Hello Lovely!
So, I have wanted to post something that I feel is lacking on the ‘interwebs’. Here you will find a couple of resources to how to get the best images you can. Alright, lets get started!
First off congrats on your purchase! You’ve done it! You took the leap of faith and went with your gut. Yay! But now what? After you unbox your camera you might want to read your manual to make sure you get the most out of your shooting experience. Yes, it’s an obvious first step but, as we all know, we don’t always do it. So, go ahead and read it.
You might want to charge that puppy up and insert an SD card. Most (if not all) digital cameras nowadays no longer have an internal memory and require an SD card. If you purchased a professional full frame camera you will need a CF Card (compact flash card). Once those two necessary things are loaded you can go ahead and start playing!
You can use any brand. I personally feel SanDisk cards work best for me.
This is where most people hit the “I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m going to throw this thing against a wall.” point of confusion. Why aren’t your photos coming out like you would like? Many of the times people forget the difference between a SOOC and an edited image. SOOC is the image “Straight Out Of Camera”, no editing. We’ll get to that later. First lets make sure your settings are correct. Here’s some diagrams that can help you tremendously understand all the corraltions between ISO, SHUTTER SPEED, and APERTURE.
DOF: Depth of field
If those didn’t help clear things up check out these videos:
Froknowsphoto has a bunch of videos you can check out on his website that are beginner friendly.
In summary: The longer your sensor is exposed to light the brighter the image (Shutter speed; 1/300 is a lot less light than 1/15). You will always want your ISO as low as possible to get the clearest photos you can. Try to keep it in the 400 iso range if possible. Your aperture or F stop will be the thing that will allow the amount of light to touch the sensor (If it’s fully open at 2.8 or 1.4 , whatever your lens lets you drop it to, you can blur the background even more). All these settings need to be in sync to capture a well exposed image. TIP: If you find that your aperture and your shutter speed are nailed down perfect go ahead and push your iso. You can regain the image in post (editing).
Okay, so you got all that down. AWESOME! Now this is the make or break part of your image…
Composition. What is the difference? Why can’t I just shoot and be done with it? Well, you can. You can shoot and be done with it , but is it visually interesting? Even if your just shooting at your kids party you obviously want more ‘professional’ looking images right? So that’s why Composition is so important. A well balanced image always stands better than a unbalanced off image.
Off balanced, Looks awkward and rule of thirds not met anywhere
Well balanced, rule of thirds successful, eye is guided.
Again here’s Jared Polin with his Kermit the frog showing us, yet another, awesome how to:
Once you’ve got that down we can move to the last thing to understand. SOOC vs Edited images.
http://digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/before-after-lightroom-presets.jpg (Photographer unknown)
You’re images are NOT failing you. The images you see online don’t always look like from the start. Many uploads have already been post processed and cleaned up. This is where editing software comes in handy. I personally use Lightroom and Photoshop for all my editing.
Don’t be discouraged! Keep snapping guys. You have greatness within you. Hope this bit of information helps!
If you ever have any questions just use youtube, google, or photography forums. Your answer is out there.
Love,
Jovana Padilla
