Hi

I am a beginner in Photography. I have a Rebel 2000 with 28-80 and 75-300 mm lenses. If I set a fast shutter speed for capturing an action and then click the shutter release button half way in the Tv mode, the camera shows its metering values on the display screen rather my settings. After leaving the shutter release button it sets it back to my settings. Why is it so? How can I set my own shutter speed and aperture by overriding camera readings? Which settings will it use to take the picture in this case? Is it my setings or the camera settings? The same thing happens in Av and M modes. With this I am finding difficulty in overriding camera suggested values. Some body please help me.

George Mathew

-- George Mathew (george_mathew2k@yahoo.com), November 09, 2001

Answers

George,

Your situation sounds very unusual, because it shouldn't be doing that. So I pulled out my Canon to try to figure out what's going on. This may sound silly, but the only thing I can think of if that you have it on P mode rather than Tv. They're right next to each other on the control dial, so it's a very easy mistake to make. However, since it is still occuring in Av and M mode, something else is going on.

When you turn the dial to Tv mode, only the shutter value should appear on the top-plate LCD. When you press the shutter button half- way, the aperture value determined by the camera meter then appears. Metering various areas of the room, only the aperture value should change. The shutter value should remain constant.

The reverse should happen in Av mode.

However, in P mode the camera reacts exactly as you have described. No matter what you set, the camera will override it with it's own settings. If this is occuring in all modes, there is something wrong with your camera. It's possible that the control dial is able to turn from P to Tv to Av to M, but the camera thinks it is still at P mode. This is very strange and unusual.

-- Peter Phan (pphan01@hotmail.com), November 09, 2001.

Is your flash up? I think the camera will automatically reduce shutter speed to the camera's max sync speed in all modes if the flash is up.

-- Derrick Morin (dmorin@oasisol.com), November 13, 2001.

Hi

Thanks for your help! I checked and found that the situation can be simulated again. But it occurs only when the flash is up as Derrick Morin said (Thanks Derrick!). When the built in flash is up, camera sets the shutterspeed to its max syc speed(only if my settings is higher than that). I have a Canon Sppedlite 220 EX. With that I can sync the flash to all shutter speeds. Thanks all of you a lot!

Regards George Mathew

-- George Mathew (george_mathew2k@yahoo.com), November 19, 2001.