that rule, ill definately hold on to it.
im actually always shooting on 5.6 cause most of the time it doesnt go lower. Only occasionally it will let me go to 4 and 3.5, but its completely at random. Ill try it today

Thats cause of the lens you use. Minimal Aperature is 18mm is f/3.5. Minimal Aperature at 55mm is f/5.6. Thats why they call it a 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. Now if you upgrade to the "pro" style of lenses they have a constat Aperature of f/2.8, or f/4. You can use that Aperature at any focal length. Here's an example 70-200mm f/2.8. Hope that helps.

Now does that mean that you are stuck to using an apperature of 2.8 at any zoom or that you have the ability to have it that low? I shot 5 cars at work today and no alas on any DOF only on closeup shots of lights and nametags, for shots of the whole car, it doesnt work. TROLL is it ok to post 4 or 5 pictures here to show what i mean or should I make a quick thread. They are all resized to 640x480

i would start a thread about it since we're starting to move away from the general stuff at this point, which is the purpose of the sticky

This was very helpful, thank you for putting it together.

photo.net has some good learning pages also http://photo.net/learn/