Sony DSC-H5 user manual for dummies

[Bonnie22]

Ok I admit it, the manual that came with this camera is so chock full of information that I find it incredibly intimidating.

I'm trying to take still pictures and for some reason it starts taking movie pics. The LED screen shows the following icons:
ISO
Red Eye
M (with what looks like multiple sheets of paper)
Fine>101
1/30"
1425 :eek:

I'm sure that somehow I managed to hit a button but can't for the life of me figure out what I did. I'm leaving on vacation in a few weeks and hate to think that I won't be able to use this :o

[Sintares]

Ok, read the H1 whitepaper at http://www.aakatz.com/h1whitepaper/

Most of it applies to the H2/H5 as well as the H1. There are a lot of chapters, but the chapters showing basic and recommended settings are a must read, then once you are more familiar you can come back to the more advanced chapters ie the ones on macros, teleconverters etc.

The writer , AAKatz, is a regular over on the www.dpreview.com forums (Sony talk forum mainly) , so feel welcome to pop in , register and say hi to us all !

--

The M means you are in a simple multiburst mode, where 16 low resolution shots are taken in your case 1/30s apart and then combined into a single larger photo.

If viewed in camera the individual shots are played like a mini movie, but if downloaded to a computer you see one big pic with 16 (4x4) mini shots, ie think of a chess board where each square is a small pic.

The 1425 is refering to the total number of shots of this type you can save to your memory stick, remember this multiburst mode is not shooting at full resolution, I think it shoots at 1Megapixel, so thats why so many can be on your card, and the Fine>101 is referring to the jpeg compression (fine) and the camera is saving into the default folder on the card .. 101..

The folder is as it should be and fine mode is also recommended, it produces slightly larger pics compared to standard mode, thus less can be stored on the memory stick but the pictures have less compression and are better quality.
Jpeg is the common format for saving pictures, but just like MP3s for music, information is thrown away during compression (the format is "lossy") , the more compression, the smaller the pic, but the worse it looks, so stick to fine mode.

You can get out of Multiburst mode by pressing the button marked /brk, just behind the shutter button, its marked as button 3, on the diagram page 18 of your manual.

Pressing it will cycle through the options, Burst/exposure bracket/Multiburst/normal

ISO -> Scene selection mode is set to High Sensitivity mode ie the command dial top right of the camera is turned to ISO, see the Read this First manual , step 5

You will be wanting to change that since high ISO means that while you can shoot in darker places without flash, there will be more "noise" in the picture, ie more speckles/grain, try Auto mode on the command dial (green camera icon), to start with till you learn a little more about the camera.

If you want a little more control, try P mode, (program shift) page 35 of the manual. It operates a lot like auto mode, except you can change many of the values, more so than auto allows you to change, yet is simple to play with.

P mode, starts off by setting the shutter speed and aperture as the camera thinks will produce a good pic, you can then use the jog wheel on the front of the camera to either change the exposure compensation, or choose from the displayed values of shutter speed and aperture that will produce the same overall exposure as calculated by the camera.

Since the camera only shows you options that produce the same over all exposure you can't make a drastic mistake, it just lets you cycle through the various options and pick one you like, ie while shooting sports you would might pick the option with the highest shutter speed to avoid the fast action on the field or track from blurring.

Or in some cases you might actually want to show blurr since it gives a nice sense of motion in a picture, so you would quickly cycle through the options till you found a slower shutter speed.