Photography Tips

Sony A57 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson in St. Petersburg Florida with Jennifer

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Jennifer with her new Sony A57 DSLR camera during our first photography lesson in St. Petersburg, FloridaI met Jennifer with her new Sony A57 in downtown St. Petersburg for a 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson getting her prepared for an upcoming trip to Thailand!  I of course have been there twice so in between photography tips we talked a little about what it is like on that side of the world.  

I do not often get hands on with Sony DSLRs, which seem to feature newer technology than Nikons and Canons.  Jennifer's Sony A57 featured an electronic viewfinder, so when you hold the camera up to your eye, you are seeing a digital screen, not actually seeing through the lens.  This means things look underexposed in the viewfinder if your settings are not right.  It would take some getting used to for me to use a viewfinder like that.  It also does not have a moving mirror, so the camera is cable of 10 fps, which is very fast!

Jennifer will be getting an external flash to pair with her DSLR so we will meet up again once she adds to her photography gear collection!

Nikon D5000 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson in St. Petersburg Florida with Joe

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Joe with his newly acquired Nikon D5000 in North Straub Park during our first DSLR photography lessonI first met Joe over a year ago at an event I was shooting for Office Depot.  I have seen him subsequently at North Shore Dog Park where he brings his dog Tux.  His dog looks rather similar to my own beloved Kiki.  They play together very roughly at the park, but they both seem to have a lot of fun doing it!  Joe told me the other day he got a Nikon D5000 and said he would like to take a 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson.  

We met on a pleasant semi-winter Florida afternoon in downtown St. Petersburg where I helped Joe become familiar with his Nikon and how to change the necessary settings for making well exposed and sharp shots using the 18-55mm lens he has right now and giving him some advice on what lens he may wish to get next.  

During the lesson we went on a small tour of the downtown waterfront area starting at the Museum of Fine Arts and its kapok tree before eventually ending up in North Straub Park.  When Joe gets some new photography gear I will be seeing him again in this official capacity, and before then no doubt in the dog park too!

Morean Arts Center Intro to Photography Class Winter 2013

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Practicing using the meter and reading the histogram at my winter 2013 Morean Arts Center photo classLast week I started teaching a new intro to DSLR photography class at the Morean Arts Center in St. Petersburg, Florida.  For the winter class I have five students, up one from the fall class!  It is a diverse group of people though most have pretty much the same photography experience level.  In the first two classes I have spent much of the time teaching each student how to use her/his specific DSLR and getting them all setup and on the same page with being able to change all five settings necessary for making a well exposed and sharp shot in any given shooting conditions.  

We have now moved on to learning how to use the meter to get a pretty good idea of exposure before pushing the shutter, and then how to read the histogram to understand the exposure exactly after pressing the shutter.  One student volunteers to be the subject while the others practice.  The classroom has white walls and a dark gray wall making for two distinct backgrounds for portraits.  

For the third class I think we will be ready to venture outside and make some shots in the field!

Purple Hyacinth Flower Macro Photograph from Publix

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My purple hyacinth growing right in water in my living room!

I am a regular Publix (Florida grocery store franchise) Friday shopper, and have been all my adult life in Florida.  On a recent shopping trip I was thinking to finally get a new plant to replace the one that had long since died (of natural causes!) in my living room.  I was very quickly talked into getting the above purple hyacinth by the lady behind the counter.  Growing a plant right in a vase of water appealed to me, and she promised when in bloom the scent would fill the room.  She was right, it now smells great anytime I pass by the bloom!

Purple Hyacinth in bloom in my living room - Nikon D300 Nikkor 105mm VR Micro @ f/8 ISO 200 0.4 sec natural light

Having flowers right inside your house also makes for a very convenient photography subject too.  So my photography tip is if you live somewhere that is really cold, so cold it deters you from going outside with your DSLR in winter, then go out and buy some flowers and shoot from the comfort of your living room!

