So for my birthday last October, my amazing husband got me a Nikon D80. I’ve always loved photography; I think I get that from my dad. I through my childhood, I remember he had this really cool Canon camera that was completely off limits to us kids — and was only brought on when the situation was worthy enough. Once I got older, he wold try to teach me things about aperture and exposure and ISO and light meters. But he might as well have been speaking Latin. I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand all that “photog” talk. For my college graduation, my parents bought me a Canon Rebel SLR (aka a 35mm film camera). And I loved using it…on auto mode. But it was also discouraging in the sense that whatever photo I took was final. No previewing, no editing. FINAL. And not knowing any of the cool settings, I almost felt like it was a waste of film and money experimenting with the settings. And then by the time I actually did get around to developing the photos, I wouldn’t remember which photos were in taken in which settings.
And that’s the beauty of a digital SLR for the amateur photographer: you can actually learn the different settings hands-on and see the differences right there on the screen in front of you. On the day I took the above photo, I felt like experimenting with depths of field. I’ll post other comparisons a little bit later on. This one, while most of the photos I took are of Pepper in focus, I decided to get creative and focus on some of the wild grass in the foreground, thus making Pepper blurry.
If you are the type that shoots on auto-mode, AND you have a digital, flip it to A mode (if you have Nikon) or Av mode (for Canon), and practice this depth of field. (A is for aperture, you know.) I guarantee it’s loads of fun!
Another fun tool on photographs: photo editing software. I use Adobe Lightroom (it’s gobs cheaper than Photoshop).
Pepper sure likes to do her “one way” thing, huh? (With her ear)
I know! It’s the weirdest thing, like her ears are her antennas or something.
How do you like lightroom? I’m trying to decide between lightroom and elements. I’m not a huge editing fan, but I’ve come to realize it’s needed.
I learned to shoot photos on an old Fujica SLR as a kid… got away from it for years, and just got my 1st digital SLR. (Yeah, a little slow in catching up with the rest of the world, I know… lol) and I’m having a BLAST with it!
Yeah, I love my silpat. A lot. Nothing sticks to it, I use it for everything. And it is so easy to clean. And it’s so much less wasteful than using lots of parchment. I would definitely recommend it!
And thanks for the info about lightroom. I still haven’t decided what I want to get, which is a good thing – since I’m broke! haha.