Taking pics help

[Fz5_newbie]

Hi, I'm very much a beginner in the aperture, shutter speeds, composition etc. As name suggests i have a Fz5.

Can anyone recommend me settings to take a full (everything) in focus picture. I've tried scenery mode and that works ok and i know if i up my aperture that will increase the depth of field. What if i wanted to take pics of say my 2 children, their 2 cousins and their scooters with absolutely everything in focus??

[emalvick]

I think if you are an absolute beginner, and you just want to make things simple and get a well focused shot, use the program mode (P mode). That will almost always get you a focused shot that is exposed well for light. It is almost always good to use this while you are using the camera and learning what everything does. Heck, I still use program mode most of the time unless I have something tricky that I need to get a shot of using the other manual settings.

With the fz5, almost everything will be in focus with almost any settings unless you are doing macro or using a lot of zoom on a close subject. Depth of field should not be much of an issue. I also suggest setting the ISO to automatic while you learn the camera (in the menu). Your other option is to use the aperture priority, and fix the aperture at a higher setting. However, this could reduce the shutter speed (in darker situations). If the shutter speed is too slow, you won't have any focus.

Erik

[Balrog]

To get "everything in focus" means you want to have the largest possible depth of field, which means you should use a very small aperture; f/8 is the lowest you can get on the FZ5 so use that. Of course, that will necessitate being in a very well-lit area (i.e. forget indoors) because otherwise your shutter speed will be so low that camera shake and/or subject movement will ruin the shot. Tiny apertures also tend to adversely affect sharpness due to diffraction effects - I think optimum aperture for the FZ5 was around f/5.6 or so.
Moving further away will increase the depth of field too.
On the other hand, I'm thinking with active kids your biggest problem might be freezing motion rather than having enough DOF (Point and shoot digitals generally have a pretty large depth of field) .. so you might want to try goin to shutter priority mode and setting a shutter speed which is fast enough to freeze everything, and let the camera pick whatever aperture it can get.

[Fz5_newbie]

Thanks for the quick replies... I've only had the camera about a month and just getting to grips with it. Until now have just been a point and shoot man!

Think you've hit the nail on the head there, see the reason for my example was i took a picture (kids as described) earlier today, they were pretty static, and now that i look at it (i used f8) it's maybe the sharpness that's wrong and not the actual focus.

One of my friends suggested 'experimenting' taking lots of virtually the same photos, trying different settings, writing them down and see what works, "it's the only way to learn " he said. However, it's such a great camera and 12x zoom is fantastic you get all excited and just want to click away... :D

Cheers, will give all your suggestions a go.