Photography: DSLR Camera Basics

1. Intro: In this course, we're gonna go over the DSLR camera basics and how to use a camera with an interchangeable lens more efficiently. And the three settings needed to make a better photo. By the end of this course, you're going to be more knowledgeable about your camera and how to take better photos. So without making any way any longer, Let's learn about the DSLR camera basics. 2. Class Project Overview: Welcome to Photography and more specifically the DSLR camera basics. Before we get started, I want to talk about the class project, and this is going to be available for you to download. And you're gonna be able to work on it while you watch this course. Or you can work on it after you're done watching this. It is a quiz and it will show you what you've learned throughout this course. And I encourage you to upload it. Once you're done. If you have any questions, please feel free to message me. I would love to help you if you're struggling or if you need any help when it comes to this project. 3. 3 Fundamentals: Let's talk about the three fundamentals of taking pictures with our DSLR. The first is shutter speed. Shutter speed is how fast we take a photo. And typically you'll see numbers like 1/60, 41/200. When it comes to shutter speed, 1/60 is slower than 1/200 aperture. Now, this is how blurry we want our background besides the subject that's in-focus. So if we want a blurry background will have a lower aperture. And if we want a less blurry background or a more focused background, we're going to have a higher aperture. So e.g. an F18, referring to the aperture that is the lower number. When it's an F18 aperture, we're going to have a blurry background. When our aperture is F117, our background is going to be more in-focus. It will be less blurry. The last fundamental we're talking about is ISO. So this is artificial light that we add to our photo. So numbers, you'll see our numbers like 100 and e.g. 800. And ISO of 100 is a lower number and provides less light than ISO of 800. Again, ISO is artificial light. We want to have a lowest number of this as possible. Now questions to ask when taking your photo. Is the subject moving? If your subject is moving, that is going to deal with your shutter speed. That's how fast we're taking our photo when it comes to how is the lighting. This is going to deal with our ISO. How much light do we need to add to this image? If any? Remember, we want our ISO to be as low as possible. What do I want in-focus? Do we want our image to have a background that's blurry or a more in-focus background that we can see the trees or how the mountains are. Where do we just want our person that we're taking a photo of to be in focus and the rest is very blurry. 4. Types of Photography: When it comes to taking portrait photography, the types of conditions that I'm usually in is the person is standing still there posing, and it's a really sunny day. My typical settings for portrait photography is probably going to be a shutter speed of 1/400, an aperture of 1.8, and an ISO of 100. Now let's talk about why I have these types of numbers. Starting from ISO 101 is a sunny day. I keep the ISO as low as possible, which are for my camera is an ISO of 100. When it comes to aperture, I prefer my portraits to have a blurry background. So an F1 0.8 is going to be perfect for that, the shutter speed is going to be 1/400, which is a very high number when taking a photo, it's going to be very quick. What's great about this type of portrait photography is that all I have to do is set my ISO and my aperture one time, and the rest is up to shutter speed. This will determine how much light we're letting in our camera. We let in less light the higher our shutter speed is. So 1/400 does not let in a lot of light. It's a very quick photo while aperture is an F18, this lets a lot of light in our camera is wide-open and receives a lot of light. Iso of 100 has an artificial light that it's adding, but it's very, very small. Let's move on to family photography. The more people, more people will be in this picture. So we're probably going to need a higher aperture. I typically use a three-point five aperture to be safe with this type of photography. The reason why is because it will still provide a pretty blurry background with some of the background in-focus, but mostly just the people. This is because I don't want any of them to be out-of-focus because you will be able to tell shutter speed is going to vary because All portrait photography and family for top photography, they could be moving in this image. If they are, the shutter speed is going to be higher, such as 1/200 if they're moving or 1/60 if they're staying still. And our conditions will always make this depend as well. As I mentioned with portrait photography, with my shutter speed being 1/400, that's the last thing I'm adjusting during my photos. So again, shutter speed varies because it's the last thing I'm adjusting. And shutter speed is how fast we're taking our photos. We want the ISO to be as low as possible, especially on a sunny day, the sun is providing the light that we already need. So ISO is not needed in this scenario. If it was a