I know I haven’t talked much (at all!) about the photography class I started taking… Mostly that is because we’ve only had two classes, my mind was reeling, and my notes are pretty bad. :)
Our first class was mostly about the course objectives, how an SLR camera works, some websites to check out, and other just general hoopla.
The second class we got into some of the explanations about shutter speeds, aperture, and exposure metering. Our instructor had us switch off auto-focus and work manually. I felt really smart when I left that class…like it was a piece of cake. Yay! ha. And then I didn’t put any of the new information into practice for oh about 10 days and felt pretty lost when I went to shoot my project photos.
Our assignment (should we chose to accept it):
Winter Scene
- Work in full manual mode or any one of the automatic or program modes (so on the Rebel that’s Av, Tv, or P), whatever is easiest for you.
- Become familiar with the different functions on your camera.
- Remember to use a tripod and a cable release (or self-timer).
- Keep the images simple and try to have the subject anywhere in the frame except the middle of the image.
Another important thing he stresses is to take notes of your settings while you are shooting. There are no set answers for which settings to use because every situation is going to be different. So especially if you are working in full manual mode it is super helpful to make notes as you go.
And that’s exactly what I did! I brought along my lame little tripod and my cute little notebook and set myself up with some bare trees and Winter mittens. (There’s not much left around here as far as “Winter Scenes” go). I don’t have a cable release yet so I was using the self-timer to ensure a nice, clean, wobble free shot.
(I should mention I was shooting with my 50mm lens, so no zoom function…) I started in Manual Mode, with manual focus, and 400ISO. Aperture was set to the biggest depth of field (F1.8 on this lens) and using the metering I matched that to 1/2500 shutter speed. To start I set white balance to “cloudy” but we haven’t learned about white balance yet.
I got a few blurry shots at first but with a few slight focusing adjustments I got this to hand in…
I switched to auto-white balance and fiddled with the aperture and shutter speed for a few shots, but didn’t love anything I got. When I bumped the ISO to 1600 the shots were awful, but then I used the meter to match the aperture at F4.0 to 1/1250 shutter speed and wound up with my other favorite shot…
I changed the photo composition (subject layout) a bit because I didn’t like that random tree jutting up in the background of the first one.
So all in all I don’t LOVE these photos because they aren’t my usual subject matter and I find them boring. But I think I covered all of the bases I was supposed to, I followed the rules, I proudly did everything manually, and my subject is in focus (the mittens)!
I hand these in to tonight’s class for discussion…scary! If they don’t beat me up I’ll come back and let you know what is said. :)
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