I'm a newbee and need help with absolute basics.

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Lauri E

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I'm am shooting birds here in the Olympic National Park. I have been trying to shoot birds in an area that the park has feeders out. Although birds are small and flitty, some of these aren't. When I get home to look at the photos , 99% are blurry and I have to delete. Can anyone help me with what settings I should be shooting at? Frankly, I don't know my shutter speed and don't know how to set it. I know I'm amongst so many of you amazing photographers, but hoping someone can take pity on me and help me out with some basics.
Many thanks,
Lauri E
 
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First bit of advice is to read the camera manual. They usually have a basic set up guide in the first section, which covers everything you usually need.

Second is to tell us what kind of camera you have, and what lens you're shooting with, so we can help with more accurate advice. Otherwise a lot of what we can say is overly generic.
 
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I would agree with Cameron, get to know your equipment. Read the manual with the camera in your hands so you can practice changing the settings on your camera. Then do the same thing every week or so until you know how to change all settings. Once you have done that and you read online or watch a YouTube video about preferred settings in certain situations you will know how so set those settings on your equipment.
 
Here's some good reading to get you started.

photographylife.com

Photography Basics: The Complete Beginner's Guide

Photography isn’t the only way to capture the world, but it certainly is one of the most effective. Look no further than the nearest social media feed, news station, magazine article, or book cover to see it – photographs have power. If you want to harness that power and learn how to take the...
photographylife.com photographylife.com
 
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@Lauri E

There is a learning curve for general photography and once you are comfortable with using your camera day to day for general use, any specialism such as wildlife, macro or portraiture (and others) has a further learning curve.

It takes time and you learn by making mistakes and knowing how to correct them. As has been said, there is a lot of stuff on line and there are probably courses that you can go on, but if you have any camera clubs in your area they can be a great source of knowledge. They are in the UK for sure.

I'd suggest that you learn one bit at a time rather than tackling lots of things. The settings interact so changing one thing affects other things too.

Try these steps. They won't mean anything to you but search for them:

Exposure triangle, composition, when to use a fast or slow shutter speed, what a small aperture and a wide aperture does, (aperture is not intuitive as the smaller the number, the wider the aperture is!) and when and why to use the different exposure modes.
 
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bleirer said:
Here's some good reading to get you started.

photographylife.com

Photography Basics: The Complete Beginner's Guide

Photography isn’t the only way to capture the world, but it certainly is one of the most effective. Look no further than the nearest social media feed, news station, magazine article, or book cover to see it – photographs have power. If you want to harness that power and learn how to take the...
photographylife.com photographylife.com
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Cameron T said:
First bit of advice is to read the camera manual. They usually have a basic set up guide in the first section, which covers everything you usually need.

Second is to tell us what kind of camera you have, and what lens you're shooting with, so we can help with more accurate advice. Otherwise a lot of what we can say is overly generic.
Click to expand...
Little to add. The important step is to get out and start taking photos. Digital images are basically free (compared to what one used to pay for film that is). So practice and learn from mistakes. It also is less frustrating to begin with easy subjects such as pigeons or waterfowl in the local park, and pets. Many years down the line I regularly practise on common birds around where I live as well as my cats.

It pays dividends to first learn to use your camera in full Manual mode first to understand how to adjust exposure [shutter speed and aperture settings) on the sensor, and read what the sensor is telling you via the histogram about how it's recording the light falling on the sensor for the ISO you set to adjust its gain.

Also consider joining Journal of Wildlife Photography, and when you are ready consider signing up for a workshop. One of Steve's ebooks will also be a huge help once you are comfortable with the basics
 
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First off welcome to BCG! You have taken the first step in becoming a better photographer by joining this site and if you invest time reading on here you will learn a lot! There are some very talented photographers on here.

You are likely getting blurry photos because your shutter speed is to slow. A combination of your abilities and the subject moving tend to cause this. In general a shutter speed of at least 1/500 is needed for a bird on a perch. If a bird is rather still you can go slower but in many cases they aren’t and you might need even more shutter speed to increase the number of shots that aren’t blurry. The length of your lens also plays into this as well. The more magnification you have the more shutter speed you typically need to stop user movement. I’m not sure which Olympus you have but by using the stabilization feature will over come this part of movement.

I suggest using auto iso if your camera has it. Then the next step would be shutter priority so you control the minimum shutter speed. Once you get a feel for this you can move to manual mode with auto iso and you can control both shutter speed and your aperture.

I also suggest you look at Steve Perry YouTube channel as he has lots of educational videos that will help you learn the best settings. He also has several books around how to capture images of wildlife and birds in flight. This will do more to help you than anything.

Lastly do some YouTube searching for your camera and see if anyone has set up guides on best settings for wildlife/bird photography. As others have said reading the manual helps but if you don’t understand what you are reading or how it will impact your photography by using a specific setting you’ll likely be frustrated. If you can find someone who walks you through how to set it up it will likely make more sense and as you get more familiar with the camera and photography things will begin to click.

Good luck!
 
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DavidT said:
I suggest using auto iso if your camera has it. Then the next step would be shutter priority so you control the minimum shutter speed. Once you get a feel for this you can move to manual mode with auto iso and you can control both shutter speed and your aperture.
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I have to disagree with this because doing this will teach you nothing about how to control exposures. I know someone who was a beginner and he told me that he used manual settings on his camera and auto ISO. His pictures were always well exposed but he did not have a clue about how to control exposures. He religiously followed YouTube advice, but whatever he did made no difference to his pictures. When I advised him to turn auto ISO off and set 100 ISO, everything started to fall into place for him.
 
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dabhand16 said:
I have to disagree with this because doing this will teach you nothing about how to control exposures. I know someone who was a beginner and he told me that he used auto ISO. his pictures were always well exposed but he did not have a clue about how to control exposures. He religiously followed YouTube advice, but whatever he did made no difference to his pictures. When I advised him to turn auto ISO off and set 100 ISO, everything started to fall into place for him.
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Sure I see your point but one step at a time. First thing they are trying to do is stop getting blurry photos. I guess than to full manual everything and get frustrated. For me when teaching you start to solve one problem at a time and once that part is learned you introduce the next thing which to me would be aperture. Iso would be the last thing I’d worry about in a modern camera and the far majority of us more seasoned photographers use auto iso.
 
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DavidT said:
Sure I see your point but one step at a time. First thing they are trying to do is stop getting blurry photos. I guess than to full manual everything and get frustrated. For me when teaching you start to solve one problem at a time and once that part is learned you introduce the next thing which to me would be aperture. Iso would be the last thing I’d worry about in a modern camera and the far majority of us more seasoned photographers use auto iso.
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I don't disagree with any of that. In my other post I said "I'd suggest that you learn one bit at a time", but as you said "the far majority of us more seasoned photographers use auto iso" and Lauri is a beginner. I don't use auto ISO for the majority of my photography, only for action/sport/wildlife and you don't have to use auto ISO to get sharp pictures.

When we seasoned photographers first started photography with film you learnt how to control exposure, used zone focus, had the DoF marked on the lenses, used the 1/focal length rule for shutter speed and the only controls you had were shutter speed and aperture. When you nailed those you could not go wrong.
 
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