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Online simulator offers help for inexperienced DSLR users

For anyone who never took a photography class in college or used an analog 35mm camera, manual DSLR settings can be difficult to understand. With point-and-shoot cameras everywhere that simply have a long list of presets for every possible situation, some folks have no idea how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO can change a photo. While most DSLR cameras do have an Auto setting and a few other presets, your photography won’t reach its full potential until you have enough basic knowledge to make use of the manual settings. The Camera Sim online simulator (Free) offers sliders and instant results for all of the important manual camera settings: ISO, aperture, shutter speed, and focal length. The simulator can be used on shutter priority, aperture priority, or full manual settings. Set the sliders to the appropriate settings, click ‘snap photo’ and you can instantly view the results.

There are explanations and definitions of all the important settings below the simulator to help users fully understand how they work. Practice a bit with this simulator instead of getting underexposed or blurry photos on your next vacation or at your daughter’s soccer game. After some experimentation with this handy simulator, users should be able to make use of manual settings on their DSLRs, which will mean more control and better photos.

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Right now the simulator only offers adjustments on a single photograph (pictured above), but the image does include a moving object, which is helpful for understanding shutter speeds. The website claims that a better simulator is on its way, hopefully with the ability to work with several different stock photos instead of just the one.

Kelly Montgomery
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kelly Montgomery is a magazine journalism graduate from the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communications…
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