Digital Photography. For beginners

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Paulina Mills
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1 Digital Photography For beginners

Welcome to Digital Photography for beginners. Den Pemberton Your Tutor is: Contact Details: TutorDen@gmail.com Website: www.tutorden.co.uk Paperwork: Enrolment form Progression Sheet To take part in this 10 Week Course you will need the following: A Digital Camera A USB Flash Dive 4Gb minimum.

2 Welcome to Digital Photography for beginners. Den Pemberton Your Tutor is: Contact Details: Website: Paperwork: Enrolment form Progression Sheet To take part in this 10 Week Course you will need the following: A Digital Camera A USB Flash Dive 4Gb minimum. Note Pad Pen/Pencil A4 folder for Hand-Outs Overview of Course:

3 Week 1 Digital Camera Basics What is a Digital Camera Holding the camera correctly, taking the correct stance for steady images Using the Shutter Release Composition & the Rules of thirds Assignment 1

4 What is a Digital Camera? 1. Viewing screen 2. Sensor 3. CPU 4. Battery 5. Pop up Flash 6. Mirror 7. Lens Digital cameras look very much like ordinary film cameras but they work in a completely different way. When you press the button to take a photograph with a digital camera, an aperture opens at the front of the camera and light streams in through the lens. So far, it's just the same as a film camera. From this point on, however, everything is different. There is no film in a digital camera. Instead, there is a piece of electronic equipment that captures the incoming light rays and turns them into electrical signals. This light detector is one of two types, either a charge-coupled device (CCD) or a CMOS image sensor.

If you've ever looked at a television screen close up, you will have noticed that the picture is made up of millions of tiny coloured dots or squares called pixels.

In a television or computer screen, electronic equipment switches all these coloured pixels on and off very quickly.

5 If you've ever looked at a television screen close up, you will have noticed that the picture is made up of millions of tiny coloured dots or squares called pixels. Laptop LCD computer screens also make up their images using pixels, although they are often much too small to see. In a television or computer screen, electronic equipment switches all these coloured pixels on and off very quickly. Light from the screen travels out to your eyes and your brain is fooled into see a large, moving picture. In a digital camera, exactly the opposite happens. Light from the thing you are photographing zooms into the camera lens. This incoming "picture" hits the image sensor chip, which breaks it up into millions of pixels. The sensor measures the colour and brightness of each pixel and stores it as a number. Your digital photograph is effectively an enormously long string of numbers Binary describing the exact details of each pixel it contains.

6 Holding your Camera correctly This sounds a bit silly, doesn't it? How to hold your D-SLR camera? It's pretty obvious: You pick it up with the lens pointing away from you, put your eye to the viewfinder and press the shutter button. Couldn't be simpler, right? Well, yes and no. Doing the above will certainly get a picture, but the way you hold your camera can help ensure you get a good picture. What one thing ruins more pictures than anything else? The blur that results from an out-of-focus image caused by Camera Shake. Holding the camera correctly can help prevent that blur. Blur is caused by the movement of either the subject or the camera. Subject movement is something we really can't control, although adjusting the shutter speed can give us some control over how subject movement is captured. Camera movement, however, is something we can control. Short of using a tripod or a VR, image-stabilised lens, holding the camera properly is the best way to avoid a blurry picture.

Holding your Camera correctly You need to hold the camera as steady as possible. Hold the camera's handgrip in your right hand and cradle the camera body or lens with your left.

This is a steadier position than holding the camera away from your face.

7 Holding your Camera correctly You need to hold the camera as steady as possible. Hold the camera's handgrip in your right hand and cradle the camera body or lens with your left. Keep your elbows propped lightly against your torso for support and place one foot half a pace ahead of the other to keep your upper body stable. This is a steadier position than holding the camera away from your face. If it's windy or your shutter speed's getting slow (1/100 or lower) try to find something to lean your body against, like a tree or a pole. You can also place your elbows on a low wall or table. You may not always have a tripod with you, but you have a bipod yourself. Do everything you can to be as solid a platform as possible for your camera, and it will reward you with sharper pictures.

The Shutter Release In photography, the shutter-release button (sometimes just shutter release or shutter button) is a push-button found on many cameras, used to take a picture.

8 The Shutter Release In photography, the shutter-release button (sometimes just shutter release or shutter button) is a push-button found on many cameras, used to take a picture. When pressed, the shutter of the camera is "released", so that it opens to capture a picture, and then closes, allowing an exposure time as determined by the shutter speed setting (which may be automatic). Some cameras also utilise an electronic shutter, as opposed to a mechanical shutter. The shutter-release button is one of the most basic features of a handheld camera. Camera phones that lack a physical button for this purpose use a virtual button on the virtual keyboard. To take your shot, gently press the button until you hear a beep, this indicates that the camera has focused and is now ready to take the shot, continue to press the button until you hear the shutter noise, you have now taken a shake free picture. Shutter Release

Composition & the Rule of Thirds The rule of thirds states than an image is most pleasing when its subjects or regions are composed along imaginary lines which divide the image into thirds both

9 Composition & the Rule of Thirds The rule of thirds states than an image is most pleasing when its subjects or regions are composed along imaginary lines which divide the image into thirds both vertically and horizontally: Of course, rules should never be applied blindly, particularly in art, so you should think of it more as a handy "rule of thumb" or guide rather than one that's set in stone. However, it will produce a pleasing photo more often than not, and is an excellent starting point for any composition.

10 Composition & the Rule of Thirds

11 Assignment 1 Landscapes Landscape photography commonly involves daylight photography of natural features of land, sky and waters, at a distance though some landscapes may involve subjects in a scenic setting nearby, even close-up, and sometimes at night. Photography of artificial scenery, such as farm fields, orchards, gardens and architecture, may be considered "landscape" photography as well. Even the presence of man-made structures (buildings, roads and bridges, etc.) or art (such as sculpture) may be considered "landscape" if presented in artistic settings or appearing (or photographed) in artistic style. Further, landscape photography is typically of relatively stationary subjects arguably a form of "still life." This tends to simplify the task, as opposed to photography of kinetic or live subjects. However, landscape photography often overlaps the activity of wildlife photography and the two terms are used somewhat interchangeably; both wildlife and landscapes may be elements of the same picture or body of work

12 Landscapes Cityscape

We ll go over a few simple tips for digital photographers.

Jim West We ll go over a few simple tips for digital photographers. We ll spend a fair amount of time learning the basics of photography and how to use your camera beyond the basic full automatic mode.