Priority Modes

SouthernExperience

Would you be able to do more priority mode tips? I really like how you did the shutter priority mode one where you added the overview, and explained what level did what (fast freezes, slow is motion). I would have loved to have seen that for the aperture one you did.

bruto

Aperture affects depth of field, and your best bet may be just to experiment. Find a scene with a good deal of depth, and take the same shot at different apertures in A mode. Wide open will give you shallow depth of field, and more closed down will increase depth of field. If none of your image is very close, there is less advantage to a very small aperture, and you will begin to see overall image blurring at apertures smaller than f/16 owing to diffraction. You need to make decisions on the priority of overall clarity versus depth of field here. Sometimes you will want to get the maximum DOF even if it is a bit less sharp. Sometimes the loss of sharpness just doesn't show anyway (it tends to be most noticeable on contrasty edges).

When you change aperture, of course you also change the shutter speed required for a good exposure, so you must keep an eye on what else changes. If you have your camera set to auto ISO, the ISO will rise when shutter speed gets beyond a certain slowness (1/30 is the default). If you have the camera on manual ISO, the shutter speed will go down without limit, and eventually become too slow to hand hold.

If you keep an eye on the changes in one area when another changes, eventually you can use either A or S mode and achieve the same results. If the shutter speed goes too slow in A mode, open up the aperture. If the aperture goes far from what you want in S mode, change the shutter speed until you get what you want.

Remember this is a digital camera, and you can take lots and lots of experimental shots and erase them. Find subjects of no pictorial interest that help illustrate photographic rules - a chair or a thing on a table, or a mailbox or whatever. Take pictures at different settings, compare them, and erase them when you're done.