Lessons
Photographic Characteristics
06:36 2Camera Types
02:53 3Shutter System
08:51 4Shutter Speed Basics
10:06 5Camera Settings Overview
16:02 6Camera Settings - Details
06:05 7Sensor Size: Basics
16:26 8Focal Length
11:26Practicing Angle of View
04:49 10Lens Speed
08:53 11Aperture
08:15 12Depth of Field (DOF)
12:32 13Lens Quality
06:56 14Light Meter Basics
08:54 15Histogram
11:38 16Dynamic Range
07:15 17Exposure Bracketing
07:59 18Focusing Basics
12:58 19Manual Focus
07:04 20Digital Focus Assistance
07:25 21Shutter Speeds & Depth of Field (DOF)
05:08 22DOF Preview & Focusing Screens
04:45 23Camera Movement
08:13 24Focus Stacking
07:48 25Lens Adaptors & Cleaning
08:24 26Flash & Lighting
04:37 27Tripods
14:03 28Cases
02:53 29Natural Light: Mixed
04:10 30Sunrise & Sunset Light
17:14 31Silhouette & Starburst: Sunrise & Sunset Light
05:25 32Golden Hour: Sunrise & Sunset Light
07:42 33Light Management
10:06 34Speedlights
04:02 35Built-In & Add-On Flash
10:37 36Editing Assessments & Goals
08:48 37Editing Set-Up
06:49 38Importing Images
03:49 39Culling Images
13:47 40Adjusting Exposure
07:53 41Remove Distractions
03:52 42Cropping Your Images
09:43 43Angle of View
14:25 44Framing Your Shot
07:17 45Foreground & Background & Scale
03:41 46Rule of Odds
04:50 47Visual Drama
12:20 48Elements of Design
09:14 49Texture & Negative Space
03:47 50Black & White & Color
10:23 51The Photographic Process
08:58 52What Makes a Great Photograph?
06:39Lesson Info
DOF Preview & Focusing Screens
For those of you with SLR cameras, most of you have the option of a depth of field preview. But when you look through the viewfinder, the aperture is completely open so that you can see the brightest, easiest view so you can manually focus. But if you're shooting a picture at F 16 it's gonna be completely different when that aperture stops down and you get a whole bunch more depth of field. So a long time ago, professional cameras put on a depth of field preview button over on the side. It is now migrated all the way down to some of the entry levels, not all of the entry levels. But some of the entry level cameras will have this little hidden button down on the side, and that when you press it normally in the viewfinder, you get this shallow depth of field look because that's what you're going to see with lens wide open. When you press it in, it closes the aperture down, and when you look through the viewfinder, it's going to give you a really dark image. Now, most people who see this ...
for the first time and you're explaining it to him. They always say the same thing. I can't see anything got dark. Let your eyes adjust to take a moment for your eyes to people's adjust and then you'll see that you're actually getting more depth of field. You see how much is in focus? Oh, I see it now. And so you press the button in you wait for a second or two for your eyes to adjust, and then you can see how much depth of field you're going to get. Now back in the days of film, this was really important cause you didn't know how much depth of field you're getting until you got your film pack from the processor. Now with digital cameras. This is kind of useless because you want to see how much you get in focus to shoot a picture and look at it. Ah, the fact that matter is, though, if you're using an SLR, it's hard to see the back of the camera in bright sunlight. And so, for a landscape photographer who's got a lot of light that they're working with, it's nice to hit that depth of field preview to see if those flowers in the foreground are and focused with the mountain in the background, and so it's a handy little device. Now, those of you with muralist cameras, you may want to do a little experiment. Don't take a picture of yourself, but hold the camera pointed at yourself and press halfway down. When it presses halfway down, some of the cameras will do an automatic depth of field preview for you. I believe Fuji's will do this. When you press halfway down, you hear a little noise, the apertures stops down. Other cameras don't stop down until the actual picture is taken. And this may even be a feature that you can turn on and off on your camera. But you will get this as an option on some muralist cameras if you look for it in that manner. Now, for those of you with S l ours and any of you that have very fast lenses, there is an important little secret change that has happened in cameras over the years. When we went into auto focus, the focusing screen in your camera in past cameras actually used to be replaceable, used to be able to interchange it, and you could exchange it for one with grid lines or had a special focusing mark on it. And there was also some ones that were brighter than normal, and you could change these. But now there are no current model of cameras where you can change the focusing screen anymore. They have all disappeared from the market. What you get in the camera, is it? And when we went to auto focus, they had to change. Or they chose to change the type of focusing screens that Aaron the cameras. And it's because there was a new demand for these small, lightweight, slow lenses. And in order for them to work, they needed to change the way these focusing screens were in the camera, and they made them mawr bright, less accurate. And so we traded accuracy so that we could actually see our subjects. I don't know if anybody remembers the old film cameras, but if you remember film cameras with a slow lands at that point was like an F four lands, and you didn't get your eye right in the middle. Everything got really dark. The thing was, it was accurate, but it was dark. And so now we're choosing brightness over accuracy. And what that means for the person who uses an SLR camera is that if you use a fast lens anything faster than 2.8, the camera in the viewfinder will not show you the proper, shallow depth of field that you are likely to get. So if you have a 1.4 lens, you look through the viewfinder. You go okay? Yeah, I see how much depth field I'm gonna get, and then you shoot it at 1.4, you're gonna get even shallower it up the field. And so this focusing screen changes what you are seeing in the amount that you're gonna get by by the depth of field. And so for anyone with a very, very white open aperture, it's gonna look different in the final picture than it does through the viewfinder. Take a look. Do your own tests. It's true. So check it out
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