8
Photography Class
- Thread starter OneHotHatch
- Start date
littleazn248
Go Kart Champion
I got all that covered in my lecture thingy. I pretty much set the rules as any DSLR, kit lens are ok if you have anything else feel free to use it and always include the metadata.
dragon69185
Go Kart Champion
Sergio_in_SF
Ready to race!
Ok of course we don't have to do OCF. I was just trying to sound like I know what I'm talking about and impress you guys 
Skipdr
Go Kart Champion
Probably going to suggest something simple and abstract so there are multiple interpretations of it. Limiting it to certain "techniques" makes it harder for creativity and people that aren't as familiar with it.
I would suggest something more like wooded scenery with your vehicle. Good amount of leeway for interpretation, something to help learn about composition, can be done just about anywhere (even in urban environments. Get creative
Just my 0.02
So are we doing this.
dragon69185
Go Kart Champion
lol, I'm not the teacher. littleazn248 is and will have everything set up here soon.
I'm just the other Asian over here
HyeWarrior
Banned
Lol this is a cool idea... I'm down
littleazn248
Go Kart Champion
Ok I just got home from school let me post the first "lesson"
littleazn248
Go Kart Champion
Introduction
I’m glad you guys have taken the interest in participating in this class. I hope that most of you who join the class find it interesting and decide to stay in the class.
This course will cover the basics of photography and pretty much everything you should know to use your DSLR on anything but, Auto.
I will post up new “lessons” every Thursday.
Materials
*DSLR
*Tripod (Very Helpful)
*Computer with software capable of reading the MetaData from your photos.
*Lens or Lenses that will cover the minimum range of 18-55mm (So your kit lens)
*CS5 (optional)
My Gear
In case you have the same camera as me I can help you out if you are stuck with something.
*Nikon D7000 (Previous DSLR was Canon 60D)
Rules
There are no rules but, I hope you understand that I chose to help out teach this class in my spare time. So don’t expect perfection, if you have any suggestions PM me and I will address the issue. When you post your pictures please post your MetaData at the bottom of that picture. MetaData is information such as ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed.
Schedule
Week 1: Basics
Week 2: Focusing
Week 3: Portraits
Week 4: Flash Fill
Week 5: HDR
Week 6: Motion
Week 7: CS5 (I put this last because not everyone has CS5)
Class 1
So I will go over several skills which I feel are necessary to photography
*Camera Setup: Stop using Auto Mode and turn it to M-mode. Now begin to set these settings.
1. Color Profile: Adobe RGB
2. ISO: 400
3. WB: AWB
*Color Profiles: You may be curious what a color profile is. On most DSLR there are two profiles to choose from Standard RGB(SRGB) and Adobe RBB. Dialing in a certain profile will give the camera a certain number of colors to choose from. By using Adobe RGB instead of SRGB your camera will be able to capture millions of colors instead of thousands of colors.
*White Balance: This helps the camera recreate true white. By setting your camera onto auto it will take care of most instances. However, if you are shooting under fluorescent lighting for example and your pictures don’t turn out white change your WB to the fluorescent setting. This will let the camera know the lighting conditions and adjust properly. There also more advanced functions on some cameras that let you tweak WB via the Kelvin Scale but, I have not yet played with these settings. AWB has worked 90% of the time for me.
*Metering: This is fundamental! By looking inside the eyepiece of your DSLR you will see a little scale on the bottom of the screen. It looks kinda like this -…….0………+ This is the metering scale. You goal most of the time is to adjust you aperture and shutter speed so that the indicator rests at 0. If you end up to far on the negative end you will have underexposed your shots. This will result in very very dark pictures as not enough light was let in to develop your shots. If you end up with the indicator to far into the positive side you will come out with overexposed images, which will be bright, white with washed out colors.
*ISO: This is one component that can help you achieve proper exposure in situations where you may need fast shutter speed but desire a wider aperture. Do however, chose your ISO wisely though. If you chose a to high of an ISO you will come out with noise in your pictures. It is ideal to always use as low of an ISO as possible. Some DSLR’s do have AUTO ISO and while it does the job be careful! The camera may sometime use to high of an ISO to gain proper exposure. This may result in grainy pictures. Typically ISO’s over 1600 are considered high but every DSLR has a different ISO where images will begin to become grainy, thus ISO400 is a safe spot. By using a higher ISO you help to bring the exposure more into the positive territory.
*Aperture: This is another component that will help you achieve proper exposure as well as set your DOF. Apertures are labeled F#. By going to a low F-stop such as f2 you will get a shallow DOF. This means that your camera will be tack sharp only on the distance you focus at. Anything farther of closer will be blurry. A small F-stop such as f22 will provide a very broad DOF so almost everything in the picture will be tack sharp. Using a large F-stop is excellent for landscape pictures since you want as much as possible in focus. By using a large F-Stop like f2 you help to bring exposure more into the positive territory.
