Week 9 - End of the Month Fun

This week's challenge is to just take a picture of something fun!  Have fun with your camera and let your imagination roll!!

Week 6 - Aperture Part 1

Aperture is the fancy word for the blurryness of your background (or foreground) depending on how you focus.   Aperture is alsot talked about in f/stops.....you can have f/ stops of f/1.2 all the way up to f/22. The confusing thing about Aperture is that when photographers are talking about the blurryness (bokeh) and complete in focus of a photo is when people are talking about it they say that they have the maximum aperture they are usually talking about a small number usually an f/stop of 1.2 all the way to f/4 which is when you get your subject nice and your background has a nice blurry background (bokeh).  A miniumum aperture is when you have a larger number usually an f/stop of 11 all the way up to f/22 which is when you have your subject and your background all sharp and crisp (the higher the number f/22 the more everything is in focus). 

Here is your assignment for the week.  Take a picture using a maxiumum aperture (a small number -- try using the lowest number that your lens or your camera has) and then take a picture using a minumum aperture (a large number -- try using the highest number that your lens or camera has).  Have fun and enjoy!!

Week 5 - Shutter Speed - Part 1

Shutter Speed how fast your camera takes a picture.  With a point and shoot camera it's a little bit more difficult to control how to take a picture.  When you take a picture (whatever camera you have....you have to have your shutter speed fast enough so that you have a clear and sharp picture!)  The reason why your pictures sometime don't turn out crisp and clear is because your camera (or you) has choosen to slow of a shutter speed and you are hand holding your camera to get the picture and your hand starts to shake.  There are a couple of things that you can do to adjust or fix this. 

1. Adjust your shutter speed (in order to do that you have to make sure you have enough light so that your subject isn't all dark -- see if you can bump up your ISO)
         a.  For little kids (I fail at this miserably) you should make sure that your shutter speed is at least at 1/125 of a second.  Every time I pop my shutterspeed below that and I take pictures of my kids (unless I'm using my flash which is another subject completely) I am disappointed -- I usually get blurry kiddos! (Is it illegal to use duct tape and super glue to force your kids to stay still? Yes?....darn it!!)
          b. If it's an inanimate object or a person who you might be able to get to sit still and be patient (not in my family) and you just don't have enough light to keep it at 1/125 or higher pop that baby (camera) on a tripod and try that and see if you can get sharp and clear photos.

Your lesson for this week is to try out taking pictures of people and play with your shutter speed.  See if you can get crisp clear photos -- in different lighting & by trying to adjust your shutter speed.  You can do it.....if you are confused and don't know how to adjust your shutter speed read your user manual.....memorize that baby it's your friend!  Good luck!!

Week 4 - ISO

ISO....most cameras if you can adjust your camera to manual you can most likely adjust your ISO.  ISO is what you used to have to use for film you would have your 100 for day light and then 200 - 800 for various other times when it wasn't quite as nice and it was dark.  I remember having my film camera.....a cute little point and shoot film camera.  I never understood what ISO did for my pictures when I had my film camera.  I would have some pictures that were usually just dark and didn't have enough light for them to really be recognizable.  I really didn't understand how ISO helped my pictures and what effect it had on my pictures until I was reading my owners manual and started reading books about the subject -- Bryan Peterson wrote an excellent book Understanding Exposure.  Which helped me understand what ISO did and how it helped with photography.

ISO  basically is how much light is let into the sensor (if you still use film -- then film).  Now you can only go so high with your ISO before you introduce noise.....which is basically graininess (film) and noise (digital film).  This is usually when it's nice to have a nicer camera -- the more expensive the camera the more equipped it is to handle the noise.  Which is why...probably in three years I hopefully will be able to go up to a full framed camera. 

My advice to everyone is to play with your ISO.  See if you like the noise....maybe you won't notice it at the higher ISO.  I usually notice and can tell when I take pictures with ISO 1600 and the picture it's really grainy. Here is my rule of thumb....try it out!

