Jim Harmer - Improve Your Photography: How Budding Photographers Can Get Pro Results

IMPROVE YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY:

How Budding Photographers Can Get Pro Results

Fourth edition

by

Jim Harmer of ImprovePhotography.com

Copyright 2011 Improve Photography LLC. All Rights Reserved

KINDLE EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Improve Photography LLC on Kindle

Improve Your Photography

Copyright 2011 Improve Photography LLC. All rights reserved.

* * * * *

A (Very) Brief Introduction

This is the book I wish I had when I bought my first DSLR. At that time, the camera knew much more about photography than I did, and it punished me severely with blurry pictures, confusing buttons, and an undecipherable manual.

In the next 100 short pages, it is my hope that I can explain the most important concepts of photography that usually take beginners two or more years to learn. Since we have only 100 pages together, I will forego trying to impress you with complicated technological jargon, and will simply explain what you need to do to take great photos. Throughout the book, I will explain concepts and then we will go on an imaginative photo shoot together and apply the concepts from the chapter to common shooting situations.

If I am allowed one short piece of advice for a beginning photographer, it is

After mastering the concepts in this book, I would encourage you to join the Improve Photography community at ImprovePhotography.com and participate by reading my (free!) daily photography tips and asking questions on our Facebook fan page. I make myself available to each person in the community and personally respond to any photography questions you may have.

As you capture life at 1/100th of a second, dont forget the Creator of the beautiful things you record.

Sincerely,

Jim Harmer

* * * * *

IMPROVE YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY

HOW BUDDING PHOTOGRAPHERS CAN GET PRO RESULTS

FOURTH EDITION

* * * * *

chapter 1: Exposure

By far, the greatest divide between the knowledge of a beginning photographer and that of a professional is the knowledge of exposure. Nothing will impact your photography so quickly as spending a few minutes to learn exposure. Spending the next few minutes learning exposure will immediately make you more knowledgeable about photography than 99% of the worlds camera owners.

I have attended many photography classes where the instructors made exposure seem so difficult that even I became confused! No need to worry, though. I have taught many, many photographers the basics of exposure and every single one of them eventually catches onand I dont anticipate failing on you!

Simply put, exposure is the amount of light that is captured by a camera during the process of taking a photograph. That is why we say that some photos are overexposed, which means too much light was gathered, or underexposed, which means that the camera did not gather enough light.

Digital cameras have three tools to control the amount of light captured on the sensor---shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. I will explain what each of these do so that you are able to set them on your camera to take a picture that is properly exposed.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is the measure of the length of time that a camera allows light to enter into it, and it is measured in fractions of a second. The longer that the camera allows light to enter it, the brighter the image becomes. An exposure taken in the black of night might last 30 seconds or more, while an image at the beach on a bright day might only last 1/2000th of a second or less.

The shutter speed does not only control how bright the image is, but also how blurry the image is. My guess is that the reason you chose to purchase a nice camera or to learn photography is that you want to learn to take pictures that look clear and not blurry, right? Well, youre about to learn the #1 secret to capturing crystal clear pictures.

The shutter is a small piece of metal or plastic that covers the camera sensor and prevents light from being recorded except for the instant that you take a picture. When you take a picture, the shutter quickly flips up and allows light to reach the sensor for a tiny fraction of a second. Knowing that a shutter works this way, you can already see why some pictures end up blurry. If the shutter stays open for too long, something in the scene could move, and the sensor would record the moving path of that object.

So why, you might ask, do pictures end up blurry even when taking a picture of a stationary object like a tree or a building? The answer is that, even if you dont feel it, your hands are constantly trembling. This minute movement of your hands is enough to make a photo look blurry if the shutter speed is too slow. If a fast shutter speed is used, even a trembling hand cannot move enough in 1/2000th of a second to make a difference in the picture. Just remember: fast shutter speeds freeze a moment in time and reduce blur.

There you have it! Now you know how to fix blurry picturesincrease the shutter speed. Unfortunately, increasing the shutter speed is not a panacea. There will be many, many occasions in photography where you find yourself unable to use fast shutter speeds. If the shutter moves very quickly across the sensor and only allows light to reach the sensor for (for example) 1/800th of a second, the camera may not be able to gather enough light to properly expose the image, and your shot will be underexposed. When shooting in a well-lit place like outside at your childs soccer game, it will be easy to achieve fast shutter speeds, but it will be impossible for the camera to gather enough light to use a fast shutter speed when shooting, for example, indoors at a birthday party.

That is it! You have learned everything you need to know about shutter speed. However, there are still two more techniques you can use to control the overall exposure of a photo, and you will find that they are equally as important as shutter speed.

The reason the camera needs more methods of controlling exposure is in difficult lighting situations. Suppose you want to photograph a friends dance performance. You go to the recital hall ready to adjust your shutter speed to a fast setting, like 1/1000th of a second so that the fast-moving dancer is not blurry. Then, moments before the show begins, they turn off the main lights in the recital hall and suddenly it is very dark. When you take a picture at 1/1000th of a second, the picture comes out almost completely black! This example illustrates the need for another player in the exposure trianglethe aperture.

Aperture depth of field and brightness

There is a small hole inside the center of a cameras lens that allows light to pass through the lens and into the camera. The size of that hole is changeable by setting the aperture on the camera. Not surprisingly, a large aperture hole creates a brighter picture since more light is allowed to pass through. When the hole of the aperture is constricted, less light is allowed through.

Like how the shutter speed controls two things (brightness and blurriness), the aperture controls two things as well: brightness and depth of field. Depth of field is the photographers secret weapon. It allows us to make the background of a picture blurry and keep the subject in sharp focus. You have undoubtedly seen this many times when looking at pictures in magazines, and now you will know how to do it! You will hear photographers use the terms shallow depth of field and full depth of field. Shallow depth of field means that only a small part of the picture is sharp and the rest is blurry. Full depth of field means that the entire picture, from front to back, is in sharp focus. A large aperture hole creates shallow depth of field, and a small aperture hole creates full depth of field.