It was an all Canon lesson with Christine (Canon XSi) and Kristen (Canon 60D) in downtown St. PetersburgTwo friends, Christine and Kristen, made the drive from their distant Carrollwood and Dade City homes respectively for our DSLR Photography Lesson late Monday afternoon. After conquering downtown St. Petersburg's difficult parking, we met as usual in front of the Museum of Fine Arts and started off with a primer on how to get your DSLR set and ready for shooting. Though they both had Canon camera's, Kristen's Canon 60D and Christine's Canon XSi differed quite a bit in ergonomics and somewhat in menu layout. Still, I am experienced with teaching both DSLRs so I was able to get them both onto the same page quickly, with of course a little friendly competition between them.
They both have children so we spent a good amount of time practicing how to photograph moving subjects. Their children were not with us during the lesson of course so I was running around randomly offering a no doubt less adorable target. We started off in aperture priority mode (A on Nikon; Av on Canon), but once we did the moving subject practice I showed them how using manual settings have the advantage of offering a constant shutter speed insuring the action can be frozen properly, without any blurring.
We stayed in manual mode as we finished the lesson with a bit of flash portrait practice. They both only have the pop-up flashes on their DSLRs, but I think I convinced them to give more money to Canon and invest in an external flash since they really want to make good portraits of their kids and family. This time I let the ladies take their turns as being the models!
It was a fun time and I hope they are photographing their kids on a near daily basis!