Aperture

on my 18-55 vr1 lens in manual and aperture priority I can't always select the lowest no. (3.6) some times 4 is the lowest or 5.5 etc seems to vary quite a bit

what at would cause this im guessing it's some auto setting in camera I don't think there's an issue with the lens?

also sometimes the shutter won't go ie the other day I was trying to take a macro of a flower it was a bit windy but i didn't think that would be an issue other than a bad shot, but when I pressed the shutter button I got nothing.
Is this just because of movement like the flower in the wind etc?

thanks

The 18-55mm lens is also rated f/3.5-f/5.6. This means that the maximum aperture varies with focal length. At 18mm zoom, it should do f/3.5. But at 55mm zoom, it only opens to f/5.6. And in between will be in between, etc.

Several lenses are built that way, whereas many others only have one value of maximum aperture.

The lens has to be in focus before the shutter will operate. There are setting (release priority) that will let the shutter actuate regardless if it has focus or not, but not-in-focus pictures is not the normal goal. Actually, that Release Priority is for continuous shutter, like a burst of 10 frames following motion, where we hope it finds focus sometime.

The flower blowing in the wind is probably not letting it lock in focus. There is a green dot that appears at bottom left of the viewfinder indicating when the camera has focus. Next trouble, notice if that green dot is missing.

that makes sense, having a manual focus 28-100 lens which was my first lens that had a max aperture at all zooms guess, I presumed they were all the same

Oh these questions bring back the memories of learning. I don't mean to laugh at you but I get a chuckle because I too was at this point some time ago. Keep the questions coming as this is how we learn.

FastGlass said:

Oh these questions bring back the memories of learning. I don't mean to laugh at you but I get a chuckle because I too was at this point some time ago. Keep the questions coming as this is how we learn.

Click to expand...

Exactly. Just a year and a half ago I was Googeling pretty much these same things.