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A Beginners Guide to Photography
Photographer taking a picture of the sunset.
Photography can be a fun and rewarding experience, but it can also be overwhelming for beginners – at first. All of those camera settings, buttons, and lenses can seem consuming at first, but with practice, you can even create your own photography series. This in-depth guide will answer certain basic questions that lay the foundation for an enjoyable and fulfilling pastime or career in photography.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner, master or somewhere in between, attaining a true understanding of exposure is vital in your growth as a photographer.
The Exposure Triangle
In this section, I’ll take you through a quick overview of three important fundamental settings that will take your photography to the next level. These settings form what is commonly known as the exposure triangle.
After gaining a basic understanding these settings, you will have to practice balancing them to create a well exposed photo. You’ll get images the way you expect to see them and not how the camera does.
Essentially, these three settings will control three aspects of the camera. Each one of them will control light in a slightly different way and together when balance is achieved, perfect exposure is captured.
This info graphic is a great visual of the individual elements of the exposure triangle created by Expert Photography.
Aperture
On most cameras it will be represented by either a ‘Av’ or ‘A’ setting.
The best way to understand aperture is to look at your eye in a mirror. If you shine a torch briefly into your eye you will notice your pupil becomes dilated. When the lights are turned off the opposite happens and your pupil enlarges. Your eye will do this to let more light in so you can see what’s around you in low light situations.
Wide open vs Narrow Apertures
The lenses controllable aperture does exactly this. You can change the settings, known as ‘f stops’ on the control wheel of your camera (or directly on the lens for some brands) to either increase or decrease the aperture.
The resulting photo will either be everything in focus or just the subject in focus with a blurry out-of-focus (known as bokeh) background. The latter result is what you should aim to achieve.
To do this stop down your aperture to the biggest f-stop (smallest number). On most lenses supplied with your camera this number would be f3.5, however on more expensive lenses the aperture will go to f2.8 or even f1.2. The smaller the number the more bokeh and typically the higher the price of the lens!
The second setting is shutter speed.
Shutter Speed
On your camera this will be shown on the mode dial as either ‘Tv’ or ‘S’.
Shutter speed is the amount of time that you tell your camera to open the sensor to receive the light information of your desired image. The advantage of controlling your shutter speed means you will be able to portray motion in your photograph.
For instance, you could leave the camera’s shutter open for a few seconds to capture the movement blur of your subject or you might like to have the shutter open for only 1/1000 of a second to ensure the moment is frozen in time. This allows you to really explore creativity and add some really cool effects to your shots.
A slower shutter speed gives you the oft desired dreamy water effect
Playing with your shutter speed can really add to the story your photo will tell.
Now, we’ll turn our attention to ISO.
ISO
ISO is a controllable function which can make your camera more or less sensitive to light. For instance if you find yourself in a bright situation you don’t want your camera to become too sensitive to light, otherwise you will end up with an overexposed image with no detail, so it is better to use a lower ISO to counteract this.
On your camera, ISO is displayed as numbers, typically starting at 100 and quickly moving to 200, 400 and all the way up to 51,400 and beyond on some cameras. The lower number represents best use in bright situations, whereas the higher number (around 1600 – 3200) is better for low light – although there is a catch.
At a very high ISO (like 6400 and above) the piece of technology that records the photo, otherwise known as “the sensor”, may be subject to becoming over sensitive, resulting in digital noise. This sort of noise will degrade the picture quality so it’s best to use the lowest ISO setting available to you given the lighting situation you find yourself in.
A high ISO will introduce noise into your image which you can see in the green light on the lower left.
Once you have played with ISO and seen the difference it can make to your photo, turn your attention to the controllable aperture.
Introduction to Digital Photography
Since you are a new shutter bug, chances are the first camera you picked up was a digital one. To understand how it works, you need to figure out how traditional cameras captured images. The lens of a traditional film camera allowed only a certain amount of light to come in contact with the film that was in it. This was a plastic sheet that was coated with a chemical that was light sensitive.
A digital camera sensor
Once the film was exposed to the prescribed light for a sufficient amount of time, a picture formed on it. This film was then developed, a few more chemicals were applied, and the image became a negative image which could be enlarged or printed on paper.
