Innholdsfortegnelse for The Ultimate Photography Beginners' Guide i The Ultimate Photography Beginners' Guide

It’s no surprise that if you purchase a new camera with an interchangeable lens system, one of the first questions you might ask yourself is ‘which lens should I buy for my camera?’. That is not quite as easy a question to answer as you would hope. Manufacturers offer increasingly varied lenses to suit different photographers’ requirements. To add to the confusion, there is also quite a varied range in price and quality to take into consideration. On top of that there is also the cropped sensor and full-frame issue to consider. Certain lenses will only work with certain camera bodies because of the mounting system used, and so on and on it goes. Everyone shoots differently, with a different style and preference and the type of shot you are…

When you use flash lighting, especially if using it to directly light your subject, you will be aware of how harsh the shadows it casts can be. You can’t always be near a large picture window on an overcast day, where the softness of the light coming through that window makes it difficult to take a bad photo. You have to work with what you have, so that means you need to go back to your flash. However, there are some techniques that allow you to modify and shape light to suit your needs. This is where light modifiers come in. A lighting modifier is just what the name suggests. It is an object, surface, or material that alters the way the light travels from its source to the subject.…

Shutter speed is another of the three main pillars of photography. It is used in conjunction with the aperture and camera sensitivity settings on your camera to get a correct exposure of your subject. A camera’s shutter is just a mechanical curtain that stays closed, covering your camera’s sensor, until you press your shutter button. When the shutter button is pressed, the shutter opens and allows light to fall onto the camera’s sensor. Based on the settings used, the shutter stays open for a certain amount of time until enough light has been collected for a correct exposure, and then closes again preventing any more light hitting the sensor. The amount of time the shutter allows light to hit the sensor is referred to as shutter speed. The slower the…

Nearly all digital cameras, from top-of-the-range DSLRs to the humblest budget point-and-shoot compacts, have multiple light metering options. Knowing how and when to use these different metering modes can make a dramatic difference to the quality of your photography; unfortunately most people don’t understand what the different modes are for, how they work, or how to use them. Know your modes Depending on your camera, you’ll find metering options either in the menu or with their own separate control. In cameras with a fully-automatic setting, this will usually disable the metering options; automatically selecting multi-zone metering as the best option for day-to-day scenes and snapshots. The most common light metering modes are found on nearly all digital cameras. They are spot metering, centre-weighted metering and matrix metering. The symbols used…

Shooting modes should not be confused with Scene modes that alter your camera’s settings for specific lighting and scene conditions. Shooting modes are the main core of camera operation and can often be a source of confusion for new photographers, or those moving up from a simple compact camera or even camera phone. The main shooting modes on any DLSR are Auto, Programmed AE, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority and Manual Exposure. There is also the Auto (flash off) feature and Bulb mode for exposures longer than 30 seconds. Different models of DSLR have other modes available and they vary by manufacturers as well; but the main modes, often abbreviated to PASM, are the key ones that are worth getting to know in a little more detail. It is very useful…

Landscape photography is one of those genres where sharpness is everything. Wide angle shots of amazing vistas usually require front to back sharpness in your scene to maintain all the detail that was present. The viewer of the final photograph will appreciate the image more if their eye is able to take in all that detail. It will make the photograph ‘live’ for them. Nothing ruins a shot more than the image being fuzzy and blurry when you need it to be tack sharp. The problem, however, is that in many cases in landscape photography you have a foreground element as well as a distant object that you want to be in as sharp a focus as possible at the same time. Shooting with a wide angle lens and setting…

Before the advent of digital photography, if you wanted to share your photos with your friends you either had to make expensive copies of your prints, invite your friends over to look through your photo album, or even set up the slide projector and subject them all to a couple of hours of upside-down and out-of-focus holiday snaps. However, in this modern age of wonders in which we live, you can share your photos with people from all over the world quickly and easily by using one of several services available on the Internet. Rather than printing your photos out or emailing them to friends individually, you upload your photos to a website where they are displayed in an online gallery and can be viewed and downloaded by other people.…

