Learn the Fundamentals of Photography - Beginner Course

1. Introduction: Welcome to my photography course. Nice to meet you. My name is Roy and I'm a passionate photographer. When I was young, I always went out photographing. I never stopped doing that because I really love creating and I'm thrilled to show some of my work with you. Anyways, in this course, you will learn the fundamentals of photography. Step by step, I will teach you every element that is needed to take a good photo. We are talking about fundamentals like the light triangle, aperture, shutter speed, wide balance, focus with your camera perspective, and everything about lenses of the camera. All the lessons are included with animations to make it more visual. All the lessons are also included with assignments, so you can immediately practice your new skill and make it your own. This class is for the beginner. If you have no skills or a little. It will help you to understand the use and the fundamentals of the camera and photography. You can take that photo knowing what to do. You need a camera body with a lens for this course. It doesn't need to be a very fancy one. You will understand and learn how to use your camera and to take photos, knowing what settings to use when you know all the different techniques you can photograph, what you want. You can share your photos with me and show me your progress. Let me know which photo you enjoyed creating the most and what techniques you have learned. So let's get started and I hope to see you in the first lesson. 2. Aperture, how does a light triangle work & Assignment: The aperture. As you may have noticed, photography is all about finding the right balance with various ingredients. One of those ingredients is the aperture. What does the aperture actually do? The aperture is the size of the hole in the lens, which you can make bigger and smaller. This way you can create more or less de field. You also use this to determine whether more or less light falls on your light sensitive sensor. What are you actually setting with the aperture? The aperture is the hole located in your lens. You can allow more or less light to reach your sensor With the right combination of the shutter speed, aperture, ISO, you can create a good image. You also determine the depth of field with your aperture. The bigger the hole in your lens, the lower the number is. For example, 2.8 basically means that you have a little death a field for example. You can make the ice in a potrait sharp and the background super blurry if you now want a lot of death a field. This means that the hole in your lens is supposed to be smaller, and therefore the aperture needs to be higher. For example, 11 or 16. With this, you will photograph the portrait sharply, but also get the background a lot sharper. The aperture is the light opening in your lens. Simply put the hole in your lens. You can make the aperture larger or smaller so that more or less light falls on your camera sensor. With the aperture, you also have different steps. For example, 1.8 or 2.8 or 45.6 all the way up to, for example, 22, the aperture. Each step is also called a stop. 8-11 for example, is one stop. One stop is one step. Let's take it to the test. Let's start with the aperture assignment. Now we all got some information and theory about the aperture, and now let's experiment. It's the best lesson anyway, right? I want you to get two objects or things. For instance, right here, we've got two flowers behind each other a little bit, I'm going to focus on this one. This one is out of focus. I'm going to start with an aperture of 2.8 and I'm going to upgrade it all the way to 22. And you can see what the aperture does from 2.8 to 22. You really understand the aperture. Get your tripod, get your camera and go out there. Or put some things behind each other and go experiment with your aperture. My lens can start from 2.8 I go all the way up to 22, what I just said, but try for yourself, maybe you've got a lens, what starts at 5.6 Start at 5.6 and go all the way up to 22. For example, I do put my camera in a mode because I only want to focus on aperture at the moment. And your camera automatically will adapt the shutter speed with it, so you don't have to think about shutter speed yet. So let's start. 3. Shutter Speed & Assignment: Shutter speed. Super nice. One of my favorite elements of the camera and photography with the shutter speed, you can create different effects if you have this under control. This way you can freeze moving objects or blur objects in your picture. The shutter speed determines the exposure time on the photo, sends the film of the sensor. This can be very fast, but it can also take a very long time. The faster you set your shutter speed, the less light can reach your sensor. The shutter is then only open for a short period of time, so the faster you have, the shorter speed, the more light you need. With a fast shutter speed, you freeze a subject, such as a running horse or someone who's cycling, for example. With a slow shutter, you need less light because the shutter is open for a longer