Canon 40D

Johns Pass Village Florida DSLR Photography Lesson with Jenn & Canon 40D

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Jenn (center) and daughter visit from Canada and take a DSLR photography lesson at Johns Pass VillageVisiting all the way from Canada, I met Jenn & her daughter at Johns Pass Village for a very enjoyable DSLR photography lesson.  They definitely perpetuate the idea that all Canadians are very nice people!  We started out talking about how to set their Canon cameras to shoot in manual mode and why one wants to shoot in manual mode in the first place.  They had been bouncing around using the various scene modes and sometimes semi-auto modes like aperture priority without really doing it on purprose.  I assured them that those scene modes could be left behind and demonstrated that by checking out the supposed "sports" mode.  It set the camera to shutter speeds ranging from 1/320th to 1/400th of a second!  That is way below the minimum 1/500th needed to freeze sports action.  Hence, scene modes are useless and not to ever be used.

Coming down off the boardwalk we found an egret that did not mind being photographed (see above) and it allowed Jenn & her daughter to practice both changing settings (we were photographing fast action before) and how to get in best position to photograph a subject.  

They will be in Florida for over another week so I may meet them again for a second lesson.  

DSLR Photography Lesson with Rossie & his Canon 40D

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Nikon D300 Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens @ f/8 ISO 200 1/60th Strobist: Nikon SB-800 Speedlight handheld in commander mode

I learned a little bit about Rossie's interesting career before we met for our first DSLR Photography Lesson this morning in downtown St. Petersburg.  He has worked as an illustrator for the Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times and even lived in my old hometown area of Lee County.  He showed me some of his photographs and I was really impressed with the lighting, which he said he used his serious Photoshop skills to produce.  So in our lesson he wanted to start to learn how to make photographs using more photography skills, less processing skills.  He recently bought a Canon 40D from a friend and had been shooting in auto-mode, as many of my past students used to do.

We remedied that immediately by shooting in aperture priority mode, Av on the 40D's dial.  Rossie already had many instincts for composition, but not much experience with a DSLR itself or specific shooting techniques for specific types of photograph.  For example, I noticed that Rossie really likes to photograph people, so as I had him practice on me I said make sure to always set the focus on the eyes when making a portrait.  He had not heard that before, and it is not one of those pieces of photography knowledge that widely floats around unless you specifically look for it, and how looks for something they did not know to look for in the first place?

Despite the above serious portrait of Rossie, he is a very jovial person and I had a great time during the lesson listening to his stories and his thoughts on photography, etc.  I like people that speak freely, with candor.  I look forward to our next lesson, which will focus on shooting with a 50mm lens. 

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