*Shutter Speed: This is how fast the shutter works. By using a faster shutter speed you are able to freeze fast moving subjects. Imagine a fast moving car on the street. If you want to make that car freeze you would use a fast aperture speed such as 1/4000th. If you wanted to make the car a blur you would use something such as 1/125th. By using a faster shutter speed such as 1/4000th you let less light touch the camera sensor. This will result in moving the exposure more into the negative territory.
*Equivalents: You will have to learn something called equivalents since this is fundamental. Say for example you are taking a picture of a sunset and you managed to dial in the perfect Aperture and Shutter Speed (ignore ISO for now). The F-stop is f/2 and the Shutter Speed is 1/500 but, say you want a slower shutter speed. As a result you move the shutter speed one stop slower to 1/250. By changing just the Shutter Speed alone this will result in an overexposed picture. To balance this off you need to adjust the Aperture in order to gain proper exposure. This results in changing your aperture to f/4. To fully understand this concept you will have to look at this shutter speed/ Aperture scale.
Here is the scale. Your camera most likely does it by 1/3 steps this is in whole steps.
Less Light More Light
Shutter Speed (1/100) (1/500) (1/250) (1/125) (1/60) (1/30) (1/15) (1/8) (1/4) (1/2) (1) (2) (4) (8) (16)
More Light Less Light
F-Stops F1.4 F2 F2.8 F4 F5.6 F8 F11 F16 F22 F32 F45 F64
*Shutter Speed/ Focal Length Rule: This is a rule created to help prevent those blurry handheld shots. Say you have zoomed in your camera to 200mm to get a nice close up shot but, you have no tripod. To prevent camera movement your shutter speed should be faster than 1/200th, this would be shutter speeds such as 1/400th, 1/800th, etc. If you carry a tripod with you 24/7 or if you have super stable hands these rules could be tossed out but, for the 99% of us you should follow these rules to prevent frustrating image blur
I’m glad you guys have taken the interest in participating in this class. I hope that most of you who join the class find it interesting and decide to stay in the class.
This course will cover the basics of photography and pretty much everything you should know to use your DSLR on anything but, Auto.
I will post up new “lessons” every Thursday.
Materials
*DSLR
*Tripod (Very Helpful)
*Computer with software capable of reading the MetaData from your photos.
*Lens or Lenses that will cover the minimum range of 18-55mm (So your kit lens)
*CS5 (optional)
My Gear
In case you have the same camera as me I can help you out if you are stuck with something.
*Nikon D7000 (Previous DSLR was Canon 60D)
Rules
There are no rules but, I hope you understand that I chose to help out teach this class in my spare time. So don’t expect perfection, if you have any suggestions PM me and I will address the issue. When you post your pictures please post your MetaData at the bottom of that picture. MetaData is information such as ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed.
Schedule
Week 1: Basics
Week 2: Focusing
Week 3: Portraits
Week 4: Flash Fill
Week 5: HDR
Week 6: Motion
Week 7: CS5 (I put this last because not everyone has CS5)
Class 1
So I will go over several skills which I feel are necessary to photography
*Camera Setup: Stop using Auto Mode and turn it to M-mode. Now begin to set these settings.
1. Color Profile: Adobe RGB
2. ISO: 400
3. WB: AWB
*Color Profiles: You may be curious what a color profile is. On most DSLR there are two profiles to choose from Standard RGB(SRGB) and Adobe RBB. Dialing in a certain profile will give the camera a certain number of colors to choose from. By using Adobe RGB instead of SRGB your camera will be able to capture millions of colors instead of thousands of colors.
*White Balance: This helps the camera recreate true white. By setting your camera onto auto it will take care of most instances. However, if you are shooting under fluorescent lighting for example and your pictures don’t turn out white change your WB to the fluorescent setting. This will let the camera know the lighting conditions and adjust properly. There also more advanced functions on some cameras that let you tweak WB via the Kelvin Scale but, I have not yet played with these settings. AWB has worked 90% of the time for me.
*Metering: This is fundamental! By looking inside the eyepiece of your DSLR you will see a little scale on the bottom of the screen. It looks kinda like this -…….0………+ This is the metering scale. You goal most of the time is to adjust you aperture and shutter speed so that the indicator rests at 0. If you end up to far on the negative end you will have underexposed your shots. This will result in very very dark pictures as not enough light was let in to develop your shots. If you end up with the indicator to far into the positive side you will come out with overexposed images, which will be bright, white with washed out colors.
