Stuicide

What next?

Time to learn a few basics of using your camera. First off, stop using Auto mode. The Aperture Priority mode is my favorite mode to mess around with. What’s Aperture you ask?

Aperture is the Depth of Field that your lens will give you. A Large Aperture is actually the smaller number. f/2.8 is a bigger aperture than f/22 and will give you a much shallower depth of field. Sounds counterintuitive doesn’t it? It gets easier, I promise.

Next after your aperture, you should make sure your Shutter Speed is good. If you are taking handheld shots around 1/200 is a good range. If you get lower than 1/60th of a second there may be some motion blur when you take pictures in low light situations.

Aperture is how big the hole is to your sensor, shutter speed is how long the shutter will be open. After those two elements of photography, if you are taking pictures in low light situations, you can increase your ISO. ISO is how sensitive your “film” is to light. ISO 100 is the best to use, but requires the most light. A lot of DSLR cameras can go to ISO 400 or 800 and still take decent quality pictures. I’ve taken pictures at ISO 1600, but you def. take a chance at getting a lot of noise and grain in your pictures which is something you probably don’t want.

Now that you know the very basics of a DSLR, I recommend getting some new lenses. Both Canon and Nikon make a cheap 50 mm f/1.8 lens that will give you a much better aperture than the kit lens that came with the camera. Plus on a crop-censor (if you are wondering, your camera probably is a crop-censor) 50mm is a great range for portraits.

I’ll post more later about higher quality lenses but odds are if you just got a DSLR, you don’t have the $$$ to spend on thousand dollar lens.

I definitely recommend reading a lot, and posting your pictures online so others can see them. It will drive you to improve constantly, and getting a positive comment on a photo will boost your day.

Some books I recommend: Understanding Exposure by Brian Peterson and The Digitial Photography Book Vol 1, by Scott Kelby

Join Flickr and post your pictures, and join some groups! It’s a lot of fun.

In the coming month I will post some “homework” assignments that will be fun to go out and exercise some photography skills.