clear things up.

There are two primary factors that "expose" a picture, expose meaning getting the brightness right: Shutter Speed and Aperature.

When your camera takes a picture it opens a shutter, which allows light to hit its sensor... which captures the picture. If the shutter is open for a longer period of time, it lets in more light.

Think of aperature as like an eye... it can be a large circle or a small one. Closing or opening up to allow more light in.

When you switch to aperature priority mode, you control exactly how far open your lenses "eye" is. When your lenses "eye" is very open, it lets lots of light in... but at the expense of depth of feild. Depth of feild is simply a term describing how much of the picture depth is in focus.

People use aperature priority mode to control depth of feild. The vast majority of the time when taking pictures, that's all that will need to be controled. Sometimes youll want blurred out background, like for portaits or artsy stuff, and sometimes youll want everything in clear, for landscapes and boas.. etc. When you set your camera to aperature priority a number will pop up somewhere, this is the F number. There will be a dial or button to press to move this number up and down. Raise the number as high as possible to achieve lots of depth in the picture. But watch your shutter speed, if your pictures are coming out blurred... its because the shutter speed was too low (trying to compensate for a too high F number).

Your zoom also determines depth of feild. If you are zoomed way in, it will blur background/decrease depth of feild. So thats another angle to consider. Aperature is a bit more important to pay attention to however.

As far as the sun being too direct, that shouldn't be an issue. In fact, direct sunlight is one of my preffered boa picture scenarios. If your previous camera was washing out all the shots in that scenario it has exposure issues. You can fix this by using exposure compensation. Your manual will tell you how to adjust it. It generally looks like a /- on the camera. If things are coming out too bright, compensate down (-). I get great shots outside in harsh, direct sunlight. Just make sure you are angled correctly (with the sun towards your back and facing the subject, angle yourself so you dont shadow the boa). Time of day makes a difference as well. Also understand that sometimes certain angles will create "blown" hot spots, in which cases you will have to change your position or wait until the sun is at a different slant.

A tripod is pretty much out for taking boa shots. They simply move around too quickly. I've tried it many times. One of the primary reasons I moved to an SLR is because of that, they're nearly instant when taking shots. I can capture tongue movements on cue... etc.

Some outside in direct sunlight examples:

EBV Girl you produced (I think)



Lokken Pastel



Orange Pastel



I posted a shot of a motley and jungle in one of my previous posts that were also in direct sunlight.

The best thing to do is get out and mess with your camera settings. Experiment, experiment, experiment. Learn by trial and error. It takes time.

Another thing to understand that getting the shots is just half the battle. Post processing (cropping, white balance calibration, sharpening, etc) plays a crucial role too!

Anytime you run into specific problems / questions. Let me know and I'll try and steer you in the right direction.
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Take Care,

-Ryan Homsey

www.topnotchboas.com

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