period of time. Because the shutter is open longer, you'll have to deal with more movement though with the shutter speed, you determine what effect you want to give the photo and how much light can reach the film of the sensor. The shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second. You happen to have steps. The basic shutter speed is 250 of a second or 125 of a second. For example, with this shutter speed, you can shoot handheld one step between two shutter speeds. For example, 125 of a second or 1,200.50 of a second is called one stop. If you want to go one stop up or down with your shutter speed, it's called one stop. In photography, you also have a 160 of a seconds. Between 125 or 250 seconds. If you then want to go 125-1160 it's increasing your shutter speed by half a stop. A wall stop, therefore, is doubling or cutting your shutter speed time. You can go 125-250500 to 1,000 For example, welcome to the shutter speed assignment. Today I'm with Op. Here's my model for today. He's going to jump and we are going to freeze him in the moment that he's up in the air. But also the blurry mode. We're going to experiment with two different shutter speeds. One of the shutter speed is a very fast shutter speed, like 500. He is freeze in the picture. We're going to show it later. Also, we're going to make him very blurry, that he's jumping and you see the movement in the photo. And that's the challenge for today. All right? I'm going to put my shutter speed at 500 and my aperture at 5.6 My ISO, a little bit higher like 320, maybe I will push it up to 500 and we're going to freeze at the moment up first in the photo. After that we're going to change the settings to 125 of a second. We're going because you got more light when you put your shutter speed down. We have to compromise it. We put the ISO to 100. After that, I'm going to play with the aperture as well, to make the photo imbalance again. Let's start with the 500 shutter speed, and let's see what's happened happening. Because it's very sunny weather, we got a little bit more light, so we can also freeze him in the object. Otherwise, we had to put the ISO a little bit higher. But for now, let's do this. 31. Yes, nice. All right, we just made a photo that is freezed in the image, but for now we're going to change the settings to 25 of a second. He's going to be more blurry, more fake. I'm going to change the settings from the shutter speed to 125 of a second. I also have to adapt the aperture and the ISO because you want to photo imbalance. I put my ISO 500-200 and I'm going to play with the aperture. Let's see what setting is, right. Let's try 321. Yes. All right. Good luck with this assignment and have a lot of fun. Thank you very much, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 4. ISO & Assignment: The ISO is also one of the most important ingredients for a good photo. You may have wondered, what exactly does ISO do? Actually, that's very simple. You used to have a roll of film on which you took a photo on. It had to certain light sensitivity. The higher the ISO, the less light you need to take a good photo. This allows you to use a faster shutter speed and a higher aperture, or still take a well exposed photo in a somewhat dark place with the. So you set the light sensitivity of your sensor. For example, if you think you have set the correct shutter speed and aperture, but the photo is still too dark, your O is probably too low. You can change the SO 100-400 for example. Because you have raised the SO and this increased the light sensitivity to 400, your photo becomes lighter. With the same shutter speed and aperture, you can give that extra something for well exposed photo. Most cameras start with an O of 100 and often goes up to 6,400 or higher. You also have to deal with the concept of a, SO 100-2000 is one stop. The higher you set the isovalue, the more sensitive the sensor will be, and therefore allows more light. The higher you set the isovalue, the more noise this will produce in your photo. This means the lower you'll have set the, SO the higher the quality of your photo is, Try to photograph with the lowest possible O value. Only compensate if there is no other option. The amount of noise you experience in the photo will be different. Per, in general, a camera with a large sensor can handle a higher ISO value before experience noise than a camera with a smaller sensor. But the lower you set your ISO, the higher your photo quality will be. My advice will always show that 100 or 200. So unless there is no other option. Now you know all about. So let's get to the assignment. All right, the ISO assignment. Let's start, I'm going to shoot some photos with ISO 125, all the way up to 20,000 ISO. Every camera has a different range of how much ISO you can use. Just look at your camera, what is the best settings and what is possible. You should try also when you're shooting just on a dark spot right now, when you're testing how much ISO you can use before you got the noise, I'm going to shoot every photo. I also set my shutter speed a little bit higher, that's why the photo