O.K. I finally bought a camera what’s next?
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Hello everyone, I’ve been involved with the PSAE crowd on fark for a while and I finally got a digital camera so I could join in the fun here as well.
I’m looking forward to learning more about Photography.
I got a Rebel XTi and it seems fantastic to me so far. Are there any basic tutorials any of you would suggest that might help me venture out of full automatic mode?
The basicest of tutorials is “taking pictures is free now!”
Just fiddle around with everything and look at the results until you’re comfortable with it. There should be a really nice tutorial already in the box it came in (even my puny Rebel XT non-i had one).
What Mofo said. Also, you can find a lot of good info on Flickr. Just do a search in “groups”. Have fun!
My preferred shooting mode is Av (aperture priority). I’d suggested moving the dial to Av or Tv and playing there for a bit. Get the feel of the inverse relationship between aperture and shutter speed, and figure out what happens to the same subject with you move through shutter speeds (or aperture values). My big-book-of-slides contains many examples of the same subject with different aperture values.
shoot shoot shoot!
/seriously, shoot your ass off.
//in the photography sense, that is.
What the others said…shoot lots! I’ve put something like 3400 pictures on my 30d since I got it in mid-May. Like Schnee, I like Aperture Priority, but then I also like shallow depth of field and using natural/ambient light, so controlling aperture is usually the most important to me. Look forward to seeing you on Farktography!
The easiest way I’ve found to learn each setting is to set the camera on one of the manual settings (like Tv or Av) and then just play with one setting at a time. Take the same picture over and over again adjusting only the shutter speed and see what you get. Then take the same picture only adjusting the Exposure and see what you get, etc. etc. Most importantly, have fun! Go somewhere or find something that you’d really like to have a picture of and then fill up all the memory cards that you have with pictures playing with all the settings. A few are bound to turn out well and seeing good pictures that you’ve taken is great motivation to continue taking pictures.
Thanx for the tips and welconing comments everyone! …and I am shooting alot!, my first couple of days out, I’ve shot well over 1000 pics with 3 or 4 shots out of that bunch that I actually think are worth printing. I hope this ratio changes over time with practice 🙂
Thanx for the tips and welconing comments everyone! …and I am shooting alot!, my first couple of days out, I’ve shot well over 1000 pics with 3 or 4 shots out of that bunch that I actually think are worth printing. I hope this ratio changes over time with practice 🙂
One of the best photogs I know (from the meat world) put together a nice book of his fine-art photographs. Maybe 30 of them. When he was asked how many photos he took to cull down to these he answered a very understated “about forty thousand”.
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