cloudy day or getting dark at this time, we probably want to add some ISO. And I really don't recommend any more than 800 if possible. Let's talk about weddings. The shutter speed is going to vary the whole day as well as aperture and ISO. Now you may be thinking, well, this isn't very helpful. And I understand why you'd say that. Because your settings are going to change throughout the whole day with the bride walking down the aisle, we probably want our shutter speed to be 1/200 or higher, just in case we don't want her to be blurry during this time. We want her to be in focus. This is one of the more important shots of the whole event. Of the whole event. If we want just the bright to be unfocused, I recommend an aperture of 1.8. If we wanted the people in the audience or the people looking at her in focus, I recommend a higher aperture, such as 3.5 or higher, maybe even 5.0. As always, you want the ISO to be as low as possible. This can be tricky though, because some couples have their weddings in low-light settings, e.g. they want a dimly lit building that makes it harder for photographers, because that means we're going to have to sacrifice somewhere in our three fundamentals. If we want our bride to be walking down the aisle and we want to capture her and her not be blurry. We want our shutter speed to be a pretty decent number, so 1/200. But the higher our aperture, e.g. 1/200, That means we're sacrificing less light to enter the camera when it comes to aperture at a one-point eight, that means we're allowing more light to enter the camera because it's a lower number, a higher aperture, while it has more things in focus, will allow less light to enter the camera. And then of course with ISO, I really don't recommend anything over 800 because you notice things are going to start to get more grainy. And that will sacrifice our images quality. 5. More or Less Light: Let's talk about more or less light. Shutter speed. When it comes to shutter speed, 1/60 is allowing more light to enter the camera. Because we're taking a slower photo rather than 1/400, we allow more light to enter the camera when we're taking a photo and it's 1/400 for our shutter speed, we're taking a really fast photo. So that makes it harder for light to enter in because it is even quicker than 1/60, so less light will enter and hit the camera. Let's talk about aperture. Aperture is how much light we lead in through the ring with an aperture of f 1.8. We allow more light because the ring is going to be as open as it can be, or even more. There are cameras that even go to F12 that's even more light than f 1.8. When it comes to F11, we're allowing less light to enter the camera. And this will have a more in-focus background rather than F18 because we're going to have a blurry background and we have more light entering ISO. Iso is artificial light. And we don't want too much of this because whenever we have an ISO of 800, we're having more light for our image. When we have an ISO of 100, we have less light entering the camera. But remember ISOs, artificial light. We don't want too much of this because you'll start to notice our image becomes more grainy. 6. Getting a Visual: Let's get more of a visual on shutter speed as we see right here with this image, the faster we're taking our picture, the more sharp our subject is going to be, the slower we're taking our photo, e.g. 1/50, 1/2, or even 1 s long, our subject is going to become more blurry if it's moving. But something also to look at. The more blurry our subject, the more light you let him sharper our subject, the less light we're letting in because the faster we're taking the photo, but less light that we're allowing to enter the camera, the slower our photo. So even 1/50 years allowing more light rather than 1/1000 when it comes to the size of the aperture, the lower the aperture, e.g. F2, 0.8 is going to let more light in compared to F6 team, as you can tell, the lower the number of our aperture, the larger amount of light we're letting in. But we also have to remember the more light you let in, the more blurry our background is going to be, the higher our f-stop or the higher our aperture number, the less light we're letting in when it comes to ISO, the lower our ISO, the less greening our photo is going to be. Because remember, ISO is artificial light that we're adding to our camera. So the higher the number, the more artificial light we're adding to our photo. So if we were to max out our camera to 25,600 ISO, it's going to have a lot of light added to it. But the issue is the amount of grain that we're adding, It's not going to look like a great photo. 7. Thank You: Thank you all so much for watching this course. Don't forget to upload your class project to the Projects and Resources tab in the description area below. That's where you can find your class project where you can edit the photo I have submitted there and show what you have learned throughout this course. You can always start a discussion in the discussion tab with other students, talk about what you've learned and what you'd like to learn. And if you have any questions, please feel free to message me. I love to answer any questions you may have.