is more dark. And I'm going to show you what's happening when you yeah, scale your ISO up. I'm also going from 125, all the way up to 20,000 ISO. And you can see what's going to happen with the photos. And try it at your own place. Try to play with it. Put your camera on a tripod. Put your camera at manual, and yeah, just go play with your ISO. Let's go. 5. White Balance & Assignment: White balance. White balance is important to get your photo in the right color ways. It is important that you at least understand the influence of white balance in your pictures. The correct white balance settings shows the photo with the correct colors. You can set the color temperature with the white balance. This color temperature is also expressed in Kelvin degrees. With the white balance, you can cool or warm a photo. Sometimes the photo is very yellow or very blue and you don't want this. We are going to use this technique to control the right temperature in your photo. Let's start. What do we need? We need camera and the tripod. Put your camera on the tripod. We're going to figure out which wide balance symbol is the right one in every different situation. It could be different what degrees of calving you need to use or what symbol you need to use. Let's find out. Because the sun is very bright today, we're going to use the lens hood. This is because you don't want any flares or light spots on your photo. This cost you a lot of quality if you don't use it sometimes. Let's start with the wide balance. You also can change your own degrees of Kelvin. We're going to start with 2,500 And take every time, and next step till 10,000 Let's start with 2,500 degrees of Kelvin. All right. We just tap it a little bit. Up to 3,000 degrees of Gulfin. We are going to move it up again to 4,000 degrees of Calvin. Let's go now we use 5,500 degrees of Calvin, and that's just a normal daylight, it should fit today. All right. Now we're going to pop it up to 6,600 degrees of Calvin, and a little bit more again, to 8,300 degrees of Calvin. We arrived to the last step, 10,000 degrees of Kelvin. We just go through all the symbols first we're going to use the automatic white balance symbol. This is your body and your lens decides themselves how much degrees Kelvin it's going to use, and it's supposed to be the right one. Let's see. All right, let's use the next one. This is the artificial light. The next one is another one, also artificial but with a different degrees of Calvin. Yes. The next one is the Sun. It should be this weather. Let's see if it fits. All right. The next one is flash light. The next one is for cloudy weather. The next one is sun with very hard shadows. Now it's your turn. Just take your camera. Just go through all the symbols and through all the degrees of Calvin and just look what they do in every situation. Can this be different? In every situation, try to look at the right degrees of calf or the right symbol. The more you figure out, the easier it's going to get. Good luck with this assignment. 6. What is Camera Obscura and how do you make one?: Camera obscura literally translate into dark room from the old Latin language. Essentially, this means a dark and closed of room, either big or small, whether the light that enters the room through a tiny hole or pinhole. The same thing happens when you let the light through a lens. Now we are going to make our own camera obscura. This is not an assignment, but if you want, you can do it of course. And I will tell how you can create it. All right, we're going to start to create camera obscura. I just put here a paper wall, paper background on two tripods. We're going to move the background up and down to have the right and accurate point, to have the right sharpness, we can move this around. Then we go over here, we got some windows. We're going to tape with paper and black paper, very thick, black paper tape. We're going to tape the wall window, there is no light coming through. Then we go come over here in the middle and put a small hole or a small pinhole in here with a scissor or a knife, make a very small pinel in it. Then you will see you get a reflection on the screen. Move the screen up and forward to create the right angle to make the image what it's going to create sharp. But if you put a hole in it and it's too big, then you can take another piece of paper and make this a little bit smaller. You can tape it over or hold it before, and then you can play with the shortness of the image. And with camera obscura, This way you can create the image what you see outside upside down on this paper wall. 7. Focusing: How does it work?: Focus Today is all about focus. If you going to shoot, going down to the Beats or whatever and photos you want. Sharp photos. How to pull sharp pictures. All right, let's go with this lens. You can set your lens via this thing. You can put it on manual and on out of focus, also on the camera. Not every camera has this function, but you can put it on manual and outer focus. Keep in mind you put both buttons in outer focus because otherwise it won't work. If you put the button on the