Photography Training Tips

Join a photography club and participate in their activities.

Learn how to shoot manually or priority - Even though you enjoy shooting on "program" or "automatic", understand f-stops, shutter speeds, exposure, and depth-of-field for those difficult or unusual situations.

Get close - do not allow too much dead space in the frame.

Use a tripod or a monopod - especially in low light or when using a telephoto lenses or doing macro photography. Even the smallest movements of the camera while the shutter is open can translate to inferior quality.

Understanding lighting - natural and artificial - use of flash, both indoors and outdoors.

Practice on composition - Try different angles and focal lengths and move around, get down low, climb up higher, and see the difference in the outcome.

Know about filters. Using a "polarizing" filter, for example cuts glare and reflections, removes the glare from windows, and deepens the colors of landscapes as well as coats of animals.

Understand why you should take a photo gray card along with you

Have fun - Do not get so serious that you forget to have fun. Play around, try different things, and do not be afraid to have a bunch of throwaways.

Read your camera manual and keep it in your camera bag for quick resourse.

Set digital camera setting for highest JPEG resolution - Takes fewer, but better quality photos from memory card.

Don't think that having the subject in the middle is better. Know the "Rule of Thirds" guide.

Shutter Speed

Simply put, the shutter speed of a camera is a number which represents the amount of time the shutter remains open to let the light through the lens for proper exposure, to stop the action ,or to create movement in it.

COMMON SHUTTER SPEEDS
1/1000, 1/500, 1/250, 1/100, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1, B

Shutter speeds are normally listed in your camera without the fraction and can far exceed the 1/1000 speed. REMEMBER, the shutter speed is measured by a fraction of a SECOND. One (1) second is just that. The B setting allows the lens to remain open as long as we like (over 1 second) by using a cable release or remote and a sturdy tripod - good tool for night photography.
"Slower" shutter speeds as 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15 lets more light in because the shutter is open for a longer length of time. "Slower" shutter speeds can also be used to create movement, such as in the angel hair/smoky looking water of a waterfall or rapid river. "Faster" shutter speeds as 1/1000, 1/500, 1/250 stops the action of fast moving subjects as race car, cyclist and a runner because the picture is recorded quickly.

f STOPS/APERTURE

The size of the aperture, or opening of the camera lens, controls the amount of light entering the camera. F stops are located on a movable ring around the lens. One can see a series of numbers indicating these stops on the ring ranging from 1.4 to 22 - and sometimes as high as 32 or 64. REMEMBER, the lower the "f" number, the larger the lens opening. Point and shoot cameras often have their f stops pre-set in the factory or only have one or two f stops.

EXPOSURE

EXPOSURE is the amount of light needed to create the image. Too much light causes overexposure, and too little light causes underexposure. From the above, we know that shutter speed control the amount of time that light passes through the lens and that aperture or f stops control the amount of light by size of the lese opening. These 2 factors are set automatically by modern cameras.
It is important to go off "automatic" or "program" for those certain situations, which will also allow one to become more creative and make less mistakes. With the modern camera, many photographers no longer shoot in manual mode which requires both f stop and shutter speed to be set. They either shoot in shutter priority or aperture priority.

Shutter Priority - is that mode which the camera's controls will pick out the proper f stop required when we set our own shutter speed.

Aperture Priority - is that mode which the camera's controls will pick out the proper shutter speed when you choose the f stop.

EXERCISE

USING SHUTTER PRIORITY - (ONLY SETTING YOU NEED TO MAKE)

EXERCISE

USING APERTURE "F STOP" PRIORITY - "S" - (ONLY SETTING YOU NEED TO MAKE)

Excellent setting for "Depth of Field" which fades background

The smaller the aperture "f stop" (larger the number i.e. f 22) more background fades and foreground highlighted

Experiment with f 22, f 16, and f 11 for that right photograph using "depth-of-field"

GRAY CARD

For better exposure, take the guesswork out by carrying something that has been proven to be a mid-tone - a photographic gray card (a sheet of gray cardboard with a matted finish that is guaranteed to reflect 18 percent of the light) is ideal. Set up the card near the primary subject, and move in close to take the light reading from the card . Find the shutter speed and aperture combination that the meter indicates, and you will get a correct exposure.

Without a gray card, one can point the lens to a mid-tone area and meter the same as above.

NOTE: Some say that the average scenes reflects 13 percent, not 18 percent of the light that falls on it. If that be the case, one should increase exposure by a half stop (+0.5 compensation factor) for most subjects. If the subject is very light as snow or sand, decrease exposure by a half stop (-0.5 compensation factor).