What is the most important thing to know in digital photography?
I am taking digital photography(the class) and all we do is read the whole period, I want to know the main things to know to pass the class instead of all the other crap!
Tags: know, important, Photography, other crap, DigitalRelated posts:
What does your syllabus outline the requirements are for the class? (Maybe you should ask the instructor.)
Reading is sometimes required to gain information that helps to know what you are supposed to do and not supposed to do.
I would guess one of the most important things is to have a working digital camera. Then you’ll need: fresh batteries, a good eye, working knowledge of the camera and plenty of picture taking opportunities.
Keep Arting!
Jeff (weseye) Wesley
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5660189
First and foremost, the most important thing to know in digital photography is what YOU want to take pictures of. I took my digital photo class and it seemed that everyone there knew what they wanted to take pictures of or was already doing what they wanted. I had no clue, I just knew I wanted to take pictures. But after being there for a while and experimenting with our different assignments, I figured out that I love doing portrait and landscape photography. If you don’t know WHAT you want to do, it’s a lot harder to succeed in photography.
Photograph EVERYTHING. Just delete the ones you don’t like. It gives you a load of practice.
-SarWestMay
You have a very lazy instructor … you may want to drop the class and find a better “hands-on” instructor.
I don’t know what you think is “crap”. You need to learn three things to be successful. 1) learn to make perfect exposures every time you press the shutter release, 2) learn how to use light to best describe your subject. 3) do all this intuitively.
These skills are important for both shooting film and using a digital camera. Where the difference begins is in the darkroom … traditional or digital
While it does sound like you have a lazy instructor, chances are the information your are reading isn’t “crap”.
Digital photography is still based on the same principles as film photography. You need to understand aperture, shutter speed, sensitivity, composition, light quality, light temperature, and many other topics to truly master photography.
Your instructor or class syllabus is probably a more useful source of information than YA, but I’d say the basics are:
• Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. What they are, how they affect exposure, and how they affect image qualities. Be able to calculate equivalent exposures.
• Focal length. What it is, what’s normal, wide, and telephoto, how to select.
• Light. The qualities of different types of light, and how to use light and shadow to your advantage.
• Cameras. The different types and what all the controls do.
• White balance. What it is, how to use it, how to know when you’ve got it wrong.
• Focus. How to control it. Also, depth of field.
• Imaging parameters: resolution, sharpness, color balance, brightness, contrast, dynamic range, color saturation.
• Megapixels. What are they and how do they impact resolution for viewing and printing.
That should get you started. Note that’s just the technical stuff, which is the part of photography you can get by reading. There’s another world of knowledge regarding the artistic aspects - subject matter, composition, framing, timing, and applying all that technical stuff to actually making good pictures, that is best learned by doing and critiquing.
The most important thing in film and digital photography is to know how to use your eyes. Learn how to see what you are looking at.
The others all make valid points, but miss the most basic point of all - the thing to remember about Digital Photography is that it is Photography, just with a particular type of equipment.
Learn about Photography, it really is not that difficult.Stuff like:
Aperture - another name for an opening.
The odd numbering system is no more than how big the opening is compared to the focal length of the lens (you don’t have to know what that means yet - it’s marked on the lens). For example, if you have a 100mm lens, and the size of the opening is 50mm, then that size of opening/aperture is f2 (100 divided by 50 = 2) and so on. It also means that the smaller the number, the bigger the opening and the more light will enter the camera, and vice versa.
Shutter speed:
The device built into the camera that uncovers the light-sensitive area for a controllable amount of time. The numbers are usually fractions of a
second, eg 60 =1/60 sec, 1000 = 1/1000 sec and so on, until you get to long exposures (which just means how long the light sensor is ‘exposed’ to the light going through the lens). With longer times the numbers refer to whole seconds. The way the numbers increase/decrease is an approximate doubling of the preceding number or, going the opposite way, a halving of the preceding number.
A Stop:
each ‘difference’ in shutter speed or aperture is called a ’stop’. The camera controls can be altered in parts of a stop, often thirds - look at the way the numbers change as you alter the settings.
I’ll stop there, because you need to do some of your own work.
The point is not to be scared of the terminology and the equipment. The camera is no more than a tool, a means by which you communicate how you see the world.
If you need some more help, see my profile and get in touch; I’ll help if I can.