lens on manual, the outer focus is not working, then you can try to pull focus with manual, the lens on this ring. The other ring is to zoom in and zoom out. This ring is for pull your own focus and yeah, get your image right Also in your lens. It depends on what camera and lens you have. This one have 55 focus points. I really like to shoot with just focus point. You can, with this button, you can put the short point wherever you like in the frame. You can change how much points you want to use. If you want to use 55 points, all the frame is sharp, it's going to pull focus in all the frame. If you just want four points, it's only the four points. Where you aim at is going to sharp. I really like just to use one or two points. The reason for that is I can change this point where I want. I can pull the focus on the point or the thing or the object in the frame I really like to be focused at. I got total control over the focus. You've got also different settings you can set your camera in for focus with your camera in your lens. One of them is eye out of focus when you shoot fashion or portraits more close. It can be very handy and very nice that your camera focuses on the eyes. You always want the eyes sharp. Check in your camera or just on Google. If your camera has this setting, not every camera does just find out and go experiment with this setting. You also got face out of focus. The camera will then focus on the face when someone is moving or a portrait or whatever. Yeah, the face is always sharp. Continuous focus. Continuous focus is very nice for moving objects like someone walking toward car is driving what it does, your focus will adapt to the object. When a person is walking towards you, your focus will automatically keep the person in focus. Keep in mind your battery will be lower more quickly because your lens needs to focus all the time and adjust. Yeah, the movement continuous focus is just very nice for moving objects. Single shot focus, I really like single shot focus because you've got a lot of control. When do you use single shot focus? Single shot focus is just nice for an object just, or a tree or a person. What just stands still for single shot focus. When you put your release button in, the camera will focus at that moment and lock your focus. Then you shoot your photo and then you refocus again. I really like it because you've got a lot of control, But for moving objects, it's not a very nice focus. Now the bonus. All right, for the bonus round, I put my camera on a tripod and I put my camera in a live view. Also, I put my lens in manual mode. I just can pull my own focus with the focus pool ring on my lens. At the moment, we are standing in front of a little tree and I want to photograph a Tw. We are in live view mode. Not every camera has this option. But if you have put it in live view and you got here a little button plus and in, you can zoom in on your live view. Now it's sharp, but when I focus pull ring on my lens, I can see what is sharp. Because I am in on the tick, I really precisely decide what part of this twick I want to be sharp. You got more control over this focus pulling and then when I zoom out, I know my focus is on the right spot and now I can shoot my photo. 8. All about perspective: Knowing the basics of perspective can help you take photos that are static, to look at, which rules are important to use and to know. We're going to talk about perspective, the golden ratio and the rule of words. By having this knowledge, you will soon look differently through your camera than before. There are three types of perspectives. You'll have the frog I feel, the bird I feel, and the eye level perspective, the fro I feel, takes a photo from a low point of a few upwards. Because you use the low point of view, you'll get a certain tension in your photo. This also applies to the bird. I feel only the bird I feel is photographed from top to bottom. You take different position here. You also have the eye level perspective. This is if the object or portrait, for example, has the same point of view as you and there is therefore no differences I level. Here are some examples of the three types of perspectives, starting with the bird. I feel this is the frogs. I feel this is eye level perspective. All right, now that you know what kinds of perspectives there are, it's also very important that we explore the golden ratio and the real words. I'm going to use an illustration to explain this. Probably often as a starting photographer, you shoot without thinking about composition, so to speak. Many photographers photograph the subject in the middle. This often results in photos that are a bit boring to look at. This is where the rule of Ts and the golden ratio come into play. The rule of D divides the image into nine equal areas, the lines that create the perfect intersections. These are important points. The object of your photo has to line out on a point on the grid. This creates an image that is more pleasant to look at. This also includes the rules one and the two t distribution. For example, by photographing a landscape in