Basic Photography

Day I

Ariz

What we got to do here

Credo Introduction How to take a picture The Rule of Thirds The Exposure Triangle ISO Aperture Shutter Speed PSAM Modes Tripod

Credo

Its not about your camera. Its not about my camera. Its all about you. Its all about the ability of your eyes; to see things, differently. To see the colors and its elements. Its all about our vision. Its never about your camera.

Introduction
Photography is a broad subject that eventually boils down to a

mixture of art and science. Now, before we disappear down the "Is photography an art?" road I said it was a mixture and although the process of taking and processing a photograph is down to physics and chemistry the driving force behind it is often to some degree artistic or at least creative. So, where do we start? Most books, at least the ones I have read, start with some history or "What is photography?" or something down that line. This is all very well and may interest you a bit later but right now what you probably want to do is take pictures, sorry, photographs. If you study at college or university they prefer the term "image " and get upset when you tell them you are going out to " take some pictures ". So we are going to start , where everyone really starts book or no book, at the beginning.

How to take a picture

Compose and expose.
Photography is full of rules and to get us started Compose & Expose been invented by the photography fraternity. You have to do two things when taking a photograph. Compose: This is the creative or artistic bit where you arrange all of the elements of your picture within the frame or viewfinder to produce what should hopefully be a pleasing composition. Expose: This is the scientific and mechanical bit where you expose your film to light through the lens of your camera and if you are lucky preserve the image for posterity. In my infinite wisdom I have decided to call this The Compose and Expose Rule. To make life simple compose and expose rhyme so it is easy to remember. You compose first and expose second that is the rule.

The Rule of Thirds

One of the most popular 'rules' in photography is the Rule Of Thirds. It

bands occupying a third or place things along the imaginary lines. As you can see it is fairly simple to implement. Good places to put things; third of the way up, third of the way in from the left , you get the idea. Duff places to put things; right in the middle, right at the top, right at the bottom, away in the corner. Using the Rule of Thirds helps produce nicely balanced easy One last thing about the Rule eyeThirds for the time being. Once you have got the on the of pictures. hang of the Rule of Thirds you will very quickly want to break it ! This is fine. As I said earlier these 'rules' are best used as guidelines and if you can create a better image by bending or ignoring rules then fire away. The Rule of Thirds is fairly structured but there are a great many methods you can employ which rely on your ability to 'see' things and incorporate them into your composition. Next up we will look at some, but by no means all, of them.

is also popular amongst artists. It works like this: Imaginary lines are drawn dividing the image into thirds both horizontally and vertically. You place important elements of your composition where these lines intersect. I've even made a little diagram for you. As well as using the intersections you can arrange areas into

The Rule of Thirds (Contd.)

The photograph to the right demonstrates the application of the rule of thirds. The horizon sits at the horizontal line dividing the lower third of the photo from the upper two-thirds. The tree sits at the intersection of two lines, sometimes called a power point or a crash point. Points of interest in the photo don't have to actually touch one of these lines to take advantage of the rule of thirds. For example, the brightest part of the sky near the horizon where the sun recently set does not fall directly on The rule of thirds is does fall near the one of the lines, butapplied by aligning a subject with two of the lines, close intersection of the guide lines and their intersection points, placing the horizon enough to take advantage of the rule. on the top or bottom line, or allowing linear features in the image to flow from section to section. The main reason for observing the rule of thirds is to discourage placement of the subject at the center, or prevent a horizon from appearing to divide the picture in half.

The Exposure Triangle

The three elements are: 1.ISO - the measure of a digital camera sensors sensitivity to light 2.Aperture - the size of the opening in the lens when a picture is taken 3.Shutter Speed - the amount of time that the shutter is open - Mastering the art of exposure is something that takes a lot of practice. - In many ways its a juggling act and even the most experienced photographers experiment and tweak their settings as they go. - Keep in mind that changing each element not only impacts the exposure of the image but each one also has an impact upon other aspects of it (i.e. changing aperture changes depth of field, changing ISO changes the graininess of a shot and changing shutter speed impacts how motion is captured). -The great thing about digital cameras is that they are the ideal testing bed for learning about exposure. - You can take as many shots as you like at no cost and they not only allow you to shoot in Auto mode and Manual mode but also generally have semiautomatic modes like aperture priority and shutter priority modes which allow you to make decisions about one or two elements of the triangle and let the camera handle the other elements.

ISO
In traditional (film) photography ISO (or ASA) was the indication of how

sensitive a film was to light. It was measured in numbers (youve probably seen them on films 100, 200, 400, 800 etc). The lower the number the lower the sensitivity of the film and the finer the grain in the shots youre taking. In Digital Photography ISO measures the sensitivity of the image sensor. The same principles apply as in film photography the lower the number the less sensitive your camera is to light and the finer the grain. Higher ISO settings are generally used in darker situations to get faster shutter speeds (for example an indoor sports event when you want to freeze the action in lower light) however the cost is noisier shots. 100 ISO is generally accepted as normal and will give you lovely crisp shots (little noise/grain). When choosing the ISO setting I generally ask myself the following four questions:

Light Is the subject well lit? Grain Do I want a grainy shot or one without noise? Tripod Am I using a tripod?

Aperture
Aperture is the size of the opening in the lens when a picture is taken. When you hit the shutter release button of your camera a hole opens

up that allows your cameras image sensor to catch a glimpse of the scene you want to capture. The aperture that you set impacts the size of that hole. The larger the hole, the more light that gets in the smaller the hole the less light. Aperture is measured in f-stops. Youll often see them referred to here as f/number for example f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/22, etc. Moving from one f-stop to the next doubles or halves the size of the amount of opening in your lens (and the amount of light getting through). Keep in mind that a change in shutter speed from one stop to the next doubles or halves the amount of light that gets in also this means if you increase one and decrease the other, you let the same amount of light in (very handy to keep in mind). One thing that causes a lot of new photographers confusion is that large apertures (where lots of light gets through) are given f/stop smaller numbers; and smaller apertures (where less light gets through) have larger f-stop numbers. So f/2.8 is in fact a much larger aperture than f/22. It seems the wrong way around when you first hear it but youll get the hang of it.

