Your biggest questions answered
Exposure
Q I am still confused by the ‘right’ shutter speeds to choose when shooting handheld.
Michelle Cowbourne
A As a guiding principle, shutter speed should match or exceed the equivalent focal length of your lens. So, if you're shooting at 50mm on full frame, you'd need a shutter speed of at least 1/60sec to avoid image blurring due to camera shake. This is OK as a rule of thumb, but often isn't sufficient to get really sharp results when viewing high-resolution images close-up onscreen. Also with telephoto lenses, movement is amplified so using even faster shutter speeds is often needed. Remember, though, modern image-stabilisation systems have helped here, enabling you to get slower shutter speed effects (e.g. motion blur) while shooting handheld.
Q What exactly is a semi-automatic shooting mode? Not like a rifle, I guess...
Mark Webb
By semi-automatic modes we usually mean aperture priority and shutter priority (sometimes called Av and Tv). In aperture priority, you set ISO and aperture and the camera then automatically works out the most appropriate shutter speed based on the available light. In shutter priority mode, you set ISO and shutter speed and the camera takes care of aperture. Program shift is a more advanced version of P mode which enables you to ‘shift' to different combinations of aperture and shutter speed, which you can set for creative effect. In these modes you could also use Auto ISO, allowing the