this way and by placing the horizon at one third or at two third, you immediately get a pleasant picture of it. If there is still a subject such as a tree or a sun, use the cutting lines and points. This is the basic of the rule of Third Golden Ratio is a mathematical formula and the spaces are also classified on that basis For a starting photographer, I would recommend having the rule of third completely under your control. First, when this is your second nature, you can develop further into the golden ratio if you like. Basically, it's the same. We're going to focus on the rule of D, which I personally use 100% the assignment perspective. Let's start. We are going to make few photos for every perspective. Start with the bird feel After that start just the frog eyes feel When you finish this and you're completely have, please also the eye level of when you completed this six focus and you're completely happy with the perspective, with the photography. Then we're going to move to the rule of third, we are in this beautiful nature park in the Netherlands and we are going to look for a beautiful landscape and use the rule of, let's go after we randomly shot with the camera, this awesome cow on high level perspective. Now it's time for the rule of the rule of third, I found this amazing, beautiful landscape over here with this cool tree. Let's go, let's shoot this with the rule of all right, now it's time for the rule of third. Like I said, try put the horizon on one third or two third and the sky, yeah, same, 13 or two third. The cutting line, cutting line put on one of the lines, a three or portrait or something. To make the third work, you can use the one third and two third, but you can add on the vertical lines one object. Now we're going to use this three. Let's go and let's shoot it. And I'm going to show the results of the photos with you. And after we did that, it's your turn to play and find the beautiful landscape or make a beautiful portrait. With the rule of third, let's start. 9. Lenses – What's your favorite?: Types of lenses with a camera body alone. There is, of course, nothing to do. I still remember when I first started with photography, I didn't know which lens to choose from. For what kind of photo do I choose, which kind of lens? I didn't have the right lenses for what I wanted to photograph. Fortunately, I went ahead and experimented a lot with various lenses. I want to help you also a little bit with the choice of lenses. What is important to know is with choice of lens you have and what each lens does this way, you can make a choice with width lens or lenses you would like to start. You can choose from two types of lenses, a zoom and a fixed focal length lens. The lower the millimeters, the wider the angle we see in the photo. The higher the millimeters, the more we have a zoom. Lenses with a low focal length are generally referred as a wide angle lens. Lenses with a high focal length are also known as a tailor photo lends. Wide angle lenses are often used for interiors, landscape overview, architecture, and group photos. These are lenses such as a 12, 18 millimeter or an 18, 35 millimeter. You also have R round lenses. These are often zoom lenses that you can use as a wild angle, but also go towards the Taylor Photo lens. Often when you buy SLR camera, a kid lens is included. This is usual in 18, 55 or 16, 50 millimeters. Those are popular lenses to start with. You can shoot wide angle and zoom a little bit. The most R round lenses that I use are 24, 70 or 24, 105 millimeters. These are lenses that have both wide angle and a little bit of tailor photo options. This gives you a space to use the wide angle options, but also to zoom in for a certain detail or for instance, a portrait. When we talk about Taylor photo lenses, we are talking about long focal length lenses. This means you are zoomed in when you look through the camera, feel finder. The distance between you and the object is therefore greater. What I personally think is a wonderful Taylor lens is the 7,200 millimeters. This allows you to photograph object reasonably close, but also from a far away distance. These type of lenses are often used by sport and nature photography. But also the 300,405.600, millimeters, it just depends on how close you want to get to a certain object from where you stand with your camera. For example, you could use a 600 millimeter lens when you're photographing a wild lion. You don't want to get to close to it. Now you also have lenses with a fixed focal length. These are lenses that you cannot zoom in or out with. These are lenses with a fixed angle now or here you think. But Roy, with a zoom lens, you have much more choice in which angle you want to photograph. Why should I choose a fixed focal point at all? A zoom lens have many more parts in the lens and is often a bit heavier. The fixed focal length lens has the advantage that they are much more light sensitive. The aperture can be much larger, and therefore provides a smaller depth of field. Also, because the lens has a fixed focal point, they are sharper. The glass is often processed