Canon T3i 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson in downtown St. Petersburg Florida with Jeannie

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Jeannie with her Canon T3i practicing photographing moving subjects in downtown St. Petersburg FloridaOn a slightly cool Saturday morning I met Jeannie for our first of four 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lessons in downtown St. Petersburg getting her started with her new Canon T3i.  Like many of my hundreds of photography students, Jeannie just got her DSLR after only shooting with small, point and shoot cameras in the past.  She did some reading in a photography book before we met though, and following a suggestion I gave her on what to do before the first lesson, she familiarized herself with how to change aperture, shutter speed, ISO, WB and focus mode on her Canon T3i.  Every first lesson I teach, pretty much for a student of any level of experience, starts with me showing that person how to change key settings on their DSLR camera body.  After all, even if you have full knowledge of the five key things to making a well exposed and sharp photograph in any situation, if you do not know how to change those settings on your camera, it does no good.

The Canon T3i has enough dedicated buttons that the menu is not needed to change any of the five key settings, which is an advantage when it comes to being able to quickly change one, two or all five of those settings as a shooting opportunity arises.  We covered a lot of things in the first lesson, concluding with some moving subject practice.  Jeannie put on her Canon 70-300mm lens and with Saturday morning being very busy in downtown St. Pete, there were plenty of cyclists, etc to practice the moving subject shooting technique on.

Jeannie has already written to me saying she has been out practicing since our first lesson, which is very good, and will help her even more when we meet for our second of four lessons.

Photography Tip - subject dictates lens dictates aperture

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If you find yourself thinking, which lens should I use?  Or if you are thinking, which aperture should I use?  Well, I suggest first thinking about what subject are you going to photograph.  I have lenses with the following focal lengths:  17-50mm, 50mm, 105mm, and 80-200mm.  Each one is very good at photographing different subjects.  After all, why have lenses that largely overlap in purpose?  Since I have these different lenses, how do I know which one to use?  And with what aperture?  I decide this by thinking of the subject first.  I phrase it like this:

subject dictates lens --> lens dictates aperture

Using the above image as a reference, if my subject was a single person for a headshot, that dictates to me I want to use my 80-200mm lens (pictured) and when I use that lens, I most often use it at f/5.6 (read this photography tip for more on which aperture for which lens).  In that way my subject dictates everything I need to know for making the shot as far as which lens & which aperture.  

Likewise, if my subject was a landscape, that would then dictate that I use my 17-50mm lens and that lens dictates that I most often want to use an aperture of f/11.  

So my advice is to always think of your subject first, then think which lens is best for that, and then for each lens you have you know which aperture you like to shoot at with it.  If you only have one lens, or a lens with a wide focal range of 18-200mm for example, you can still use the same process, just instead subject dictates lens dictates aperture, it would be subject dictates focal range dictates aperture.  I would think of the lens then as an 18-50mm and a 50mm-200mm in that regard.

Photography Tip - Enable Highlights mode

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Go to Highlight alert on Canon DSLRs to show any overexposed areas when reviewing your shots.One very useful feature that is often not on by default in DSLR cameras, is the view highlights mode.  Enabling this mode allows you to see which areas of a photograph have blown out highlights.  The areas will flash giving a clear signal that part of the photograph is overexposed and that you may want to adjust exposure to bring back detail in those highlights.

Nikon offers many types of review views including highlights.As usual, Nikon does highlights mode much better than Canon.  No matter what review mode you look at on a Canon DSLR, the highlights will always be flashing.  This gets annoying when you just want to see the composition of the shot and you may have intentionally overexposed some areas.  On Nikon highlights have their very own review view.  

The black areas in the white sky are the flashing highlight signalIn the image above the large black areas in the sky indicate the portions of the photograph that are overexposed, or blown out.  Those black areas will flash on and off clearing letting you know, "hey, the sky is totally blown out, did you really intend to do that?"