A Place for New Photographers and Those Wanting to Learn the Basics

I bought my first and only DSLR in September 2007 and have been a very keen enthusiast ever since. I usually go out walking and taking photographs at least once a week and try to post regularly on my blog 'Let Me Show You What I See'. I feel that I need a new project so I decided to start this new blog to pass on what I have learnt in the last three years to anyone just starting out in photography or wanting to know a bit more about how to use their photography equipment. I still consider myself to be little more than a practiced beginner so it's going to be at a fairly basic level but hopefully understandable to anyone who is starting out with thir first camera or struggling with their equipment or technique.

I have been contemplating what strategy to follow with the order of topics to cover because I'm wanting to keep each post quite short and gradually build up into a useful resource. In the end I decided to start with a post about taking your first photos and then see where the subsequent posts take me. I will number the posts based on the order I first write then and I might go back and update them with extra information or links to other posts as I progress through the subject matter. I will try to make the content generic so the make and model of you camera isn't relevant and hopefully useful for either DSLR, compact or point and shoot cameras.

If anyone has any specific questions they would like me to answer, please send me an email or put the questions in a comment. I can't guarantee the accuracy of the answers I provide or anything else I post as I only know what I know. I may express opinions with which people may disagree but they are just my opinions and I am happy for people to disagree. I am hoping to learn from this blog myself as I expect to have a need to read things from my camera manual and search for information on the internet as I cover subjects. I am also hoping that the experience will improve my own photography technique as I produce images for inclusion in the blog to illustrate the specific subject.

Thursday 11 November 2010

004 - Introduction to Image Types

Way back in the first part I mentioned that when the camera is set on fully automatic it would choose an image type depending on what it could detect in the frame. At the time I purposely didn't elaborate on what those image types might be because I was assuming that the camera would not be too far of the mark for a beginner. However, now we've got to part four so I thought it time to put forward my understanding of the basic image types may be and how the camera will use different settings.

Firstly let's consider making a portrait of a person.  What the camera would detect in the frame would be an large object quite close and fairly central with space around it. The camera determines this information about the scene while auto focusing the lens. The camera would also detect a similar scenario if you were taking a still life of a vase of flowers or a bowl of fruit. Perhaps even if you were in the open taking the picture of a statue or some other object with space around it. In any of these cases the camera would use the information and compare it to similar scenarios in its database and come up with some settings for the picture. It all happens very quickly so there's no need to wait for it to get itself ready.

What setting will the camera use for what it detects as a portrait image type. Well generally you will want the photo to concentrate on the main subject and one way of doing this is to simplify everything else. The standard method is make the background a little blurry by throwing it out of focus. The main subject needs to be sharp and clear but the rest of the frame is less important. The technical term for this is having a narrow or small depth of field and I will discuss this and how to achieve it in a later post. The other important thing to keep the sharpness is a fairly fast shutter speed to cut down on both movement of the camera or the subject if it is a person.

Sorry to inflict this image on you but I thought it might be useful to illustrate the previous paragraph. I just took this self portrait using fully automatic mode and the camera has correctly identified this as a portrait type of picture. The only part of the picture that is in focus is from the end of my nose to just about my eyes, my ears and shoulders are getting a bit blurred, this is only about 2 inches (Ideally the focus should be on my eyes but the camera appears to have focussed on the end of my nose so my eyes aren't as sharp as they could be. I guess the camera has done the best it could and the photographer would need to take a bit more control to get it perfect. We've a long way to go to get to that stage but overall I think I'm quite happy with the result)  The blue vertical blinds behind me are completely out of focus and even looking closely you can barely make out the gap lines between the individual blinds. The shutter speed isn't as fast as it could be but it's nearly midnight so the lights are on in my study and you can see the on camera flash has kicked in fill the light in my face.


Next consider a classic landscape photo. During auto focusing the camera will detect nothing or very little too close and most of the scene way out into the distance. Again it will look for similar scenarios in its database and determine the best settings for the picture. I've not put it to the test as yet but I suspect there are a range of landscape settings that the camera could use.

This time the camera will try to keep as much of the frame in focus by using a wide or large depth of field. If there are objects fairly close by it will try to ensure that they are in sharp focus otherwise it will probably set the centre of the focus around a third of the way into the scene.This is a very approximate rule of thumb but worth remembering as you take more control of the camera. The shutter speed is less important in landscape photographs but must still be fast enough to reduce any blurring from the camera moving. The camera is unlikely to use the flash for landscape photographs as the range of the flash is only a few feet so wouldn't have a great deal of impact, however you may need to switch off auto flash the camera is trying to use it when you don't want it to.

Portraits and landscapes are the either end of the scale so there are lots of places in between. The camera will try to determine what you are photographing and will try to use the most appropriate settings however sometimes it's going to need some help. Next time I'll look at moving away from the fully automatic setting and helping the camera by choosing the image type or picture style you want.
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