Shallow depth of field portraits, when done well, are stunning to look at. The main focus of the subject is sharp, but everything else falls away into a lovely soft background that has no annoying distractions. When shooting a portrait with the idea of using a very shallow depth of field, there are a couple of things you need to bear in mind to make sure you acheive the desired end result. The correct lens for the job is your first consideration. You will need to use a lens that has a maximum aperture anywhere in the range of f/2.8 up to f/1.2. Fixed focal length prime lenses are much prized for portrait work as they are generally the ones that offer the much wider apertures and excellent image quality.…

Photographing sports and action scenes is a challenging but rewarding part of the hobby. At almost any sporting event, from the company five-a-side team on a Saturday fixture, to international events like the Olympics or the World Cup, you’ll find photographers on the sidelines capturing the action. Professional sports photographers make a good living from it, and use specialised equipment such as advanced high-speed cameras and ultra-fast telephoto lenses costing thousands of pounds, but even the average hobby photographer with basic equipment can capture good sports and action shots with a bit of patience and effort. There are no hard-and-fast rules for sports photography, mainly because there are so many different types of sporting event. A technique that might work well for horse racing would be completely inappropriate for beach…

Let’s get that word out of the way first. Silhouette, what does it mean? It came into being as a result of severe economic demands imposed upon the French people by their finance minister Étienne de Silhouette in 1759. His name became linked with anything that was thought to be done cheaply. In the days before photography, making a portrait cheaply and quickly from paper became known as a silhouette. It is a term used to describe the image of a person or object that is represented as a solid shape. The interior of the shape is totally black and featureless. Only the edge of the object describes what the object actually is. The term silhouette was originally thought to describe pieces of paper that were cut out and stuck…

The human eye is a wonderful thing. An organic marvel that is unparalleled in its complexity. We see the world as it happens in real-time but cameras allow us to compress time or expand it to show us things in whole new ways that our eyes cannot do. It has been determined that our eyes, although not governed in the same way as the moving parts of a digital camera, can detect flashes of light as short as 1/100s. Depending on the health and age of the viewer it can in some cases be as short as 1/200s. Given the way our eyes and brain perceive and process the things we see then, we have a natural ‘shutter speed’ of about 1/200s. This means that we can turn to our…

“Cameras come in many shapes, sizes and prices. At their heart though, they all do the same thing: capture light on a sensor and turn it into a digital image.” Cameras come in many shapes, sizes and prices. At their heart though, they all do the same thing: capture light on a sensor and turn it into a digital image. That’s a gross oversimplification but you get the general idea. Modern cameras also come with many features and functions. Although it would be difficult to list them all, here are the main dials and buttons that you can expect to find on many cameras. Different brands and models vary in their button and dial layouts as well as certain naming conventions but we’ve put together a little guide to the…

“Let’s take a look at some of the different types of filter and how they can help to improve your photos.” Filters have been an essential part of photography since its very beginnings. Used creatively they can improve a hard-to-capture scene, add an extra artistic element to an image or just provide a bit of fun. Modern digital photo editing has provided an, almost too easy, method to add filter effects to an image after it has been captured; some effects are better when applied by actual physical filters fitted to the camera when the photo is taken and this is particularly true with black and white photography. Let’s take a look at some of the different types of filter and how they can help to improve your photos. 1.…

Back in the old days of film photography, ISO, in its simplest sense, was a measure of how sensitive your camera’s film stock was to light. On modern digital cameras, altering the ISO value does not technically make your sensor more sensitive to light. What, in fact, happens is that the resulting image has its tonal values amplified, to simulate greater light sensitivity. Low ISO values mean the image is amplified less to simulate less light sensitivity and high values mean it is amplified to a much greater degree to simulate more sensitivity. Lower ISO means that you require more light, over a longer duration, for a good exposure and high ISO means that you require less light, over a shorter duration, for the same conditions. This assumes your camera’s…

