 BetterPhoto Member |
What do the things on top of my camera do? well, I picked up the Pentax ZX-M, and I know the dial with the numbers on the right mean amount of light, but when do I use them, and there's numbers on the dial to the left.i keep it on the green 0...where do I get a better manual, one I can understand? i'm still learning this camera and I want to learn it better..thanks
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Glenn Theal |
HI, Ken: The Pentax ZX-M is a fully manual SLR camera that allows you to control lens aperture and shutter speed. The manual means that you must focus the camera on subject matter yourself. The dial on the right-side of the camera controls shutter speed and aperture. Basically, you use faster shutter speeds for faster subject matter, and you adjust the aperture setting to control the depth of field in the focus, i.e. blurriness of objects outside the focus area. Both of these control the amount of light reaching the film, although they do it in different ways. By controlling the aperture, you control how large the diameter of the opening in the lens diaphragm is. A large aperture, or small number, means a very large diameter. A small aperture, or large number, means a very small diamter. Obviously, this controls the amount of light reaching the film. By controlling shutter speed, you determine how long the shutte blades in the camera body remain open. Longer shutter speeds mean more light reaches the film, and shorter shutter speeds mean less light reaches the film. You use aperture control and shutter control in combination to affect the amount of light reaching the film. The dial on the left side of the camera controls exposure compensation. Proper exposure is usually considered to contain 18% gray. You can control this by using this dial. You can either make the photo brighter or darker depending on your desires. +X means overexposing the film; where as, -X means underexposing the film. Depending on what mode you are in, either aperture priority or shutter priority, the exposure compensation dial on the left will adjust the opposite of the mode you are in so as to control how much light reaches the film. For example, if you are in shutter priority, you are controlling the shutter speed of the camera and the camera is controlling the aperture. This means that the camera will choose the appropriate aperture to match your shutter selection so as to give perfect exposure. When you adjust the exposure-compensation dial, you are telling the camera to use an aperture setting larger or lesser than that which gives perfect exposure. When you are in aperture-priority mode, you control the aperture setting and the camera controls the shutter speed. I hope that this clears things up some for you. I know that this is a lot of info to digest. You may also wish to take an online course from webslr.com, which teaches you how to control all of these settings over the Internet. The address is www.webslr.com Cheers,
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