new starter to photography, help and advice please

oxygenuk

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hi

want to start off in photography, had real fun lately with my mums digital camera taking photos of my car etc, really enjoyable with all the diffrent angles that i can get and how much better i can make them look with a bit of editing in irfanview, aint got photoshop, not yet anyway

going to be buying this canon a460 tomorrow http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5607501/Trail/searchtext>CANON.htm this looks like a good digital camera, at least for entry level anyway, should i be able to put a 2gb sd card in there?

also a thing ive never knew or understood is ISO, someone please tell me all about it, what it is and what it does etc, always confused me, to me its just a few letters:lesson:

thanks:)
 
I use IrfanView purely as an image viewer because it can handle most file types. For image editing I'd use a different package and as far as freebie editors go, GIMP frequently comes recommended. I've never used it myself though as I've always had access to Photoshop.

Can't comment on that camera, have you tried Googling for some reviews?

In digital, ISO is the sensor's "light sensitivity". The higher the ISO the more sensitive the sensor is. Increasing the ISO means the subject will appear brighter and/or you can use faster shutter speeds. The big downside of using higher ISOs is they gradually introduce more image noise as you go up the scale.
 
ISO stands for International Standards Organization it is simple a measure of how sensitive the film or more recently the sensor is. the highe the number the more sensitive it is ie ISO 200 is twice as sensitive as ISO 100 and 400 twice as sensitive as 200

The higher the ISO the less light you meed to create the image but the more noise you get the noise affects the quality of the image

that is a simple explanation you can get a lot more in depth ones but you said you were a beginner and I didn't want to confuse you
 
ISO actually stands for International Standards Organisation , as such it isn't related to just photgraphy ( You may be aware that CD /DVD images on a hard drive are also called "ISO" files)
ISO in films?digital are loosely synonymous with ASA
Film use to have ASA ratings which denoted "speed" ie :light sensitivity
Fast film describes one in which images could be captured with relatively low light
Slow film would need a lot more light to capture image similarly
The ASA ( or ISO) rating of the film would mean an ISO of say 50 was slow and 1600, fast
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_speed

Because with the same light, you would need a "faster" shutter speed to capture rapid movt, you would use fast film. however fast film also had more "grain"
As such for a portrait you would prefer a Slow film where you could give adequate lighting and use any speed.. with good results , and no "grain"

There is no film in digital but the convention of ISO is used to denote sensitivity of sensor to light. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive to light and therefore need less to get a picture but at the cost of "noise", which is the digital equivalent of "grain"
Because the light hitting the sensor is dependent on the size of the iris ( aperture) and the speed of shutter ( ie how long is exposes the sensor for) ISO is never used in isolation as measure of how good a camera is at taking low light pictures
It is merely mentioned because the ability to give low noise with high ISO is a desirable one and is perhaps easier to find in costlier cameras
 
hi

want to start off in photography, had real fun lately with my mums digital camera taking photos of my car etc, really enjoyable with all the diffrent angles that i can get and how much better i can make them look with a bit of
editing in irfanview, aint got photoshop, not yet anyway

going to be buying this canon a460 tomorrow http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5607501/Trail/searchtext>CANON.htm this looks like a good digital camera, at least for entry level anyway, should i be able to put a 2gb sd card in there?

also a thing ive never knew or understood is ISO, someone please tell me all about it, what it is and what it does etc, always confused me, to me its just a few letters:lesson:

thanks:)

I'm afraid that the camera you're looking for isn't very good at taking photos of fish :D
 

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