The difference between a good shot of your favourite view or subject and a truly awesome one is simply down to how you compose the shot and the elements within it. A tree here, a lake there, it all adds up to elevate a photo to a piece of photographic art. The first and most important thing to remember is to take your time. Look at the scene in the viewfinder or on your monitor and try to see it not as simply a view but instead to imagine it as a finished print hanging on your wall. Ask yourself whether there’s any way that it can be improved by maybe zooming in a little, by moving the camera, changing the orientation, or just making sure it is level. A…

“Here’s an overview of the two formats. Take a look and see what is right for you.” Should you use Jpeg or Raw for your photography? This is a question that has been going back and forth for some time between photographers. Many champion the use of Jpeg, whilst others will extoll the virtues of the Raw format; so, should you shoot in Raw or Jpeg? Is the processing of Raw photos an overly complicated process? Can Jpegs give you all you need for a great final photograph? Here’s an overview of the two formats. Take a look and see what is right for you. Jpeg Let’s start with the Jpeg format as it is probably the most commonly encountered image type. Jpeg is certainly the most popular image format…

“Whichever way you look at it, colour distracts you from the heart of what should make a great photo…” At the dawn of photography as we know it, when everything was fresh and new, your only choice back then was to shoot in black and white. Exposing images onto glass or metal plates gave way to the film and chemical process. It wasn’t until 1936 that Kodak gave the world colour photography. However, black and white didn’t die off like the black and white TV, in fact it flourished. Whichever way you look at it, colour distracts you from the heart of what should make a great photo. Things like texture, composition, form, lighting and good old storytelling can be swamped and made inconsequential by colour. It’s not to say…

We love our pets. In fact for most people they are more than mere pets and become more like family members, the recipients of love, affection and lavish attention. It is likely then that their owners, at some point, are going to want photographs of their furry friends (or scaly, feathery or otherwise). We have a dog, and the number of photos that include him specifically outnumber those of all other family members put together. However, pet photography presents its own special problems. Animals, as we all know, can be unpredictable, lazy, aggressive, hyperactive and downright cute. If you’re thinking of trying pet photography, here are a few pointers to get you started. Pet personality profile You don’t need to sit the pet in question on a psychiatrist’s couch and…

“Now, let’s talk about the types of equipment you can try out to begin your first foray into the macro world.” If you have never attempted macro photography before, you may be forgiven for thinking that it is a very specialised photographic subject. While that is true to a certain degree, there are plenty of ways you can dip your toe into the subject without having to spend large amounts of cash. Macro photography remains one of the more popular genres and if you take a look through any photo library or image sharing sites, like Flickr, you will find any number of groups dedicated to this fascinating subject. Now, let’s talk about the types of equipment you can try out to begin your first foray into the macro world.…

The excitement of photographing wildlife in its natural habit on the plains of Africa, or in the Congo basin is beyond all but the most intrepid and experienced wildlife photographers. The images captured can be breathtaking and unlock the wonders of natural world when presented to us on the covers of prestigious magazines such as National Geographic. Experience, funding, and some very specialist equipment is the order of the day for the top-level wildlife photographer. “How is it possible to begin to develop the skills required when lions and elephants aren’t exactly thick on the ground in the streets of your local town?” How about the rest of us would-be wildlife photographers? How is it possible to begin to develop the skills required when lions and elephants aren’t exactly thick…

The number of camera models available to the budding photographer is vast. All the main manufacturers have a large number of different models and types of camera to suit every taste and also every pocket. A wide variety of choice is fine but it can be somewhat overwhelming when it comes to choosing a camera for yourself. It isn’t helped by the fact that the distinctions between various types of camera system have become quite blurred as the quality and the capabilities of these devices keep expanding. With that in mind, we have put together a little guide to the main types of camera out there. Hopefully it will help point you in the right direction so you get the right camera for the job. “A wide variety of choice…

