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Five ways to master manual mode

Master manual mode

If you own a DSLR and have a passion for photography, you have landed in the right place. A lot of people are under the common misconception that buying a new DSLR camera will instantly improve their photography. They place an order, and a few days later, their new, shiny toy arrives on their doorstep. Then things usually get tricky. Once the camera is out of its packaging it becomes quickly apparent that working the damn thing is much harder than it looks. Therefore the dial is switched to Auto mode, and that is where it stays for the foreseeable. Here is a handy guide to help you master manual mode in no time.

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This video teaches you the basics of aperture using Star Wars Lego

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If you’re new to photography, there can be many concepts that still seem overwhelming and confusing. In this video, Aaron Nace of Phlearn explains the basics of aperture to help you grasp the concept and see what the change of aperture does for your shots. But the fun part is: he uses Star Wars Lego (and even Master Yoda’s voice occasionally) to guide you through the theory. I think that it hardly gets more amusing than that.

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Everything you ever needed to know about shutter speed

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There’s a lot more to shutter speed than simply filling in a part of the exposure triangle.  The creative choices when it comes to shutter speed are just as important as the technical.

In this video from PhotoRec TV, Toby Gelston tells us all about shutter speed, the issues that can arise from having one that’s too fast or too slow, how to fix them.  He also talks about how we can use shutter speed creatively to give you the images you really want.

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Learn The Three Basic Principles Of Light In Less Than 5 Minutes

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It’s hard to make it any more simple than the way Lindsay Adler breaks down the basic principles of light in this quick YouTube clip she made in collaboration with CreativeLive. Join the professional photographer as she discusses three of the most fundamental aspects of lighting: direction, quality, and intensity.

Obviously, you can’t learn everything there is to know about light in a sub 5-minute clip, but Adler does a great job of explaining the important stuff, which should give you some new tools to use when you’re out there practicing your craft. At the very least, it will get your wheels turning and provide some inspiration for experimentation.[Read More…]

How To Use The Histogram Tool For Getting A Perfect Exposure

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Looking on the back of the camera to see if you got a shot properly exposed can be misleading. The LCD may not be calibrated showing a too dark or a too light image. Or the sun hitting the LCD can be laying tricks on you.

Yet there is a tool, that is often ignored that can give you a very quick and good indication if you exposed correctly – The Histogram.

In a nut shell, the histogram is a graph that show how many pixels of each brightness level are present in a frame.  John Greengo of CreativeLive give a full back to basics course on photography, in this installation he discusses the Histogram in very easy to understand manner.

Generally, John mentions that you would want a histogram that looks like a mountain with a strong peak in the middle and a slope that goes out to either end. While specific captures may be unique, (such a capturing snow, or night shots), a strong peak on the right may indicate an over exposed image, while a strong peak on the left may indicate an under exposed image.

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Back to Basics – Contrast

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In the last few weeks I’ve covered the basic exposure controls like aperture and shutter speed. I’ve also discussed the concept of depth of field as an important aspect of the subject in a picture. Continuing with the Back to Basics series, it is time to explore another important aspect of the picture – contrast. Contrast is the difference in tone in your picture. Specifically the difference between the brightest colors in the pictures (called highlights) to the darkest colors in the picture (called shadows). Usually talking about contrast goes hand in hand with talking about hard light and soft light.[Read More…]

Back to Basics – Depth Of Field

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After discussing exposure in great detail, I would like to turn to a different kind of control – Depth Of Field (A.K.A. DOF). OK. Don’t jump – you are right. Depth Of Field is not a real control, but more of a result of how you used the aperture control.

In simple words Depth of field is the term you use to describe what is inside the focused area of your image and what is left outside of the focused area (and will stay home alone, and eat dry bread and drink stale water. Sorry Jewish mom syndrome…)

As I said before the control that has the most impact on depth of field is aperture. Bigger apertures tend to provide shallower depth of field. That means that if you open a wide aperture (say f/1.8) you will have a narrow location in your image which is focused. If you set your aperture to a small value, say f/22, you will have a huge focused area. The other two controls you can employ to control depth of field are Zoom focal length and camera to object distance.[Read More…]

Back To Basics – Exposure Demostrated

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After talking so much about exposure and the controls you can use to, em.. well… control it, I thought I’d bring up some info that can help bring all the control info together.

As a solid base for demonstration, I chose to display and discuss a bit about a rule know as the “Sunny Day 16” rule. I guess that this rule is known to film photographers, and is of little use nowadays when all the cameras have built in light meters. But we can explore this rule and learn something about exposure from it.

The rule is simple: on a sunny day, set your aperture to f/16 and set your shutter speed to be as close to the ISO setting as possible. (There! All the three exposure controls in one coherent sentence. Pat on the back!). This is where this rule got its name – Sunny day 16. Image by Stefan Mendelsohn.[Read More…]

Back to Basics – Exposure

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This is the first article of the Back to Basics series which tells allabout the basics of photography, and it deals with Exposure. Do you know that click sound that cameras make? It originates from a “flip” of a mirror that allow light to fall on the camera’s sensor (or for the old skool photographer – to fall on the film).

The effect of light falling on a sensor is called Exposure. That is because the sensor is exposed to light. (OK, great, so exposure happens when something is exposed. Big deal! no wait there’s more…) When the sensor is exposed, it gathers the light and depending on how much light is gathered it creates an image.

Exposure is relative and is comparable by something called stops. (or F stops). The main trick for understanding exposure is that “opening” or “closing” a stop, doubles or halfs the amount of light that falls on the sensor. Lets have a closer look.[Read More…]

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