differently than the zoom lens. A lens with a fixed focal point is also called a prime imported photography prime. Lenses of 50 millimeter are often used, or my personal favorite, the 85 millimeter. In addition to the number of millimeters of a lens, you also have to take into account what light intensity the lens can transmit. This represented by the leader F. The F also stands for aperture. For example, the lens is an 85 millimeters F 1.8 Finally, I would like you to briefly introduce you to the tailor converter ring. With this ring, you can double your focal length. For example, this 50 millimeter lens gets a doubling in focal length because of this ring. The lens with this ring is now a 100 millimeter. For example, you can efficiently double the size of your focal point. The only downside to is that you need more light for the same photo. These are nice tools, but often with good weather or good lightning conditions. All right, now you know the basics of lenses. Let's move on. 10. Basics Light Painting: Welcome to writing with light. Photography is, as they say, nothing more or less than writing with light. The word photography comes from the Greek language and literally translate into writing with light. This is how it works. The light comes through the lens, the shutter, and the body of your camera opens for however long your shutter speed is set. At this way, the light can reach the sensor. Once the light reaches the sensor and the time of your sugar speed has been reached, the sugar will shut and you have taken a photograph. To start off correctly, I thought we should have a little bit of fun and I add an awesome assignment to this. For this assignment, we are literally going to write with light. All right, let's start our assignment. Writing with Light. We are going to write with light. What do you need? We need a camera. Lights like a flash, light, light from your phone, something that just gives light. You need to put your camera on something. What's stable, like a little table or a tripod, or somewhere outside on the wall. It doesn't matter, just don't move your camera. When we're going to start, the following settings are acquired. We are going to use the shutter speed of 3 seconds, aperture of 14, and the ISO 100. Make sure your room is as dark as possible or go outside and make sure the environment is as dark as possible. We don't want any light source anywhere, we just want a dark place. Because the shuttle speed is at 3 seconds. We have 3 seconds of time to ride with the light. All right, let's start. All right, please make your canvas as big as possible so you have to canvas to right. We're going to start with a circle. Please light three to one. Yes. Just try to move a little bit. Three? Yes. Okay. Choose a letter and make this letter 321. Yes. Let's move again. One. Yes. What also could be fun is to use a blue colored filter over your white lighting. Your white lighting becomes blue light. Okay, Let's move again with a blue light. One. Yes. Right? Wave around. Yes. All right, I really hope you did enjoy this assignment. Let's move on to the next lesson. 11. Bonus fun Lesson: The History of Photography: It always helps to get better knowing where your craft roots from. The first picture Alpha made was in 18 26 by a friends man named Joseph Nips. His inventions blew life into the world of photography. Joseph was able to capture an image from the view from his window. He did this by letting light hit a very light sensitive sheet. Joseph had to wait 8 hours for this photo to be processed. To be processed into the sheet. Imagine having to wait 8 hours for one photograph to be taken. In the following years, a lot of progress was made in the world of photography. In 80 36 another pioneer emerged. His name was Louis Dag. He was also a Frenchman. He became famous for improving the quality of the development of a picture. A lot in 18, 41 negatives were invented, so people could easily multiply the same picture from their film. The first ever colored image was created by a Scott, his name James Clerk Maxwell. He achieved this by projecting a red, green, and blue filtered image on top of each other. The next step of four photography was in 18 88, when the first cheap cameras were developed for everybody. Since then, everyone was able to take pictures because of this event. You and me right now can take all the pictures and photographs we want. Land from Boston had developed the Polaroid and put it for sale first in 1948. You can take your photo and admire this captured image right away. What an invention, who doesn't want to know them. This was a huge success and many still think polaroids are crazy awesome who doesn't know them. In 1981, Sony came up with the first digital photo. In the meantime, it was developing into where we are today with photography. Adobo, Photoshop, and all kinds of programs have made as much as possible these days. In 1990, a Photoshop came and a win for digital photography. The sky is the limit. Now, photo manipulation also started here, the standard for digital photo editing and the dark room replacement.