Terri with her Nikon D80 showing good handholding technique on a bench in North Straub Park in downtown St. Petersburg - setup: f/11 ISO 200 1/60th SB-800 Speedlight in TTL mode hotshoe mountedMy first morning lesson in awhile was my first DSLR Photography Lesson with Terri and her Nikon D80. Terri has experience from the film SLR world, but needed to know how to translate that to the DSLR world. I enjoyed hearing Terri refer to adjusting the ISO on her D80 in terms of using film speed! Isn't it hard to imagine now that changing your ISO in the pre-digital world required changing your entire roll of film?
It was a pleasant overcast morning in downtown St. Petersburg, the first time I had a lesson all summer that did not require taking an immediate shower upon returning home. I began the lesson as I do most by explaining aperture, then the rest of the 4-step setup for making any photograph. Terri liked my "top of the mountain" explanation for aperture and how the smaller numbers are larger apertures with shallower depths of field. The next great revelation was that of which focus mode to use when. She had been using AF-A which is useless. The camera is not good at deciding which to use on the fly as AF-A claims to do. Only AF-S and AF-C should ever be used.
We concluded the lesson with some park bench portraits with me having Terri take one shot without flash and then the next using her pop-up flash. Even with just the pop-up flash on her D80 the difference flash made in the overall exposure was great. The background was less blown out because the flash exposed the subject and the rest of the exposure settings exposed the background much more accurately.
I look forward to next working with Terri out at The Pier using her 200-400mm lens!
--Professional Model DSLR Photography Lessons now available!