Once you get beyond the basics of photography and you find yourself wanting to add a little creativity and take more control of how the light affects your shots, then that is when you need to take a look at additional lighting in the form of flashes. Your first experience of flash might be the tiny pop up flash you find on the top of a lot of compact cameras and a number of DSLR models. They are useful to light a subject when all else fails, but to be honest, if you want your shots to appear more than just selfies, then you need to look further afield. We are referring to the dedicated flashguns that can be mounted in your camera’s hot shoe, or for even greater flexibility,…

Aperture is one of the three main aspects of photography that help control the brightness of your photographs, and also how sharp your photos are throughout the scene. Aperture is responsible for how much of your scene is blurred or sharp; it is also known as an f-stop. This is a reference to the early days of photography when the aperture was actually adjusted by using cards with different sized holes in them. They were slotted into the camera behind the lens and were known as ‘stops’. That terminology has stuck and it has been with us ever since. The f number These days, cards have been replaced with mechanical diaphragms which use a series of curved blades that can expand or contract to alter the size of the aperture…

There are a couple of autofocus systems in use today that intelligently adjust the camera lens in order to obtain and hold focus on your subject. Compact system cameras use something called contrast-detection AF, which samples the image from the sensor and detects sharp high contrast edges in the details of the scene. Phase detection is a more complex system but is usually much faster, more accurate and works better in low light. However both systems require some detail in the scene to ’lock on’ to. Try and point your camera at a plain wall or a sheet of white paper and see if it will focus on it. Even if you own a top-of-the-range DSLR it won’t be able to focus on a featureless surface. Modern DSLRs have several…

Most modern cameras have a selection of scene modes, usually chosen by a dial on the top or back of the camera via a menu. Easy-to-use, mainly automatic cameras in the range will only have a few scene modes, whilst the more sophisticated cameras such as the DSLR may have as many as a dozen, including manual exposure options and user-programmable special settings. What are scene modes? Scene modes are provided on the majority of cameras to aid new photographers. They are a number of presets that set the camera up automatically to shoot in a variety of lighting conditions. You simply need to match the settings to the scene you are about to shoot and then you can take the photo safe in the knowledge that it should come…

“You can make shots appear warmer or cooler and adjust colour based on the prevailing lighting conditions.” If you look at a snow covered scene, your brain takes over and manipulates what you see, so that it matches your expectation of what white should look like. What you see, even under differing lighting conditions, is white. If you put a camera in the same scene, it does not make any such adjustments or adapt to a certain expectation. The camera will simply record the colours that are present in the scene. ‘White’ light visible to humans can actually vary in colour from reddish orange to greenish blue. This variation is usually described as a temperature range, with warm being the red end and cold the blue end, and is usually…

“Of course, good exposure control is paramount to ensure you capture as much of the tonal range of the scene as possible.” Metering If you want, rather than setting your camera to manual exposure and experimenting with settings, you can opt to use the camera’s spot meter mode. If you use this, you can meter a very small part of the image (not the sun), that is a middle tone area, for a decent averaged exposure of the scene. Alternatively, you can actually meter a right point nearer to the sun’s brightness and drop a lot of your scene out to silhouette. Beyond that, you can also choose to meter a darker area and really push the bright areas out to overexposure, if that is your creative choice. Get the…

Just to clarify, when we say high speed, we don’t mean that we are doing it very fast! In point of fact high speed, in this context, refers to being able to catch rapid movement in such a way that you effectively ‘freeze’ the action. There are two basic ways we can do this. First is to have enough light pouring on to your scene to give you the required shutter speeds (in excess of 1/2000th of a second) to have a hope of stopping an event dead in its tracks. The second method relies on the stopping power of flashguns and not the settings used on your camera. The camera, depending on how many flashes you are brining to bear on the scene, is normally set to ISO 100…