Photography Class #5

Wow, I’m glad I stuck it out in photography class. Finally after four weeks of not learning much, we finally talked about something that was new to me. The title of the class this week was Digital Photography Two. Candy bailed on us and decided not to come back. Lisa and I both sent her a text saying she missed out. For some reason I don’t think she believed us.

Only Derek, Lisa and I attended class. Tony bailed at the last minute because he had to work late and Andrew gave up after class number two. So, it was just the three of us that remained loyal to Farley and his teachings; and to think that Candy was the teacher’s pet all those weeks ago. Here are some of the things we learned:

• There are three variables that affect exposure: brightness of the scene (shutter speed and aperture), how long and how much, and the sensitivity of the film or digital image sensor.
• If you don’t have good exposure, you won’t get a good print
• The Brightness of the Scene is measured by your camera’s light meter
• D-Lighting takes the bright part of the scene and makes it darker and the dark part of the scene and makes it brighter – you can do this active or after the fact –active means as you are taking the picture
• Keep your camera handy at night because you can get some really exciting pictures
• When using a tripod, take the lens off of Vibe Reduction – the tripod will steady the shot
• Exposure Compensation will darken the scene (-) or lighten the scene (+) – you will need to take a test shot first to determine which way to go, but be sure and set it back at zero before you shoot at a different location
• Exposure Compensation with flash will reduce the power of the flash otherwise, the flash can wash things out
• How Long = shutter speed; How Much = aperture
• Anything above 1/500th of a second is a fast shutter speed
• If you move shutter speed to a higher speed, you have to move the aperture up also
• When shooting fireworks or lightning, use a long shutter speed
• Aperture = F-Stops – these phrases are interchangeable, which can be confusing
• Small aperture (small hole) = large number = large depth of field
• Large aperture (large hole) = small number = small depth of field
• The sensitivity of the film or digital image sensor is measured in ISO
• Most of the time you want the ISO to be a fairly low number because you will get sharper image
• ISO 200 is a good number to use when shooting outdoors

Well, these are about all the bullet points I can see from the notes I took last night. This may not make any sense to you because it doesn’t make much sense to me at times. Some of it I will have to learn as I go along. Practice makes perfect they say. In the meantime, if you want more information, check out Ritz Camera University. They have lots of tutorials, including videos. I must admit, I haven’t really looked around on there very much, but it looks like they’ve got some good information, which will be helpful if you want to learn more than my crazy summaries are revealing.

A side note: DW from last week is indeed the doctor’s wife. He was with her in class last night; nothing gets by me and Lisa!