Playing with my camera

(By Erik)

After owning my Canon Digital Rebel for more than two years, I'm finally taking some time to learn how to use it.

I've been playing with some of the manual settings and taking pictures of the various blooming objects in our front yard (you'll notice lots of dandelions — Weeds "R Us!) On a lot of these photos I used a wide aperture to give the background a soft, blurred effect.





Here's a photo of our redbud tree taken with a small aperture (the round hole that lets light into the camera). To compensate for the small aperture, I had to set the shutter speed at a slower rate to allow more light to give a correct exposure.


Here's the same shot, but using a "wide open" aperture (big hole). To compesate, the shutter speed is quicker and lets less light into the camera. Note the difference in the background.