Our Family Beginnings

For my birthday, Mr. Badger got me a gift certificate for our local photography school.  Last night, I went to my first class.  It’s an introduction to DSLR photography, and we shoot completely in manual mode – no flash. I’m hoping to teach Callie what I learn each week so that I can solidify what I’ve gotten out of class.  You know, it’s that whole “See one, Do one, Teach one” mentality.  I’m also going to try to go through what we learned in class on here, so any of you who want to play along at home can do so.  That being said, I loved the first class.  It’s one thing to read these things in a manual (or on the web), but I learn best by seeing and doing.  There are a lot of little things going on with a camera, and it’s hard to think about all of them at once.  Some people can read a manual, and boom, and I am like that sometimes. But with this? The manual just hasn’t been cutting it. I take some cool pictures, but only by accident.  This is the first step in me actually making sense out of this.

Yesterday we learned about the basics of exposure, shutter speed and aperture.

Aperture is the amount of light entering the iris of the camera.  Think of it like your eyes, how they get really small when it’s bright out, and get large in the dark – all to control the light.  The size of the opening on the camera is measured in an f-stop. The most open is 3.5 on my lens and 22 is the most closed.  So to let in the most light, I need the f-stop to be low. A bit Counter-intuitive at first, but I am going to practice this one.

Shutter Speed is controls the amount of time that light enters the camera. If you have a super fast one, you can capture a runner mid stride. If you have a slow speed, you could capture the stillness of the track with a blur of feet running by.  You could also imagine those night shots of a highway where you see the blur of lights and a perfectly focused road.

I also learned how to read the meter that shows up in the viewfinder in order to get the balance of light right. It’s all hard to explain without pointing to my camera, so just trust me on this.

We played around during class, and I had to continue when I got home. I’ll post the pix again when flickr stops messing with me.