Renita visiting from Melbourne with her Nikon D5100 for our 1-on-1 photography lesson in St. Petersburg FloridaOn a surprisingly chilly spring morning in downtown St. Petersburg Florida, I met Renita visiting all the way from Melbourne for a 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson with her Nikon D5100. In what is somewhat unusual for a photographer nowadays, Renita had several prime lenses. Back in the old days zoom lenses were not sharp enough for pros, so they carried around bags full of prime lenses. Renita shoots high school basketball a lot and needs the larger apertures afforded by prime lenses.
Despite a lot of shooting experience, she had just started using aperture priority mode after only using auto-mode. These two modes are actually the worst choices for sports photography so I began the lesson by teaching Renita my 5-step process for shooting in manual mode in order to get well exposed and sharp images shot after shot. Like many people, she thought shooting in manual might require adjusting 10, 15 or more things as a DSLR is covered in buttons and dials. At the most it is only five things and in reality, very rarely do you have to change all five between shots.
I think Renita will take what we practiced during the 2-hour lesson and improve her photography quickly and get better results from the very next time she goes shooting. It was a fun time with her and she may come over to the west coast again for another photography lesson.
