Pam using her Canon 60D with Canon 10-22mm ultrawide angle lens on her tripod in downtown St. PetersburgAs you can see, for our second of four DSLR Photography Lessons, Pam was not afraid of getting into the thick of the concrete jungle to get a shot. This evening's lesson focused on using a tripod to compose architecture shots. We mostly photographed the skyscraper condos of downtown St. Petersburg before ending along the waterfront.
I showed Pam a few tripod basics, like making sure the front of your lens points over one of the three legs of the tripod (for extra stability) and that if you do not need your tripod's full height, you should use only the upper portions of the legs, leaving the thin (and less stable) legs unextended. When using a tripod I also recommend using a cable release, which Pam has, so as to avoid any shake from your finger pressing (and shaking) the shutter release button.
It was a bit of a learning experience for me as well helping Pam compose shots with her ultra-wide Canon 10-22mm lens, as I do not own a similar lens and no past student has either. One really has to think, "I am going to shoot wide, and only wide," as even at 22mm everything still looks wide in the frame. My next gear purchase though, besides a Spider Belt, will be an ultra-wide angle lens, probably the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 as several friends have it and love it and I have not heard anything but praise for that lens.
For our third lesson next week Pam and I will be using 50mm f/1.8 lenses exclusively.
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