SLR Camera Simulator
camerasim.com
camerasim.com
Seems to me like DSLRs don't really need simulators. Pick up a DSLR, dial it to P or green or whatever, and go. It's simpler and more responsive than a point and shoot, just bigger and heavier. (My four year olds love using my smaller DSLR and have less trouble using it than a small P&S.)
Anyone wanting to learn the fine points of photography can learn them at their leisure once the key point — using a DSLR is EASIER than using a point and shoot — is absorbed, and simulators that overload the user with information are probably counter-productive.
That being said, I absolutely agree that the only way to learn photography is to get out there and shoot.
Mostly agree, but I see there as being two parts of photography.
The art, which is seeing, composing, etc. For that, you do have to just get out and shoot.
The craft, which is knowing what settings to use and when. You can learn this by trial and error by "just going out and shooting", but having someone teach you, reading about it, or using an app that demonstrates what happens with a settings change will not only save time, but make the time spent shooting that much more productive.
For dancing, it's much the same, you need to get out there and do it. But there is also a lot of time spent deliberately refining your ear for the music, your feeling for the beat what position your body should be in and how a lead should feel. Each play into the other but if one is neglected, it's hard to progress.
For these people, this kind of simulator could be really helpful. It might be a little better if there was more explanatory text after you press the shutter. For example, I saw "overexposed" once; maybe that message could be more along the lines of "Your image is overexposed. Try decreasing your aperture, decreasing your shutterspeed, or adjusting exposure compensation."
I imagine a control that indicates the trade-offs (and when they're ok) as you tweak it would educate users in a better way than experimentation. Stay "inside the envelope" and your picture is probably ok. You can get outside it if you know what you're doing.
All else being equal, to increase subject isolation:
* Get closer to the subject
* Increase focal length ("zoom in")
* Increase aperture operning (smaller aperture number)
* Increase separation between subject and background
Each of these things is equally important. (But all else is not equal, so if you're determined to stand in one spot and not change your composition, just increasing aperture size is your only option.)
If you're really going to learn via shooting, you need to bracket your shots, line them up side by side in an app like Lightroom or iPhoto and look at the metadata to see what changed in the scene from the setting changes. Most people aren't going to bother doing this.
If an app like this is done properly, it would let you see the DOF and exposure changes more coveniently than post-shot chimping can.
There's an even better mode one Pentax DSLRs where one dial acts as a P dial and the other controls ISO.
My girlfriend just got her first DSLR and was struggling with changing the aperture. While she understood the concepts, she wasn't familiar with working with a DSLR alone and since I wasn't physically present, it took me a while to realise over the phone she'd been changing the aperture by changing the focal length of the lens. (The D5100 has a pretty crappy and unintuitive control combination for setting aperture.) Had I been able to point her to a simulation like this it would have been clear to her that she needed a distinct method of setting aperture.
To set aperture on a D5100 switch to A and use the command dial.
(Shooting in Manual mode is simply torturing yourself unnecessarily if you don't know exactly what you're doing. In Aperture priority — or Program shift — setting aperture is simple and intuitive.)
My D7000 is more straightforward since it has a separate dial for this and no need to half depress the shutter release. (I assume you can also change the settings using the LCD, but that's of no use if you're looking through the viewfinder and trying to set manual exposure.)
Edit: A mode on Canons is Av mode.
I started off with P&S cameras and before I knew the mechanics of cameras I was frustrated with the automatic exposures; once I discovered I was missing "manual mode" I never turned back.
Sure, from time to time I'll use the priority or program modes when the shot is more important than the learning experience, but after 4 years of hobbyist photography I still find myself with much to learn and I enjoy the challenge of manual exposures.
I bought a Nikon D5100 last summer, my first SLR since a Pentax K1000 I had for decades. The lack of a DoF preview button was a little hard for me to adjust to.
It's important to note a distinction.
The faster aperture tends to necessitate better glass, but the idea that only fast lenses have good glass would not necessarily be true. There are plenty of "slow" lenses that have very good optical quality.
In any case, the need to have fixed fast aperture lenses is diminishing with IS and high ISO performance. I'd rather carry a fixed F4 than a fixed F2.8 zoom with a 2012 camera. It's going to be a much smaller lens and just as effective for most use cases.
If it is indeed a lens with just a single aperture setting, can you tell me the model number? I'm quite curious now. Thx.
While I agree that constant aperture lenses are substantially costly than their variable aperture counterparts, cameras like Canon 5D Mark III is coming with a 24-70 F/2.8L II lens as a kit.
I am only expecting people who actually have a DSLR with either a variable or constant speed lens but still shoot auto will come and be able to try their hands out on a same scene with similar type of lighting but different shutter speed aperture combinations and later on be motivated enough to try it out on their real camera.
Prolific shooters usually know what to expect from their camera, so there's no need to experiment with settings all of the time, and if they see a P mode choice they don't like, they can program shift or switch to A/S/M mode.
I come from an age when SLR cameras did not even have batteries, leave aside digital sensors. So probably it is hard wired into me that I need to use my eyes and brain and leave aside the cameras' when shooting.
They may not use matrix metering (I definitely don't, I use center weighted, and I'm just a hobbyist) but you also have to remember the dynamic range of a full-frame RAW file is pretty good and that you can get good shadow/highlight recovery out of most situations.
When the photographer is chimping the image post-shot, if they see that the exposure is way off, you can still program-shift the settings in P-mode or use the EV dial to make adjustments and reshoot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-NhJua5NFA
The relationships between the basic elements of exposure seem so straightforward now.
ITYM, "Why doesn't this SLR camera have burst mode?"
Some, like shutter speed, don't make a difference until you hit the button, but it would have been nice to see the DOF changes in real time.
Still, a great little tool. Very handy.
And of course, there is virtually no way to reflect the ISO or shutter speed setting, using the optical viewfinder. Not a bad idea to "simulate" here as well, because it's not funny to shoot in the aperture-first mode and forget to reset ISO from some ridiculously high value that you had to use yesterday in the evening.