McHugh - Understanding photography: master your digital camera and capture that perfect photo

UNDERSTANDING PHTOGRAPHY

Master Your Digital Camera and Capture That Perfect Photo

SEAN T. McHUGH

San Francisco

Understanding Photography: Master Your Digital Camera and Capture That Perfect Photo. Copyright 2019 by Sean T. McHugh.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher.

ISBN-10: 1-59327-894-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-59327-894-6

Publisher: William Pollock

Production Editor: Laurel Chun

Cover and Interior Design: Mimi Heft

Cover Photography: Sean T. McHugh

Developmental Editor: Annie Choi

Technical Reviewers: Jeff Carlson and Richard Lynch

Copyeditor: Barton D. Reed

Proofreader: Paula L. Fleming

Compositor: Danielle Foster

For information on distribution, translations, or bulk sales, please contact No Starch Press, Inc. directly:

No Starch Press, Inc.

245 8th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

phone: 415.863.9900;

www.nostarch.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: McHugh, Sean (Sean T.), author.

Title: Understanding photography : master your digital camera and capture

that perfect photo / Sean T. McHugh.

Description: San Francisco : No Starch Press, Inc., [2019].

Identifiers: LCCN 2018036966 (print) | LCCN 2018044393 (ebook) | ISBN

9781593278953 (epub) | ISBN 1593278950 (epub) | ISBN 9781593278946 | ISBN

9781593278946 (print) | ISBN 1593278942 (print) | ISBN

9781593278953 (ebook) | ISBN 1593278950 (ebook)

No Starch Press and the No Starch Press logo are registered trademarks of No Starch Press, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, we are using the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark.

The information in this book is distributed on an As Is basis, without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor No Starch Press, Inc. shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in it.

To everyone who has helped a friend or partner follow their passions, even though that journey didnt always have a clear destination

Sean T. McHugh is the founder and owner of Cambridge in Colour (www.cambridgeincolour.com), an online learning community for photographers, and he was formerly head of product at a leading digital camera company. A scientist by training, he is fascinated by the interaction between technological developments and the range of creative options available to photographers. He has conducted several student workshops on general camera and DSLR technique.

This book would not have been possible without all the feedback and careful reading from photographers, specialists, and many others who have visited www.cambridgeincolour.com over more than a decade. Thank you.

Thanks to Bill Pollock, Annie Choi, Laurel Chun, Mimi Heft, Bart Reed, Paula Fleming, and Danielle Foster for editing and producing this book. Thanks also to Jeff Carlson and Richard Lynch for their technical review.

VISION IS PERHAPS THE SENSE we most associate with reality. We are therefore more conscious of what we see than how we see, but that all has to change when you learn photography. You have to augment your own eyesight with a deeper understanding of what is both technically possible and creatively desirable. Such an understanding is built not by following instructions for a specific camera model but by becoming fluent in the language of photography.

Before you dig in, read through this introduction to start building a foundational understanding of light and its interaction with the key components of a photographic system. Each of these topics is discussed in more depth in subsequent chapters.

Lets start with the concept of light. After all, photography is essentially the process of capturing and recording light to produce an image. What we commonly refer to as light is just a particular type of electromagnetic radiation that spans a wide range of phenomena, from X-rays to microwaves to radio waves. The human eye only sees a narrow range called the visible spectrum, which fits between ultraviolet and infrared radiation and represents all the colors in a rainbow (see ).

FIGURE 1 Qualitative depiction of the visible spectrum among other invisible wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum (not to scale)

If you were creating a painting, the visible spectrum would represent all the colors of paint you could have in your palette. Every color and shade that you have ever seen, from the most intense sunsets to the most subtle nightscapes, is some combination of light from this spectrum. Our eyes perceive this color using a combination of three different color-sensing cells, each of which has peak sensitivity for a different region in the visible spectrum. Contrary to common belief, color is actually a sensation just like taste and smell. Our sensitivity to color is uniquely human, and its a potent photographic tool for evoking emotions in the viewer.

The first time light interacts with your photographic system is usually when it hits the front of your cameras lens. Your choice of lens is one of the first creative choices that irreversibly sculpts the recorded image (, left). If the colors of light are your paint, then the lens is your paint brush.

In reality, lenses are far more powerful than that. For example, they can influence the viewers sense of scale and depth, control the angle of view, or isolate a subject against an otherwise busy background. Lenses often receive less attention than camera bodies, but a good lens often outlives a good camera and thus deserves at least as much attention. Your lens choice can also have more of an impact on image quality than anything else in your photographic system.

The cameras lens effectively takes an angle of view plus a subject of focus and projects that onto the cameras sensor. Although often only the outer portion of glass is visible, modern lenses are actually composed of a series of carefully engineered, specialty glass elements that precisely control incoming light rays and focus those with maximal fidelity (, right). For this reason, photographers often also refer to having a good lens as having good glass.