Kasia with her brand new Nikon D700 during our first photography lesson in downtown St. PetersburgOn a humid evening in downtown St. Petersburg after a sudden rain fell, I met Kasia for our first 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson. She is just getting started in the DSLR world, but enters it with the powerful Nikon D700. That is plenty of DSLR to grow into! Her D700 was brand, brand new. We started the lesson with me helping her just setup the camera itself (date, time, file naming system) and then I showed her some of the more in-depth settings that I use from years of experience shooting Nikon. We followed that with a basic tour of the camera body giving a name to each part (finger dial, thumb dial, D-pad, etc.) so that she could understand my instructions for changing settings.
The rain stopped and we began practicing how to get the best exposure by setting aperture, shutter speed and ISO and determining when using Aperture priority mode is good enough, and when it is much better to just use Manual mode.
We concluded the lesson with me giving Kasia some lens buying advice. I look forward to our second lesson once Kasia gets in a new lens next week.