In a digital camera, this film has been replaced with an image sensor. This is an electronic device that is light-sensitive like the film. However, rather than being coated with a chemical, it is made of millions of photoelectric components that convert light that enters the camera into an electrical signal.
How strong the electrical signal is depends on the amount of light that exposes the sensor. These signals are ‘developed’ through circuits and the resulting image is stored in an external flash memory. The standard format for these files is usually RAW or JPEG (which is discussed further on).
When these files are processed via a computer, you get an image which can then be printed onto photographic paper. Keep in mind that, just like traditional film, image sensors for digital cameras are available in a range of sizes. For instance, there is a reason why the camera in your cellphone cannot compete with a digital handheld camera – the former has smaller sensors that produce low-quality images compared to the larger ones that a DSLR offers.
A full-frame sensor would not fit in the small cell phones of today!
What You Need To Know About Digital Cameras
To understand how that works, you need to understand how a digital camera works. This camera comprises of your typical lightproof box complete with a lens at one end and the aforementioned digital image sensor. There are two basic types of digital cameras that you should be familiar with:
DSLR or Digital Single-Lens Reflex Camera
The DSLR is the go-to camera for most beginners because of the sheer quality of images it can produce. It is named for the reflex mirror it contains, which is designed to allow users to frame each image through the lens before they click the button to capture it.
Here’s how it works. When light passes through the lens of the DSLR, it falls on the mirror before passing through to the viewfinder via a prism. What makes this camera unique is that the image the viewfinder captures corresponds to the actual image area. Once the picture is taken, the mirror moves out of the way, allowing the shutter to expose the sensor which in turn captures the image.
Since most features on this camera can be adjusted, you can control the type of image you capture. You can even change lenses depending on the image quality you are searching for. These come in a range of focal lengths like this 70-200mm and this 85mm prime (I will cover more about lenses in the future). In other words, you don’t have to replace the entire camera if you don’t like the pictures you are taking. You may just need another lens to create a stunning photography series.
Digital Rangefinder Camera
There are basically two types of digital rangefinder cameras – the point and shoot variety and the coincident rangefinder.
The Coincident Rangefinder
The coincident rangefinder camera uses a prism or a mirror that makes use of triangulation to combine images that you see through its viewfinder. Also known as the exposure triangle, this refers to three components (the shutter speed, the aperture, and the ISO) that can help you capture an image that is exposed properly.
To recap from earlier in the post, the aperture is the lens opening that allows you to control the amount of light that hits the sensor. The shutter speed refers to the duration the sensor is exposed to light while the ISO refers to the measure of the sensitivity to light. When this is increased, it signals the sensor to be more sensitive to the light that it is exposed to which leads to a brighter image.
Another window is used to bring the photo into focus for a sharper image. In other words, instead of one image, the photographer sees two which are on top of each other. The image only becomes sharp and clear when these two images merge into a single one.
Unlike a DSLR camera, a coincident rangefinder camera does not need a rotating or reflex mirror which reduces the ‘shakes.’ Unless you have incredibly steady hands, they will make the rotating mirror move as you try and adjust the lens on a DSLR which can result in blurry images.
The Digital Point and Shoot Camera
This camera is quite basic in construction, lightweight and named after the steps required to capture an image. As the name implies, all you need to do is point the camera at your subject and shoot it to get a picture.
This is a great camera for beginners since you don’t have to adjust settings manually such as the focus, shutter speed, aperture etc. There are some point and shoot cameras that come with adjustable settings but they aren’t difficult to use either.
This camera usually has comes with an in-built flash which does not need to be focused and some come with an LCD display screen. This allows photographers to see the pictures they take in real time as soon as they take it. Some of these cameras come with a separate viewfinder to give users more control over the images they capture. However, the shutter, lens, and aperture are fixed on the body and cannot be detached.
These two rangefinder cameras have one thing in common – both are designed to split the optical path between the viewfinder and the optical compression, lens and frame guidelines. This often makes the image the photographer sees in the viewfinder a bit different than the actual captured image.
Common Digital Camera Features
Depending on the camera you get, you may have several different setting options to play with. However, there are some basic features of a digital camera that you should master first. Here are some of them:
Image stabilization
A lens with image stabilization
Even veteran photographers have trouble holding the camera still at times. That’s why we have tripods. Of course, as a beginner, you might not have time to set one up quickly enough to capture a rare bird or a candid image. This is where image stabilization can help you.
