Lesson Three

Lesson 3:

Camera Settings So far, we have touched on the type of cameras we own (was in the survey), lighting, different modes (portrait), aperture, and a touch of focal length. I’ve seen some of you have already started to post these with your pictures and they do it in all the big magazines. So, this would be a great time to get used to putting the information with the shots. This is also a great learning tool. Boringly enough, the numbers are important. When I first started, I pretty much ignored all the figures until I HAD to pay attention (hence us going through the auto settings first). Eventually, you will want to push your camera beyond the auto settings and will need to know how aperture, shutter speed, focal length, ISO, and light (flash or otherwise), etc all affect the outcome and how to push in the right direction… “need more blur – oh, right! aperture!” or “want to freeze movement – oh right! shutter speed!” (of course having to compensate in other areas, but knowing the key of what we need to adjust first). Point being that if we see the numbers regularly, we will start understanding what it was that made that picture the way it was. Also, we can learn from each other by noticing what numbers were used in each instance.

So the first part of this assignment:

Find out where you can find your camera settings. I can find what my camera was set at when I took a shot the following ways:

1. In camera – only when the shots are still in there though.
2. Photoshop CS2 < File < File Info < Camera Data 1
3. Adobe Bridge – metadata is in the bottom left hand corner
4. Photoshop Elements 5 < File < File Info < Camera Data 1
5. Nikon Capture (RAW converter program) – camera settings are at the left hand side

**Note – when I checked the same photo in all of the above programs, the 2 photoshop programs only gave me half of the information which didn’t include the mode or the shutter speed even though these categories were available (I have no idea why…???). However, both Adobe Bridge and Nikon Capture gave me all of the information.

When you find out where you can find your camera settings regularly, then post it on your blog. Also, you can start adding on your camera settings to your picture posts like:
NikonD50
Lighting: sunny day, mid afternoon, no flash
Mode: Portrait
Aperture: f/5.6

Later, we will add more things as we learn them.

Assignments this week:

1. Find the above and post on your blog.
2. Start posting your photo information with your pictures (where available).
3. Continue shooting in Portrait Mode.
4. Fun assignment: I want to hear your funny or amazing stories that happened as a result of taking pictures. Say you dropped something, ruined something, fell down at a shoot, anything… post the picture that goes with the story and tell us what happened. I thought this would be fun since we are moving ahead on technical but not so much in the fun department.