After introducing the world of blogging to many of you (?), today I invite you to discover the art known as photography. In this post, I would like to share my little experience gained since the last weeks and hopefully, some of you may found it useful. Tips from professionals and other amateurs are also welcomed 🙂
Learning the basics
Since the last weeks, I have been surfing on loads of photography sites/blogs to learn the basics of photography. The only way to grasp them is to practice, practice and practice. It’s always useful to have some volunteers around and sometimes a pet which can also be a nice subject.
Tutorials and tips are widely available on the net and two sites which I found very useful are digital-photography-school.com and photoxels.com.
There has always been wrong perception about digital cameras :
The number of mega pixels on a camera will not make your shots nicer! Nor will they make you a good photographer.
A good photographer will be able to get a nice picture with a small 2 or 3MP while you will still be struggling to get a nice shot with a big DLSR of 15Megapixels!
A camera with a large mega pixel is useful mainly when you need to
- crop some parts of a photograph or
- view/print the picture at a very large size like billboards etc.
Basically, there are 2 category of cameras :
- Point and Shoot cameras which most of us have,
- SLR (Single Lens Reflex) and DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) cameras.
Digital, Optical?
When looking at a camera, you have surely came across the words Optical and Digital zoom.
What’s the difference between these 2 type of zooms?
To be simple :
While using the optical zoom of a camera, the image’s quality remains the same at a zooming of 1x and lets say 10x.
But with the digital zoom, a camera will actually enlarge the same picture the number of times you want. At some instant, you will start seeing pixels and the image quality gets low.
Getting used to Aperture and shutter speed
Once you decide moving further into photography, you will need to know these 2 most important terms:
- Aperture
- Shutter Speed.
The aperture determines how much wide should the lens be opened so that the correct amount of light will fall on the film/image sensor while the shutter speed determines the amount of time the lens should be opened. At first, these 2 words may be quite confusing, but with some practice, you will quickly learn the difference. Write them on a piece of paper and carry them with you, that’s what I did!
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A large aperture (small number value e.g 2.8) will allow you to focus on a main object/person while the other elements remain blurred. Here the background is in focus, while the foreground (mirror) is blurred. |
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And a fast shutter speed (largest fraction value, e.g 1/500 or 1/1000) will give you a still image, for example you may see the drops of water splashing when some object falls on water. (Sorry, but I don’t have a nice picture to illustrate this) |
Now, if your camera has different modes for shooting pictures, you should stop using AUTO mode and move on to A (Aperture), S (Shutter) or even M (Manual)!
Remember, practice makes perfect!
Photos taken today…
Since my team was not required to be in office today, I went back to Champs de Mars and also Marie Reine de La Paix.
Taking pictures at Champs de Mars can be so amazing and challenging, specially for an amateur who does not always want to have a nice photograph of the horses… There are so many people moving around or leaning against the track fencing, parents holding their children to have a better view. These are only a few, there are so many!
The 2 pictures above were taken today at Marie Reine de La Paix and they are all available on my flickr.
Flickr-ing
Some time ago, I was not much interested to view pictures taken by others, but since I started to take them myself, flickr is one of the sites I visit the most, even more than facebook!
Once you start to learn about photography, you will automatically stop losing your time poking or doing quiz (sometimes stupid) on facebook!
Flickr makes you learn a lot about photography techniques. There isn’t any other simpler way to learn how, where and what to shoot!
There are loads of tools which can make your flickr experience nicer, one of them being flickriver.com, which dynamically loads picture while you scroll down…
Credits
Special thanks to Doorgesh and Bernard for contaminating me with this virus! lol
Also, thanks to my models Dhaneesha, Dakshinee, Deepa, Pif (yeah lol) and also mum whom I keep carrying with me when I go out to shoot 😛
Later, I will share more about what I learnt in photography. Photography is so huge!
I am simply loving it and what about you?
I hope that I have not written any nonsense above, and please note that these are only basic things about photography for a novice…
Yashvinblogs 
Since I do not have a camera… I cannot add my 5 sous… 🙂
BTW thanks for you comment on Flickr. 🙂 (It’s now that I checked Flickr)
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Ban fotos p sorti bien joli..li p vin plus jolie kan ena mw ladan 😀
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Model currently on diet :pp
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Perhaps a next time you could talk about DOF, bokeh, macro and stuff like that. 😉 I just got to know about those from comments in my flickr. Flickr is a great way of learning photography stuff for newbies like me! 😀
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Nice post, it has been very helpful for me …Thanks a lot
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I learnt quite a lot reading this article. I have some questions though.
