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Photography Basics

Lesson 2 from: Olympus OM-D EM-5 Fast Start

John Greengo

Photography Basics

Lesson 2 from: Olympus OM-D EM-5 Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

2. Photography Basics

Learn the basics of photography and get a better photograph every single time you shoot.
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Lesson Info

Photography Basics

Normally this is where I describe what an slr is, but here I'm going to describe what a mirror lis camera is and I know I've already done this a little bit, eh? So we do have great high quality many different lenses available for this camera inside the lens is an aperture and our appetizer is something that we can very in size it depends a little bit on the lens, but each time we change an aperture setting we're letting in either more or less light as you can see we're closing this lands down and each time we go one of these settings where either doubling the amount of light or we're cutting it in half back in the old days we actually had lenses with aperture rings that we could turn and see this and now it's elektronik we can't see it so it's always good to actually see what's going on in the lands now beyond controlling the amount of light coming in the lands it also controls the depth of field if you have a lens that goes down to one point four you're able to shoot with very shallow...

depth of field notice how this yardstick is very blurry at the top in the bottom, but as we change our aperture each step along the way it gets a little bit more depth of field and more depth of field doesn't change radically with any one step but it does get more and more in focus as we close it down to have twenty two all right so going back to the camera light comes in to the sensor alright image sensor is a huge part on this camera now it will send the information back to the lcd display on the back of the camera or in the case of this camera we consent it up to the elektronik viewfinder also known as the e v f and so that's what we're looking at and so the e v f is a big part of the experience of using this type of camera the better that cvs it dvf is the better we can focus the better we can see our subject and as I said before this camera has a one point four million dot vf there are some models out on the market that have up to two million pixels and in the future I think we'll see even more let's talk about the sensor because what's happening at the sensor is a little different than in most cameras when you look through your camera light has to be getting to the sensor ok and so the shutter curtain of which there are two parts are all open and when you take a picture what has to happen is the shutter has to close first and then it opens up for that specific shutter speed maybe one hundred twenty fifth of a second and then it has to open up against that you can see back to the camera. So in some ways, the shutter on this camera is working twice as hard because it has to close open clothes and then open again. And so the shutter speed is another big aspect on photography, so you should know if you're into photography, you should know shutter speeds backwards and forwards like it's an alphabet, because these were going to be the moments of time that you were captured capturing and that's. What photography's about capturing specific moments in time, and this is how you select those different lengths. And so one hundred twenty fifth of a second, moderately fast, we start getting into slower shutter speeds around a thirtieth of a second where you start getting blurring with subjects that are moving quickly. This picture was taken on a tripod you can see because the bridges sharp, but people are moving and that sound, which they're going to blur at an eighth of a second fund to do some waterfalls in any sort of water movement with slow shutter speeds, half second or slower thirty seconds exposure at nighttime could be a lot of fun. Nighttime photography is a lot of fun, and you can use really long exposures with this and other cameras. So that's what's going on at the sensor level on this cameron that's kind of the way this camera works which is a little different than some of your other cameras out on the market now if you do go into camera store you look online you're going to see a lot of different models of cameras out there and what is it completely apparent to newcomers is that the size of the sensor is a big deal in cameras and so there's a lot of different sensors available and you kind of have to dig into the specs of the camera to find out what size the sensor is and there are some very common size is we're not going to go into the very small sizes in some of the point and shoot cameras of the larger size censor this uses what's known as a fourth third sensor it's a little bit smaller then the a p s or full frame sensor now full frame it is simply a name that refers to thirty five millimeter film size thirty five millimeter film was twenty four by thirty six millimeters and some digital sensors are exactly that size. There are certain cameras that have that other cameras used a slightly smaller version that's about a one point five crop factor which means lenses or kind of croft a little bit as to what you see and this camera has a two times crop factor so if back in the days of film you were using a fifty millimeter lands will now you would use a twenty five millimeter lands. It's, the new focal length for this size sensor. It's, probably appropriately sized for that.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

OlympusEM5_3.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

user-3b96d9
 

Thanks John Good clear instruction. I will watch a few times and practice. I've also purchased the mark 11 camera with pro lens. I'm due to leave for a trip to Greece and Istanbul with my new camera. Then I was overwhelmed trying to figure it out. this has helped a lot. I'm hoping to love this camera. I want to shoot video too. I'm hoping you do a Mark 11 course with video and shooting in low light. Many thanks you have saved the day...

Ron Villiotti
 

Excellent, excellent class. Just purchased the camera yesterday and the class gave me a fantastic start. Much better than I could have done in any other fashion. Having someone actually show you the inner workings of the camera and the complicated menu system is the way to go without question! The handout materials were a good method of taking notes and for future reference material. Thank you, John!

coastrbc
 

I bought a new OM-D EM-5 on clearance at the end of the cycle. Having always been a Panasonic user, I found the menu system and buttons on the E-M5 confounding, to say the least. I loved this course with John Greengo. He's a gifted teacher and he made every detail of the camera clear and easy to understand. In the end, though, I wasn't convinced on the camera. I just found it clunky and slow to use. The lack of function buttons, plus the buttons it does have are just not a smooth and simple touch. When I read the reviews of the new EM-5 Mark II, I decided to take the Mark I back and get the Mark II. Far superior camera in handling, video and stability. Now I'm hoping John will produce a tutorial for the EM-5 Mark II. Soon. In the meantime, I'm hooked on John Greengo and will be on the lookout for whatever he next presents. Thanks to John and cL!

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