Photography

For half a day we undertook a lesson in photography, the aim was to get familiar with the university cameras and all camera tools/functions. This meant taking a closer look into the camera itself more that elements within a photo. This was to help us for when collecting textures and reference images so that would could get our own rather than refencering others work.

We started by looking at the basics from learning what a DLSR ( Digital Single Lens Reflex) is and does. Instead of a film strip that would collect the light a DLSR as a digital light senceritive element that will record what light has struck it. This when taking a photo will capture a moment of light but when viewing will be mirrored so we can see what we are taking a photo of.

We were told to always remember the manual functions because they will give us better pictures than what we would get through the auto focus because we can adjust the settings to how we feel we need them. Our main focus was learning how to prepare the camera for taking a photo using the shutter speed, focus and F Stop. We has to learn how to control the amount of light entering the cameras lens and for how long as this is most important for getting good photos.

The quicker the shutter speed the sharper the image but the less light entering the camera so we would need a lower F stop. And the opposite applies or a slow shutter speed. Its more about balancing out the intake of light to the lens. The ISO in the settings would also allow more or less light to effect the photo to balancing this is advised.

Another key area of photography and computer skills we learnt was to use RAW file types for photos instead of JPEGS. RAW files are larger but they aren't condensed down meaning no detail is lost. Also RAWs can be changes and edited then placed another editing software without editing the RAW file itself so you don't lose the original photo so you can use the same images in hundreds of ways and make it perfect even if you didn't get the exposer right.

One task was to go out and take some photos with the new skills we had learnt.

We had a basic task to go out and use what we learnt to take some photos to try and get the exposer of light right using different settings on the manual mode. Here is one of my photos taken:



I didn't very well with the settings as i used my older camera with less ISO settings and i struggled to keep the camera still. But i believe that i know the basics of photography and this lesson was very helpful. I hopefully will be able to use these skills later on in the topic to benefit my work.