Quote:
Originally Posted by nhhiep
Put it in A(aperture) mode and set the Fstop to the smallest # (or 1 step next to the smallest). Now you blur out most background, so your photo will look sharper. Never put it in Auto mode.
Also, somewhere in your menu has an option for you to set to have your picture sharp or soft, ect.. Set it up Sharp. I have a nikon D50, but DSLRs share many same features. XTI is a very good camera, I almost bought it. but it is too small for my hand.
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This is both correct and wrong. You also want to take into consideration the lens that you are using. You can choose to have a a larger or smaller field of view. The above mentioned method will give you a small field of view, just like was said where the foreground is in focus and the background is blurred. If you crank your fstop up to a higher number, depending on the lens, but try F11 or there abouts for a larger field of view with both your foreground and background in focus. Some lenses are just sharper than others too. I am a Nikon guy myself so I don't know all the lens lines from Cannon, but there are certain lenses that Nikon users know that are tack ass sharp. I'm sure there are some Cannon favorites out there as well. Do some research of the available lenses on bhphotovideo.com and adorama.com. Make sure to read user reviews, some crap in there, but you can usually tell the folks that know what they are talking about.
Keep in mind the ability to do the above mentioned method is going to be strictly lens dependent. For example one of my lenses is a 50mm 1.8f lens which means I can drop the fstop all the way down to 1.8, where as another one of my lenses is a 12-24mm f4. The 12-24 only allows you to drop to a minimum of f4, where as the 50mm gives me a aperture ability of 1.8. Check your lens, it should say either on top of the lens or atleast around the ring on the front glass what your MM/Aperture is. With a 3.5-5.6 or something similar you are going to want to shoot wide open at the bottom end of the lenses range to get the lowest aperture possible. The indicated 3.5-5.6 means at say 18mm or whatever the bottom range is for that lenses (for example 18mm-200mm) the lowest aperture you can shoot is 3.5, while zooming all the way in to 200mm is going to only allow 5.6 as the lowest aperture possible.
ANYWAY! in this case you would do better to shoot in strong natural light, with the sun at your back, or close to it, with your aperture cranked to f11 or so and your shutter speed a tad longer. During strong natural light you may find you don't have to worry as much about shutter speed, but at night to achieve great shots on a high aperture (as mentioned above) you will want a tripod or a monopod at the very least to steady yourself from camera shake.
That said I suggest investing a good low to medium or semi high range telephoto that sports Cannon's IS mode (image stabilization) as it will greatly decrease a good deal of camera shake. For the Nikon folk out there the VR(vibration reduction) lenses do the same thing and are terrific.
I really apologize for the novel, just felt like talking shop for a minute I guess.