Manda's (Amachan) Experiments

This project came forth from @Lancorz photography project, which you can find here: https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1242204/

I’m trying to figure out which camera settings work well for me and get me a good result. Normally I’d use the automatic settings within the limits that I set up on my camera and that worked well, but now I’m trying to find some improvement. Before you ask, I can’t at any point in the near future change any of the stuff I use to make my pictures and thus I’ll have to make do with what I have.

For this experiment I’m not overly concerned with my shutter speed, the camera is on a stable platform and has physical lens stabilization. The camera I’m using is the Canon PowerShot SX160 IS.

So here is the first array of photographs. I list the aperture for each series and they’ll be going up in ISO value from left to right or first to last, not sure how you’ll see it on your device.

*f4.0 means an aperture of 4.0.

Having looked at all of the pictures an aperture of 4.0 gives me a good depth, although the difference isn’t very well visible. Even though I said shutter speed isn’t overly important to me, when using an aperture of 7.1 it gives me a bit too much of a chance things will still blur due to the very low shutter speed it then needs.

I do clearly see the difference between the ISO values and lower is definitely better, but also slows the shutter speed.

Here is an array of picture cuts. These are cuts from the pictures above to show the zoomed in detail more clearly. You can just zoom in on every picture to see the exact same. From first to last or left to right however you’re looking at it.

1. f4.0 ISO 100
2. f4.0 ISO 200
3. f4.0 ISO 800
4. f7.1 ISO 100

In the end I decided to go with f4.0 and an ISO of 100. The shutter speed of 1/5 at this stage is acceptable for me in my situation.

The miniature used is the Cat Huntress from Oathsworn Miniatures.