*ISO: This is one component that can help you achieve proper exposure in situations where you may need fast shutter speed but desire a wider aperture. Do however, chose your ISO wisely though. If you chose a to high of an ISO you will come out with noise in your pictures. It is ideal to always use as low of an ISO as possible. Some DSLR’s do have AUTO ISO and while it does the job be careful! The camera may sometime use to high of an ISO to gain proper exposure. This may result in grainy pictures. Typically ISO’s over 1600 are considered high but every DSLR has a different ISO where images will begin to become grainy, thus ISO400 is a safe spot. By using a higher ISO you help to bring the exposure more into the positive territory.
*Aperture: This is another component that will help you achieve proper exposure as well as set your DOF. Apertures are labeled F#. By going to a low F-stop such as f2 you will get a shallow DOF. This means that your camera will be tack sharp only on the distance you focus at. Anything farther of closer will be blurry. A small F-stop such as f22 will provide a very broad DOF so almost everything in the picture will be tack sharp. Using a large F-stop is excellent for landscape pictures since you want as much as possible in focus. By using a large F-Stop like f2 you help to bring exposure more into the positive territory.
*Shutter Speed: This is how fast the shutter works. By using a faster shutter speed you are able to freeze fast moving subjects. Imagine a fast moving car on the street. If you want to make that car freeze you would use a fast aperture speed such as 1/4000th. If you wanted to make the car a blur you would use something such as 1/125th. By using a faster shutter speed such as 1/4000th you let less light touch the camera sensor. This will result in moving the exposure more into the negative territory.
*Equivalents: You will have to learn something called equivalents since this is fundamental. Say for example you are taking a picture of a sunset and you managed to dial in the perfect Aperture and Shutter Speed (ignore ISO for now). The F-stop is f/2 and the Shutter Speed is 1/500 but, say you want a slower shutter speed. As a result you move the shutter speed one stop slower to 1/250. By changing just the Shutter Speed alone this will result in an overexposed picture. To balance this off you need to adjust the Aperture in order to gain proper exposure. This results in changing your aperture to f/4. To fully understand this concept you will have to look at this shutter speed/ Aperture scale.
Here is the scale. Your camera most likely does it by 1/3 steps this is in whole steps.
Less Light More Light
Shutter Speed (1/100) (1/500) (1/250) (1/125) (1/60) (1/30) (1/15) (1/8) (1/4) (1/2) (1) (2) (4) (8) (16)
More Light Less Light
F-Stops F1.4 F2 F2.8 F4 F5.6 F8 F11 F16 F22 F32 F45 F64
*Shutter Speed/ Focal Length Rule: This is a rule created to help prevent those blurry handheld shots. Say you have zoomed in your camera to 200mm to get a nice close up shot but, you have no tripod. To prevent camera movement your shutter speed should be faster than 1/200th, this would be shutter speeds such as 1/400th, 1/800th, etc. If you carry a tripod with you 24/7 or if you have super stable hands these rules could be tossed out but, for the 99% of us you should follow these rules to prevent frustrating image blur
Last edited:
littleazn248
Go Kart Champion
Your homework assignment is to just practice taking photos. I have comprised a list of photos that would work great to help you build up your skills and I will go over some skills during the course to help refine skills in these given situations. Don't always pick the same photo type try all the different types.
*Portraits
*Buildings (Exterior or Interior) Bonus points if you manage to successfully take a picture of a paned window inside a church
*Action Shot
*Close Up
*Landscape
*Flash Fill Portrait
*Free choice
If you have any questions please ask.
*Portraits
*Buildings (Exterior or Interior) Bonus points if you manage to successfully take a picture of a paned window inside a church
*Action Shot
*Close Up
*Landscape
*Flash Fill Portrait
*Free choice
If you have any questions please ask.
Last edited:
tman1
Ready to race!
It's great that there's so much interest in photography and even better that someone like littleazn248 has put himself out there to try and help. Now, I'm not bashing or trying tobe negative in any way but there is a reason I had said what I initially did in post #3. Photography is best learnt from folks who have been doing this for a long time and have a lot of experience to impart and help stop you from making mistakes and introducing bad habits into your methods.
Join a photography forum and read up on articles from photography websites on the basics, it's a lot more comprehensive and will give you a better understanding of what's happening that you need to know but won't get from any brief intros.
Join a photography forum and read up on articles from photography websites on the basics, it's a lot more comprehensive and will give you a better understanding of what's happening that you need to know but won't get from any brief intros.
dragon69185
Go Kart Champion
Kind of what I was thinking. That was why my suggestion for the first shoot was what it was. Basically shooting your car (just like everyone wanted), with some scenery (wooded area) and gives you freedom of expression. Take your best photo, post it up here (with no PS editing other than resizing), and we can critique on composition, lighting, and all around tone of the photo.