Hey there all my Long Distance professional photographer buddies (you know who you are!) I need help. I love taking pictures, but I have no clue (as evidenced in the many posts below) what I'm doing.
The goal is -- I want to take professional looking pictures, but with out editing them. I know this seems strange, but there is just something more authentic and individual to who I am as a person if I leave in the mistakes and learn to take better pictures.
Anyway, I need help. We are going to go on our honeymoon in a few months, and I plan on taking tons of pictures. We are going to be Italy (Rome, Florence, Venice) and then London. The last time I traveled abroad I did not have a nice camera, and I was young and all my souvenirs were stupid. I don't want to make this mistake again.
So, help me out. I need a tutorial. Also, I have forgotten everything you showed me.
I need basics. How to set up the camera before picture taking-- and how you get those shots, when you dont have time to fuss with the camera for 20 mins before hand? Comments on my pics below, with suggestions are appreciated.
Help me learn!
Hey! I like looking at pictures, I like cameras, and I like you, so sure! Be ready for some overload...
ReplyDeleteBy the way, just out of, say, random curiosity, when do you expect to be in London? I expect some seriously kick-ass travel photos from this honeymoon.
I'm going to be a bit nit-picky with language here... can you tell me a bit more about what you mean by "professional looking pictures"? Because pretty much all professionals edit their images, and most professionals know more than basics to get the images they want. The lovely travel pictures you might see in a magazine, like National Geographic, or a pretty beach in an ad for a resort? They all have had at least some basic editing (white balance, saturation, contrast). Compared to film, digital cameras don't have the dynamic range (as in, they can't perceive as wide a range of color and light) and aren't as forgiving as film if you don't have the exposure just right. This is why even some basic editing of photos is just expected for professional photos (although, even most pro film photos still got edited).
So you're left with a couple of options:
1. Go ahead and buy some photo editing software. I REALLY like Adobe Lightroom 3 - you can batch edit images (instead of doing them one-by-one), it lets you organize and sort your photos, and if you make a mistake editing, it's a cinch to go back and fix it. However, even something basic like iPhoto on a Mac would serve your purposes just fine.
2. Get good at letting your camera do the editing for you. When you shoot in Jpeg format, you're essentially letting the camera do the processing and thinking for you - the camera is doing the editing on it's own. If you really don't want to deal with editing, then always shoot in Jpeg and get good at telling your camera how to process stuff.
Also, two very important things for getting better as a photographer: Practice a LOT (if you want help and critique, you should be posting something once a week, if not more often), and learn from others (find other pictures that you like, and wish you knew how to take - post them here, and we can help explain the process. Then you go try it, if you have the gear!).
Getting more professional-looking photos means you need to start diving into this before your honeymoon!
Step 1 on the way toward your goal - get to know your camera, and know how to tell it what to do!
Do you still have your manual for the camera? If so, read through it. If you find a setting or option that you didn't know was there, play with it to see what it does! If there is something in the manual that you don't understand, or you're not sure what some of the terms mean, post your question here, or Facebook me, or Skype me, or something, and we'll get it sorted it. Or Google it... Google answers lots of questions, if you want to start with that. Seriously - if we're doing "Long Distance Photo Lessons", then you need to know what your camera does, because we can't show it to you ourselves.
Here are some basic thoughts on your camera settings so you can start off getting the best Jpegs you can out of your camera. These are coming out of my camera, but since yours is also a Nikon (right?), you should have similar options, if not the same.
ReplyDeleteGo to the menu, and go to the Shooting Menu (should be a picture of a camera on the left). Note that some of these can be changed through other buttons and dials on the camera.
1. Image quality should be jpeg fine.
2. Image size can be Small or Medium if they're just practice, but definitely on Large if you're shooting something you care about. I never shoot on Small, because it means I can't crop.
3. White Balance - Auto is a fine place to start, but you should start experimenting with the WB presets and when to use them. Check the manual, or use the "?" Button on your camera.
4. Set Picture Control - on my camera, I can choose from Standard, Vivid, and Neutral. These are where you tell your camera how saturated to make your pictures, that is, how bright to make the colors. Most of the time you'll want Neutral or Vivid. Vivid is great outdoors, but Neutral is better for people. Experiment with them to decide which you like better.
5. Active D-Lighting - if your camera has this, keep it on Auto for now.
Also, make sure that, to start, you're playing around with your camera's different Scene Modes (not just straight auto).
In the meantime, make sure you know how to change your camera's Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO (you'll need to switch to Manual to change all 3), figure out how to adjust your camera's focusing settings (does it pick the most logical thing in the scene, or do you tell it what to focus on?) and exposure settings (center dot, center weighted, or scene).
How's all that for a start? If you ask for a lot of help, you're committing yourself to a big project!
Thank you! I will work on some shots this week if I have time and post them for review. ;) Your comments are really great an will give me a good starting point!
ReplyDeleteAlso-- we will be in London from August 4-7 (attending a wedding on the 6th)