Tip 9: Your Camera is Not the Boss of You!
Lesson 9 from: Photography Tips for EverybodyKhara Plicanic
Tip 9: Your Camera is Not the Boss of You!
Lesson 9 from: Photography Tips for EverybodyKhara Plicanic
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Lesson Info
Tip 9: Your Camera is Not the Boss of You!
Okay, tip number nine is your camera is not the boss of you. Write so number one was don't blame the camera, but number nine is it's not the boss of you. All right, it's a tool and is your job to learn how to use it. So here is a tough a tough pill to swallow sometimes. Okay, this is a really heinous shot right here. Um, this is grand central station captured with about six thousand dollars worth of professional camera gear. All set to autumn. Um, yeah, great. So there, if you want to drop a bunch of money on a camera and stuff, go for it. Don't leave it in on a boat and think you're going to get your money's worth. So this is terrible. This is just a terrible dumb photo because I let the camera drive here's the same scene where I took over and shot in manual moon. Okay, it's a night and day difference. This is also showing its again the situation where the flash is making it look darker again. This was again morning grand central station. You can see the light of the windows, but it l...
ooks darker with that flash on dh, this scene has no flash whatsoever that was just ambient light. So you want to learn how to use your came right? Because it turns out that just because you bought an expensive fancy pants camera doesn't mean that auto mode is any better on the fancy pants camera, then on your cheapo point, too it's still auto mode, you just paid a lot more for it, so don't fall into that trap. Here is another example. Actually, while I was shooting that really heinous bad photo in grand central station, this couple approached me that they saw me with all my gear, and they were like, oh, she probably knows what she's doing. We'll ask her to take our picture so they didn't know I was shooting crap in auto mode, but they came to me and they handed me their camera and they were like, you, you never take sturmer visiting florida, and I said, sure, and I didn't want to, you know, mess with their camera and throw them off or something. So I just took the photo and it was it was an auto mode, and we got this, and then I was so just downhearted, like, oh, man, you can't even really tell that you're in grand central station and levi cop that for them, so I'm like, let me just try it one thing, and I don't know their camera I didn't know my way around it very well at all but I just looking down and I saw that they had the little night portrait mode so I just put it on that and I thought, well, what the heck was to see what happens? So then I put on night portrait mode that I got that it's again probably not going to grace the cover of a magazine or winning the awards for technical brilliance but in a pinch with someone else's camera that I have no idea like where anything is I just switched from auto mode tio night portrait mode and at least you can tell that they're indoors that grand central station now we have a bit of a color balance mismatch because this had flash still but it's definitely an improvement and then I made them that me the file so I could share them I think they were really seeing now we're facebook friends and I just really enjoy them that we've kept in touch you never know cameras can do all open all kinds of doors here's another example again from the desert uh this is was taken with the point shoot in auto mode on dh then I took the same scene I thought well, let's just try it in night portrait mode that was so handy at grand central station well, guess what night portrait mode in the desert still failed me miserably it looks the same as automotive pretty much so sometimes that's not enough you really have to learn your camera and learn some basics about hell photography works so I took my little point shoot tweets some settings and shot this in manual mode in the desert and I love this image it actually it looks really great on the screen is very in vibrant so hopefully folks at home can see it that way to andi I shot this and basically pitch blackness so it didn't come out exactly how I wanted because I couldn't I couldn't compose the framing how I wanted it I actually wanted the point of focus to be on the camel's back there but I couldn't see through the camera like what I was doing so I just guessed and if you look really carefully think the field of focus is actually running about here it's like pretty off but I just guessed that the exposure on this and it's just an example of the difference between an automated mode and having some know how about how to actually operate your camera and the good news is your two tweets that are not just auto mode and full blown mandel mode there's a whole bunch of things in between right? So you your camera depending on what you have you may have some scenes you may have other things like program mode or shutter priority and aperture priority mode here would be, like the little night portrait scene. So there's all kinds of things that no matter what camera you have, there are options in between auto and full blown manual if you're not ready for that, so keep that in mind and just be open to trying some other things and getting off that auto mode. You heard that? Yeah. Quick question for you. A couple of folks are asking about raw. Ok? Do you want to know it's? Sort of an advanced kind of a thing, but folks have it out there. Could you just address it really quickly? Absolutely. Okay. So, first of all, these tips apply whether you are shooting day, peg or rock. But what is wrong? Camera is just it's an unprocessed format. So it's rah, just like like an egg is raw if you don't cook it. What that means is normally when you take an image in your camera your shooting day peg, for example, the image gets put on your camera sensor, and then it moves from the sensor to your memory car. And when it does that, the camera cooks it. Basically, it processes it so it's no longer ross so it's raw on the sensor it cooks it into. Most most of the time into a j peg and what it does when it cooks it compresses something's. It applies the white balance adjustment some different settings that you might have in camera. For example, if you are having having your cameras sharpened things or maybe it's boosting slightly saturation or contrast, all the little tweaks are going to get baked in so it's kind of like by seeing your food, maybe it's a dash of extra contrast in a pinch of more saturation or whatever and that's going to get baked into your j peg and that's it going to end up on your memory card. So when you download that and open it up later, you've got this j peg that's been cooked once, so you could still edited and photo shop, of course, but your latitude for making changes is less than if you had shot wrong. So just like like if you bake a cake like a while back, I made banana bread for my neighbors when I was new to the neighborhood, and in some of the batches I forgot to put the sugar. I told you, I'm not very good in the kitchen, okay, so I forgot to put the sugar in it and then I big day well, once it's big, you can't go back and, like put in the sugar so I could still save it. I ended up just putting like cream cheese frosting on the top of that, my about that sugar's we get, but it's, obviously it wasn't the same as if I had baked it with the sugar. So that's kind of how j peg versus rise if you're shooting, rock is going to go onto your sensor and straight onto your memory card with no baking whatsoever, and when you get it on to the computer, you just have more room to bake it yourself on the computer than you would if you let the camera bake it for you first. But sometimes people then say, well, which should I shoot one or the other? And I'm just I just want to put it out there and you don't have to shoot camera rock. I feel like a lot a lot of people love raw. Obviously it has a lot of advantages, but a disadvantage that it has. Is that it's freaking huge? Those files are freaking huge, let's, just be honest, so if you're like, oh my gosh, I can't deal with these freaking huge files like, I'm just not ready to deal with, you know, the hard drive stuff for that you can shoot j peg. No one's going to come to your door and arrest you for shooting day. Peg, I love to shoot jfk. I'll just tell you that right now I should. In manual mode, I love to shoot j peg. I nail it in the camera, and I don't have to do a lot of cooking afterwards because I shot it the way I wanted teo and camera so it can go either way.
Ratings and Reviews
Elad
Short, very basic, very general and non-technical. Can't say anything presented helped or impressed me, but new comers might find it interesting.
1claud9
She simply makes sense. I like learning tips from Khara.
MARGARET NICOSIA
I think her ideas were simple to follow and to consider before going out to shoot. No ah-ha moments for me....nice that the ideas are short and to the point. thanks