As the name implies, this feature allows you to reduce image degradation when you are using the camera without a tripod to steady it. Remember, even the smallest tremor can affect the quality of the image you want to capture. It’s important to keep in mind that image stabilization though the lens can never replicate the stability that a tripod provides. If you want more information on tripods, check out my article on the lightest tripods for travel photographers.
Without image stabilization, you’re likely to get blurred handheld images
Even though you may not have time to use this feature every time you use the camera, it will be quite useful for capturing several perfect images on the go.
The Zoom
There are two kinds of zooms you will see listed when you are looking into the camera lens. The optical zoom feature gives the clearest zoomed-in images and is created by lenses. The digital zoom, on the other hand, is provided by the camera and it works similarly to how an image is scaled or cropped on a computer. However, it also reduces image quality but if it is quite clear, you can zoom in digitally without reducing the quality further.
RAW and JPEG Capability
When you take a picture with a digital camera, it stores it in RAW format or in JPEG. Most images that are taken with this camera are saved in the memory card in JPG or JPEG format which stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group – the name of the group that created the format.
This format can be viewed on almost any device so you can easily share these images on social media, email them or send them via WhatsApp. The viewer can see the image without feeling the need to edit it or make any other changes.
The JPEG file format is popular with most beginners because it is compressed. This means that the image is optimized to be smaller in size and needs less storage space. For a newbie who needs practice, this feature is quite useful for sharpening basic skills. Plus, since the images are compressed, they can be uploaded on say a WordPress blog or a web-based storytelling photography series without taking ages to load.
However, the more an image file is compressed, the lesser the quality. If you think you are ready to take better quality pictures, you should switch to RAW. This file is an uncompressed version of the image file – it takes it from the sensor and saves an unedited copy on the memory card.
Needless to say, a RAW image file takes up a lot more space than a JPEG. The main reason for this is that is about the same size as the number of megapixels in the camera you are using. So a camera that is 20 megapixels will save a RAW image file that is around the same number of megabytes while it may save a JPEG file that is no more than 4 megabytes in quality.
Plus, it goes without saying, but you cannot upload RAW files online or share them with friends via email. They are just too big. However, these give photographers a number of editing options that their JPEG counterparts cannot match. In other words, if you want to learn how to edit photos and take good ones, it might be better to save those images in RAW form. The experience may be frustrating at first, but the payback will be worth it.
Shooting modes and Menus
Menu features and shooting modes may not be at the top of your list when you are starting out as a photographer, but they will become a big deal when you gain more experience. For example, if you want complete control over the images you want to capture, you need to practice using the manual mode.
Standard digital camera shooting mode dial
The Auto mode will naturally not give you as much control as say the Tv and Av modes but they aren’t difficult to master. This includes features such as the shutter speed and aperture that are essential when it comes to maturing as a photographer. These can help you edit and organize all of the images you capture, play around with shooting options etc.
Have Fun With It!
The bottom line is that the more features you have to experiment with, the more skills you will acquire as a photographer. While the numbers of technical skills you learn will depend on the settings you choose to capture images, nothing can motivate you more than your passion for this activity.
Remember, you can have the most expensive, high-definition camera at your disposal, but you may not be able to wield it to get images that can make your storytelling photography series stand out. You have the power to capture quality pictures even while using a simple point and shoot camera with practice and patience.
Yes, you will discard more images than you use, but that will help you determine your weak points which can always be improved with more practice.
A digital camera will serve you well in this regard. Since you can take as many images as you want and delete as many as you don’t need, it can help you hone your skills with time.
I will be adding more to this article, but in the meantime, check out these other related posts:
Technical:
Tips:
Gear Guides:
- What Every Photographer Should Have In Their Bag
- 9 Best Lightweight Tripods for Traverlers
- Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art Lens Review
- Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 G2 Lens Review
- Beginner DSLR camera buying guide
Conquering Bounds is a travel blog that motivates and inspires novice and veteran photographers to overcome the bounds of their own creativity. The blog site is a rich resource for globetrotting bloggers who wish to document their travels via images that speak volumes about their experiences.
For more information about the website or to get answers to queries regarding travel, photography and everything in between, don’t hesitate to contact me.
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