Shutter Speed...winter reds...FRUSTRATED WITH SHUTTER PLEASE HELP!!

[LauraFrancesPhotography]

Hi! I have found that I mess up a lot of shots when my camera (Fuji FinePix S5000) is set to Shutter speed. Most of the time the focal image is blurred and the background is clear as day. Well I think I got it right on this particular shot....so just curious as to what those more experienced think. Does it look under exposed? Should the focal point be sharper? Any suggestions would be lovely! Thank you.

Fuji Fine Pix S5000 1/60s
Focal Length: 45.6mm
35mm equivalent
ISO-200

Also any advice on using Shutter speed would be great.

[navcom]

A couple suggestions that might give you a hand.

First, do you use a tripod? At a shutter speed of 1/60, it is possible you are getting a bit of camera shake, though it is fast enough it won't be that severe...which appears it is not in your image. But this may cause the slight out of focus.

Second, the reason you are sometimes getting the background in focus and other times the foreground has to do with your auto focus. It is having a hard time trying to figure out what to focus on. Quite honestly, I almost always turn off the auto focus (or anything automatic for that matter) for my landscape shots. Auto focus is a great thing, but it is also "auto" and doesn't know what you want. It uses a generated "program" to determine what it thinks should be in focus. If you are trying to focus on a thin flower stem, it is very likely it may just look right through it and focus on the bigger background.

As far as shutter speed...I'm going to assume you mean shutter priority. You can't help using shutter speed when taking any photo. It's how the camera exposes the picture.

But I digress. Shutter priority simply means that you will manually pick what shutter speed you want to use and the camera automatically decides what aperture and film speed to apply to get a proper exposure.

Aperture priority works the same...you pick the aperture and the camera decides what shutter speed and film speed to use for proper exposure. For landscape photography, I recommend using either aperture priority (Av) or full manual mode (where you manually select everything).

In most landscape photos (not all, but most), shutter speed is irrelevant (as long as you are using a tripod, which you should if at all possible...best image quality). But aperture is VERY important. It controls depth of field, which is an important consideration in landscape photography. Plus, aperture settings at the extreme end (either large or small) can lead to a image quality issues...and sometimes the camera will pick these extremes due to lighting issues. Therefore, using aperture priority, you pick the aperture that gives you the best depth of field and best quality for the shot you are taking and let the camera do the rest.

Of course, manual mode is even better as you have full control over your art.

Hope that helps!

[LauraFrancesPhotography]

Thank you for the great advice as I will go back out and reshoot and refer to your suggestions. I also did not have a tripod with me, which now I know would be of better use as of the 200 shots i took, only a handful I actually liked. Yes I did mean Shutter Priority..just wasn't thinking straight! Thanks again!