My rule is as long as I have light......and can keep my shutter speed where I want it to be I keep my ISO at 100.  That doesn't always work and isn't always helpful because you don't always have the beautiful sunny days and the brightly light rooms.  So if you don't have a lot of light...say it's a cloudy day and you are in the shade.....try having your ISO at 200 or 400.  If it's night time and you are inside and don't have a lot of lights turned on.....turn your ISO to 800 or beyond.  It's gonna get a bit trickier because you will be dealing with the noise but it will work out!! 

This weeks challenge.  Play with your camera's ISO...experiment with your white balance and your ISO.  Also see if you can notice the noise at the higher ISO ranges?  Do you like it?  Can you use it creatively?  Good luck!!

Week 2 - White Balance

        I figured I would start talking about something that almost ALL cameras have the ability to change....which is changing your white balance.  No matter what your camera (cell phone, point and shoot camera, DSLR camera) you will be able to change your white balance....you might not be able to set your custom white balance but you can adjust the white balance to get different ways of expressing your photos.
       I never truly thought & understood how important white balance is to photographs.  When you take a pictures you can change the whole mood and how the picture turns out just by changing the white balance.  Also by changing the white balance and making sure you have the correct exposure (another week) you can drastically improve your photos.   The nice thing is most cameras allow you control and you don't need a fancy dancy camera to do it. 

Most cameras have some standard white balance that when you go into a setting and don't have enough time to set your camera for a custom white balance you can usually pick from these and your pictures will come out fine.  You want to make sure you understand how they all work so that way you can just think.....well I'm inside my lights are on I should change my white balance to tungsten. 

Auto -- The camera will choose what it thinks is the best for the scene.....usually if you don't have time to think and you are going to be in and out of building and outdoors.....just keep it on Auto!

Daylight -- Best for Clear skies and some puffy clouds! Also if you are indoors and aren't using any artificial lights you can sometimes see if daylight will work for you!

Cloudy -- Best for Cloudy skies!  This will give you a warm look because when you are taking pictures outside when it's cloudy if you shot on auto or daylight more often then not you will have cooler pictures and it just won't feel the same.

Shade -- Best for when you are in the shade....it helps give you a warm look because (duh) you are in the shade and don't have the sun to help warm up the picture

Tungsten -- That handy dandy light bulb in your house....well sometimes it helps if you change your white balance so that you can be inside and it runs more cool than if you were to use daylight.

Fluorescent -- Those wonderful light that are in most offices.....you want to use fluorescent lighting rather than tungsten because both bulbs light the room differently.

Flash -- When you use your automatic or external flash....set your white balace to flash....it's very similar to daylight but not!  (Not gonna explain unless someone wants an explaination.....this is just basic easy explaination!)

Custom WB -- You can set and adjust your WB....well at least on my camera you.....maybe not on your phone.  Having a Custom White balance means that you take a picture of something gray and then set your WB in your camera....every camera is different so I can't tell you how to do this....I'll show you on my camera how I do it but it would probably be better if you grabbed your handy dandy owners manual and checked out their advice.

When you are changing your white balance just make sure to look around and just check out the lighting source.....you'll be amazed at the difference you will see!!  Also once you understand how white balance effects your pictures you can use it to help change the way a person might view your photograph.  Say that it's early morning and you want it to seem like it early evening.....you could switch your white balance to shade or cloudy and get a very warm picture instead of the blues breaking up.

For my examples I actually used a previous picture I had taken in Raw (more on that later) and because it was in Raw I was able to quick look at the picture and change the white balance in photoshop so I could give you some examples outside (because most likely I am not gonna go outside to take pictures in the North Dakota winter! Brr!!!!  Anyways as you can see you get either warmer or cooler pictures when you use the various white balances.  I think my favorite picture (just with changing the white balance) is between the Shade white balance and the Custom White balance.  The lighting is just a little bit more the right shades and so forth in both of those!!  I could do more to make the picture my favorite but because we are only playing with white balance I'm just showing you the potential of just doing a little thing in you camera and how it can effect your whole picture!

This week's challenge is to play with your white balance. Figure out how white balance works on your camera and just take pictures of the same object using the various white balance presets that your camera has. Also take your object inside, outside, in full sun, when it's cloudy, in the shade and see how things improve or don't improve using your white balance. Be observant and become aware of how things change.