Aperture - Significance
There are a number of results of changing the aperture of your shots that youll want to keep in mind as you consider your setting but the most noticeable one will be the depth of field that your shot will have.

Depth of Field (DOF) is that amount of your shot that will be in focus. Large depth of field means that most of your image will be in focus whether its close to your camera or far away (like the picture to the left where both the foreground and background are largely in focus taken with an aperture of f/22).

Aperture - Depth Of Field

- Small (or shallow) depth of field means that only part of the image will be in focus and the rest will be fuzzy. Youll see in it that the tip of the yellow stems are in focus but even though they are only 1cm or so behind them that the petals are out of focus. This is a very shallow depth of field. - Aperture has a big impact upon depth of field. Large aperture (remember its a smaller number) will decrease depth of field while small aperture (larger numbers) will give you larger depth of field. be a little confusing at first but the way I remember it is - It can that small numbers mean small DOF and large numbers mean large DOF. - Let me illustrate this with two pictures of flowers. -The first picture was taken with an aperture of f/22 and the second one was taken with an aperture of f/2.8. - The difference is quite obvious. The f/22 picture has the flower in focus (or parts of it) but the depth of field is very shallow and the background is thrown out of focus and the bud to the right of the flower is also less in focus due to it being slightly further away from the camera when the shot was taken. - The f/2.8 shot has both the flower and the bud in focus and youre able to make out the shape of the fence and leaves in the background.

f/22

f/2.8

Shutter Speed
Shutter speed is the amount of time that the shutter is open.
Shutter speed is measured in seconds In most cases youll probably be using shutter speeds of 1/60th of a second or

faster If youre using a slow shutter speed (anything slower than 1/60) you will need to use a tripod Shutter speeds available to you on your camera will usually double (approximately) with each setting Some cameras also give you the option for very slow shutter speeds When considering what shutter speed to use in an image, you should always ask yourself whether anything in your scene is moving To freeze movement in an image youll want to choose a faster shutter speed and to let the movement blur youll want to choose a slower shutter speed Focal Length and Shutter Speed - Another thing to consider when choosing shutter speed is the focal length of the lens youre using. Longer focal lengths will accentuate the amount of camera shake you have and so youll need to choose a faster shutter speed (unless you have image stabilization in your lens or camera). The rule of thumb to use with focal length (in non image stabilized situations) is to choose a shutter speed with a denominator that is larger than

Shutter Speed (contd.)

Giving a sense of movement

Freeze movement

Motion is always not bad

PSAM Modes
P: Program mode has the camera calculate both shutter speed and

aperture (given a manually or automatically selected ISO). The difference between Program mode and Full Auto mode is that in program mode, only the exposure is automatic, while other camera settings (e.g., shooting mode, exposure compensation, flash) can be set manually; in Full Auto mode everything is automatic. the aperture, and shutter speed is calculated by the camera for proper exposure (given an ISO sensitivity).

A: Aperture priority or 'Aperture value' enables manual control of

S: Shutter priority or 'Time value' enables manual control of the

shutter speed, and aperture is calculated by the camera for proper exposure (given an ISO sensitivity). independently set manually (with ISO sensitivity also set manually), where proper image exposure requires accurate manual adjustment.

M: Manual mode both shutter speed and aperture and

Tripod
Do you have a tripod? Do you use it?
I suspect that many digital photographers could improve the results that they get out of their cameras simply by attaching it to a tripod. The rule for whether its ok to hand hold a camera when shooting has to do with two main factors, the shutter speed youre shooting at and the focal length of the lens youre using. Here it is:

Choose a shutter speed with a denominator that is larger than the focal length of the lens. So: - if you have a lens that is 50mm in is larger shoot any focal Choose a shutter speed with a denominator thatlength dont than the slower length of the lens. than 1/60th of a second - if you have a lens with a 100mm focal length shoot at 1/125th of a Shooting at these speeds means that the effect of camera shake that you have while second or faster taking the shot should- beyou are shooting with ayou end up with. if minimized in image lens of 200mm shoot at 1/250th of a Keep in mind that this second orguide a starting point if you will to keep in mind as is just a faster

A Rule for Hand Held Shooting

you shoot. Its a rule that was devised back in the days of film and these days most of us shoot with digital cameras that often have image stabilization which means you can use slower shutter speeds and that (unless you have a DSLR) dont have focal lengths measured in mms which makes using it difficult.

Tripod (Contd.)
Having explained this rule to a number of new photographers Ive

been then asked on numerous occasions why anyone would need to use a tripod or monopod if they keep the rule in mind and always shoot at speeds faster than the rule requires. The answer is that in many cases the rule will effectively eliminate noticeable camera shake however on closer inspection of the images you end up with, especially when you enlarge your shots, you might still find evidence of camera shake despite a nice fast shutter speed. While they can be a pain to carry around with you tripods are an essential tool to have if you want to take your photography to the next level. They help eliminate camera shake, enable you to use slower shutters speeds which in turn means you have the ability to choose a wider range of aperture which opens up all kinds of interesting and creative possibilities. In fact Im surprised that more people dont use them Im not sure whether its embarrassment (at hauling gear around), laziness (being put off by the thought of having to carry something else) or forgetfulness (leaving it at home) that causes it but many

Questions please