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Photography Basics
Let's talk about basic photography, and I'm going to ignore the misplaced why on this. All right, so I do another class here with creative life called fundamentals of digital photography, and this is where we go in and we talk about how all digital cameras work. And this camera is a single lens reflex camera digital version of that, and this is the way that type of camera works. First off, we have a really high quality lens. The single winds on the camera, that's where single lens comes from. We have a variety of lens choices. We have wide angle lenses, telephoto lenses and zoom lenses as well. When we're focusing, lens elements are moving back and forth to focus. The light on the sensor. Now in the lens is an aperture unit. This is kind of a doorway that opens and closes to allow in more light or less light. So as we look down the barrel of the lens here we can see our aperture closing these air, the f stops, and as our apertures air closing down at each one of these settings, they're...
letting in half assed much light as it opens up its letting twice as much light. And this is just kind of the scale of numbers that we use in photography that indicate twice as much light or half assed much life so that's one of three different ways possibly more but three in the camera to control the amount of light getting to the sensor beyond controlling the light it also controls the depth of field how much is in focus? So in this example we have very shallow depth of field at one point for those red hash marks are indicating the front edge and the back edge of focus so you can see as we change the aperture to a smaller window we get more depth of field and little counterintuitive here in my mind but you'll have to watch the full class for the full explanation of it. Trust me it's just the way it is for right now so f twenty two gets us lots of depth of field so that's all was going on in the lens of the camera now his light comes into the camera it hits a mirrored system and this is where the reflex were. Word in digital single lens reflex comes from it is reflecting the light upward to what's called a focusing screen and some of you may recall maybe your mom or dad using an old waist level view finder on their hassle bladder or a twin linds camera they still make these cameras and your camera has a focusing screen in it but for viewing these it's much easier to view through it viewfinder that looks through a prism system this way you can hold the camera straight up to your eye and see exactly what's going on, so when you do want to take a picture that mere needs to get up and out of the way so light can get on back to the image sensor in front of the image sensor is the shutter unit, and the sugar unit comprises four metal blades that are very lightweight and move very quickly so they have two currents the first curtain that opens up let's light in and then the second curtain comes down, drops down, blocks the light off and then the mere returns so that you can see what's going on. And this is why photographers need to anticipate the moment you can't see what's going on at the exact moment that you're taking a picture, but the shutter unit is very important for controlling the amount of light because now we can stop time at different intervals very fast shutter speed like two thousandth of a second is good for stopping, say a bird in flight fast action five hundredth of a second is suitable for stopping most human actions, so dance sports things like that you would want a fast shutter speed like five hundred or faster one hundred twenty fifth of a second pretty good for just casual actions some camels walking in the desert thirtieth of a second is starting to get into the slow shutter speeds, and by panning the camera with the subjects, we can get what I call good blur, there's, bad blur, and there is good blur. Trust me, there is a difference between into slower center speeds, like a half second might be fun to use with water moving, so waterfalls, rivers, waves crashing on rocks, things like that, and you could do nighttime photography, which is what I was doing last night with this camera. Thirty second exposures can be a lot of fun working around at nighttime, and so you have a wide variety of options for controlling light with the shutter speed. Now, when you do select a camera, there are a lot of cameras out there in one of the most important things to know about is how big is the sensor in the camera? Because that's got a big impact about what type of lenses you use and what the camera is good for. And so, with all these different cameras out there, as they say, most people don't notice when they walk into the camera store, their browsing around on the internet. What size sensor? Because it's, not always the first thing that's labeled in these cameras, and so the cannon uses what is considered to be a relatively large sensor in the camera the largest of the sensors out there is what is known as a full frame sensor and this is based off of thirty five millimeter film back in the days when photographers were shooting thirty five and making that transition to digital it was very convenient to take all their lenses from their film camera and use them on a full friend camera because they worked exactly as they always did and it would be convenient if all cameras had a full frame sensor that would be kind of nice for image quality and convenience but they are very expensive so they've developed smaller sensors to make cameras more affordable mostly but also to make him a little bit smaller as well. Now the full friend camera has a crop factor called one point oh which means it's the same size as thirty five millimeter film nikon came up with a smaller sensor that is a crop factor of one point five and cannon has one that is a one point six sensor and that's what's in your camera you have a one point six crop factor I will address this more when we get to lenses and what lenses I recommend and how this affects your lens choice but it is a smaller sensor than the one in some of their higher in cameras and their traditional film cameras so if anything in the last five minutes was new and or interesting you might want to take a look into the fundamentals of digital photography, because I explain it much more thoroughly there. I just needed to breeze by just to make sure that everyone, as up to a a basic level for understanding how this camera works. And so that's. A downloadable class from creative life.
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Ratings and Reviews
user-bd4b1d
I always loved photography and even did a 12 year stint as a correspondent for a local newspaper, back in the 35 mm/film days. In 2005 I bought my first Canon, a Rebel XT. I had fun with it but never really knew what I was doing. I would get a good photo about 1 ever 100 shots, just from sheer luck. I bought a Canon Rebel T4i in Nov. of 2012 and having never taken a photography class, have been fumbling along with it ever since. When saw John's Photography Starter Kit, I immediately signed on and loved it. I was so thrilled when I saw he had specific classes for specific cameras and dove into this class, head first! It's like a dream come true! I love John's teaching style. He's concise, gets right to the point and doesn't waste time on needless fluff. I just bought this course yesterday and have already finished it and am ready to do it all over again, until I get it all right. I even learned something with the first glimpse of his slides and the photos of the T4i...I didn't know you could open the back screen, turn it around and re-seat it and have your display right there on the back of the camera without it sticking out and in the way! This course is going to be a huge help in getting the very most out of my camera. Thanks, John!
Getting a lot better
I am a huge fan of John Greengo. John is pretty much my Elvis. I learned everything, and I mean everything about this camera,though I kind of felt john could have been a little more enthusiastic about the T4i. I shoot mostly video with 4k super 35 cameras in raw. I understand top of the live vs. consumer grade. My point is, I think this camera deserved a little more enthusiasm than I felt it got. Throw a high quality lens on this machine and it is magnificent. The T4i is only entry level in price point. The photos I've taken with L-series lenses are stellar. Video is very acceptable as well, even with the H.264 codec. I would't have gotten that feeling after watching the video. From a leaning stand point this series of videos is worth the price and then some. I would just hate for people to walk away feeling they bought a toy. They most certainly did not.
Frank Siebert
Excellent course and superb tutor. I thought the pace of the tutorials was perfect. I was particularly impressed with the coverage of the course, which was extensive and thorough. I liked the tutorial so much that I have now purchased 3 more of John Greengo's courses.
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