Photographing the jack o' lantern

This year I've challenged myself to learn how to use my Nikon D50 by finally taking the camera off the auto mode setting. Given the season I am now trying to learn how to photograph jack 'o lanterns. I did some reading . . . applied a few techniques . . . and managed to get a few, fairly good pic (or at least significantly better than what I've done in the past).

Here is some of the basic things that I did:

1. I purposely chose an image for my pumpkin that allowed lots of light to shine through.

2. I turned off the camera flash.

3. Set ISO to 400. I believe you must be in a manual setting in order to change the ISO. On the D50 turn the mode dial either to M-A-P-S. Hit the menu button. Scroll down to the camera icon. Once the camera icon is highlighted you will see several setting on the right side of the viewfinder. Scroll to ISO and hit enter. Select 400and hit enter again to set the new ISO.

4. Set camera on tripod.

5. I set the camera on manual and experimented with a few f-stops. I used f-16 for this picture. To change the f-stop set the mode dial to Manual (M). Hit the exposure compensation button (the button by the on/off switch at the top of the camera that has a +/-). Scroll the command dial to select the desired f-stop. The f-stop will be displayed on the LCD.

6. If indoors turn off all the lights. If outdoors dusk is the best time to take the photo.

Let me know if these little tricks work for you. Or if you have any other tricks to share I would love to hear from you.

Thanks for stopping by. Happy Halloween!

Yoli