Are Controlling the Aperture and Shutter Speed options, only available in SLR and DSLR cameras?
I remember those “travelling lights” pictures of yours. Were those done by extending the Shutter Speed? (just want to clear my mind)
and thirdly.. simply, recommend a camera. 🙂 Yours for egample. It seems to have all the necessary pro options! Thanks!
Rock ON!!
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Interesting points, glad you mentioned that the amount of MP does not necessarily make for a good photo or photographer. I am using a little Samsung Digimax S500 only 5.1MP and it still gives me nice results. At least we are in a country where there is so much beauty around which gives the photographer inspiration. The art is still with the human eye and the talent of capturing the image. Results can be amazing if you know how to handle manual settings, aperture and shutter speed. A hobby that everyone can go out and try.
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@Mike : Well said, the art is our eye and our creativity.
btw, My camera is also only 5MP and this does not prevent me from shooting anything I want.
@Sun : You have Aperture and Shutter speed also in Point and Shoot cameras. My camera lies somewhat between the point and shoot and a SLR category, because different sites say different things. But one thing for sure, it has a SLR type body. Perhaps in the next post about photography, I may talk about the different cameras and at the same time enrich my knowledge while reading about this topic on the net.
As for the trailing lights, yes, it was done with a slow shutter speed, I think 15seconds.
This means that the lens was opened during 15 seconds during which the image captured, hence the trailing effect.
Recommending a camera? hmm, you gave me a nice idea for the forthcoming blog post on photography… Keep tuned!
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Yashvin,
Yours is a bridge camera. It bridges the gap between P&S and DSLR.
Nice pictures BTW.
Eddy.
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Question i have a canon ( sorry mo more details) and i cant see to find where the aAperture and Shutter speed ! Help please.
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@Avishna : Hmmm, it is generally marked as A(Aperture) or S (shutter) mode.
Have a look at your camera, it has perhaps a knob somewhere… and check the model details on the net to know if it supports aperture/shutter mode.
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i am very interested in photography coz most of the pictures which i take are published in an internal newsletter at work. so i want to take professional type of questions u no.
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http://www.mauritius-newspaper.com/2009/05/30/discover-the-world-of-photography.html
Has stolen ur content , zot in mem met to photo!
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ur advice was very essential 4 me.i relly want to study 4 photography as career but i don’t know with whom to take help.
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@ yashvin awootar, hello I’m going to buy a standard digital camera for beginners and the shutter speed is
iAuto (2″ – 1/1,500). I would like to know if effects like ( drops of water when objects falls….) will be good in the picture when i try to capture these kind of effects.
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Hello.
First of all, you should know that the shutter speed is not the only thing
to consider. The 3 components of the Exposure triangle are Shutter, Aperture
and ISO and each one of them have their role to play when capturing shots.
You also mentionned iAuto, perhaps it is a Sony one. In most cases, a
shutter priority or manual priority mode is the most appropriate to
effectively shoot your desired effects since an Auto mode won’t always know
what you want to do.
I haven’t answered your question directly but hope that this might bring in
some light.
Cheers
Y.A
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yes you are right the digital camera is actually a sony one as you mention there are 3 components of the exposure …. i already mention you about the shutter. i would like to mention you the aperture and ISO so the aperture is
iAuto (F2.8/F8.0 (W), 2 steps with ND Filter) / Program Auto (F2.8/F8.0 (W), 2 steps with ND Filter)
and the ISO is SO :
Auto 80 / 100 / 200 / 400 / 800 / 1600 / 3200
so will i get a good( not a perfect :-D) shot with these camera specs.
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Hi again.
You will get a good shot (perhaps not at the first trial) but the
performance of a point and shoot won’t be equivalent to a DSLR. A DSLR
is instantaneous as compared to a point and shoot which normally has small
delay (depending on models).
If you really want to experiment photography, you should try to look for a
model which offers you some manual controls. With an auto mode (or a
programmed mode), you won’t always find the results what you expected. The
name says it all. Point and Shoot.
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@ yashvin awootar, hi your explanation has really help me a lot. thanks dude.
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@ yashvin awootar, hi can you please tell me what is the price of a standard tripod and will my camera ( sony cybershot dsc w 510) mount on it. please do help me really need to buy one.
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