Exposure on camera?

I have a 400d and want to to take a photo in the evening(on a tripod) and capture all the great colours, to do this should i have a slow shutter speed and narrow Aperture 32? or a small aperture 5? Or is the aperture not as important as the shutterspeed at this moment?

Of course, exposure is the number one concern for selecting shutter speed and aperture opening. There are lots of combinations of the two that will do the job. Other than that, shutter speed affects stop action and aperture opening affects depth-of-focus. If need both foreground and background to be in focus (high depth-of-field) use narrow aperture openings. If you want moving objects to be clear, use fast shutter speeds.

Personally, I like evening shots with slower shutter speeds (over one second long) to get the feeling of motion and better color saturation. Unless I have a foreground object that needs to be sharp, I choose whatever aperture opening gives me the best exposure. Try bracketing your exposures with slower and slower shutter speeds.

Both are important, but perhaps not for the reason you think. The shutter speed and aperture are inversely proportional to one another.

If you are planning a photo of a landscape where there are objects in the foreground, middle ground and background; you will most likely want a small aperture (a high f/ number). This is so you will increase your depth of field and have nearly everything in focus. Choose the smallest aperture (largest f/ number) that your camera supports if this is the effect that you desire.

The second part of the equation is choosing the right shutter speed to give you a proper exposure. The built in meters in today's DSLRs are pretty good and should give you a good exposure. However, I would bracket my exosures in 1/2 stop increments +/- 1.5 stops. This way you can choose the best resulting image.

The cool thing about bracketing with an image like that, is if there is high dynamic range (the difference between highlight and shadow) you can merge several of the frames together using and HDR photo program. This will create a single image that compresses the high dynamic range into something that can printed on paper or displayed on a computer screen.

You might find that in order to get the colors truly saturated like you would see in Fuji Velvia, that you'll have to pump the saturation in Photoshop or Lightroom.

If you're hand-holding the camera, you may get blur from camera shake if the shutter speed is slower than 1/125 second.

Select Tv and set the speed accordingly.

If the images are underexposed, increase the ISO.

If you're using a tripod, the shutter speed isn't critical. Set Av to give you the depth of field you require.

V

If your on a tripod, aperture is the only consideration (what depth of field you want). In a sunset situation you don't need maximum depth of field so just go with the lenses 'sweet spot' usually f8 or f11.

Some of the best sunsets are taken in the corpuscular light, just after the sun goes down and for the next 20 minutes or so. The ideal time is when the sky and foreground have the same meter reading and are equally exposed.

Chris

All the above is quite true BUT, your camera will try to make the scene a mid-grey - losing all the vibrant colours. Adjust your camera to UNDER expose by one half and also one stop. Both these will give you better & richer colours and make the foreground into a silhouette.

the aperture controls your depth of field ie how much is in focus,
without a tripod the lowest shutter speed to prevent blurring is about 60 therefore by using a tripod you can extend the shutter opening without blurring and therefore us a smaller aperture experiment with the depth of field and decide what parts of the picture you need in focus,

set the camera to m= manual

hope this helps

I don't think either will have much affect on color. A small Aperture may have the effect of sharpening the details and will increase depth of field. However a long shutter speed my produce blur for any moving clouds or birds in flight. Best to experiment and bracket several exposures.

as long as you have a tripod you can definitely keep the shutterspeed slow to allow as much light in as possible. and then just adjust your aperature as your light meter tells you to. play around!

Because of the slow shutter speed you can keep the aperture at f8 to f11 because being open longer, it will allow more light in.

I'd say wide apature and long exposure. So lang is it's a land scape (everything is over 20m away) the apature will just let in more light and not affect the focal distance.