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Photography Basics

Photography Basics. Jewel Clark Intro to Photoshop Elements. Camera Basics. So here’s basically what a camera does. The digital camera innards. Point and Shoot or DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex).

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Photography Basics

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  1. Photography Basics Jewel Clark Intro to Photoshop Elements

  2. Camera Basics So here’s basically what a camera does

  3. The digital camera innards

  4. Point and Shoot or DSLR(Digital Single Lens Reflex) There are a plethora of camera choices out on the market today. You have to decide what you really want to do with your photography. Are you just going to be taking family snaps, shooting your jewelry for the web, or are you wanting to get into photography as an art form/ hobby/ profession?

  5. What’s the difference? • DSLR • Requires more photo knowledge • Allows for total control by the user • Larger sensor means larger, more detailed photos • Less portable • More expensive • More versatile- lenses, features, accessories, etc. • Upgradeable • Point and Shoot • easier for most people to use • Takes control of many functions out of the hands of the user • Smaller sensor- smaller print sizes • More portable • Cheaper • Less versatile- fixed lenses, less features • Not upgradeable Definition: A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that uses a mechanical mirror system and pentaprism to direct light from the lens to an optical viewfinder on the back of the camera.

  6. The Mysterious Megapixel The more pixels you have, the bigger your print can be. If you assume a proper print setting of 300 dpi, then you can do the math on how big a print you can reliably make: Take the dimensions of your photo and divide them by 300 along both the horizontal and the vertical. So, for example: If you have a photo that's 2240 by 1680 pixels you get an image size of 7.5 by 5.6 inches; in other words, you can safely make 5-by-7-inch prints. If you have a 3872-by-2592-pixel image that comes out to 12.9 by 8.6 inches, or a standard 8 by 10. So roughly: 2 megapixels = 1200 by 1600 pixels = 4 by 5 inches 3 megapixels = 1536 by 2048 pixels = 5 by 7 inches 6 megapixels = 2400 by 3000 pixels = 6.5 by 10 inches 10 megapixels = 2592 by 3872 pixels = 8.5 by 13 inches 12 megapixels = 4368 by 2912 pixels = 9.7 by 14.5 inches

  7. Sensor SizeFor those of you waffling between the point and shoot and DSLR The quality of your images, particularly for print will depend on the megapixels, sensor size and capabilities of your camera. DSRL cameras have larger sensors which means they can take in more information per photo, resulting in a higher pixel count/ more detail.

  8. Important Stuff to ControlAperture Aperture refers to the diameter of the opening in the camera. Aperture controls how much light is allowed into the camera AND, very importantly, DEPTH of FIELD.

  9. DEPTH of FIELD Depth of Field refers to how much of the image will be in focus. Repeat after me: THE SMALLER THE OPENING, THE HIGHER THE NUMBER, THE GREATER THE DEPTH OF FIELD

  10. Shutter Speed Shutter speed refers to how quickly the camera takes the picture. The equipment is still the aperture in the lens. But the camera is controlling how long it takes before it shuts again.

  11. Shutter speed can be used creatively to make photos more interesting. There’s no one right way to use it. It just depends on the outcome you want.

  12. ISO ISO refers back to the days of film and has to do with the light sensitivity of the film. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive the film. So if you have an ISO of 800, you can shoot in lower light with a faster shutter speed to get good results. For a digital camera, ISO indicates how sensitive the image sensor is to the amount of light present. The general rule of ISO is use the lowest number you can to get the shot you want. High ISO comes with higher noise or “grain.”

  13. White Balance White balance (WB) is the process of removing unrealistic color casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the "color temperature" of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light.

  14. Here’s the same image shot with different White Balance settings. See how the camera is trying to compensate for what it’s being told are the light conditions?

  15. No matter what kind of camera you want/ can afford/ have, if you have some control over these features, you can take good photos.

  16. Lenses Your lenses along with the camera sensor are where you will get the most versatility. This is where you will spend most of your $$ with a dslr. Camera bodies come and go, but most photographers keep their lenses.

  17. Types of lenses There are many lenses out there for the DSLRs and the lenses that come fixed on the point and shoots can frequently do some amazing things. Your lens choice depends on what kind of photography you think you’ll be doing most. The most obvious differences between DSLR and point and shoot cameras is optical versus digital zoom capabilities. Most point and shoot cameras enhance their zoom feature with “digital zoom”. That is, the camera extrapolates a closer image by taking what it gets from the sensor and adding pixels, usually by just duplicating the surrounding pixels. This results in a loss of quality when blown up. Optical zoom is provided by the lens and does not result in any loss of data.

  18. Optical vs Digital Zoom

  19. File Types Your camera usually has several options for saving your images: RAW, TIFF, and several versions/quality of jpg: JPEG- Joint Photographers Expert Group (Raster- lossy)Raster based image file used predominantly for continuous tone images. That means it’s good for photography and other images which need the entire range of colors available to display subtleties in pictures. JPEG is a compressed file format. TIFF- Tagged Image File Format (Raster- lossy or lossless)Tiff is the highest quality, uncompressed file format for images. It’s drawback is that the files tend to be very large. Used extensively for traditional print graphics. RAW A raw file is comparable to the latent image contained in an exposed but undeveloped piece of film. It holds exactly what the imaging chip recorded. Nothing more. Nothing less. This means that the photographer is able to extract the maximum possible image quality, whether now or in the future.

  20. Bottom Line Unless you know you are just going to be shooting for the web, save your images at the highest resolution your camera will allow. You can always size an image down but you can’t size an image up!

  21. Resources http://www.luminous-landscape.com/index.shtml http://mansurovs.com/ http://improvephotography.com/ http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/ http://www.bythom.com/index.htm http://www.dpreview.com/ These are some of the sites I like, but there are many more online, just start Googling!

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