Warning to Photographers!

Bruce — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:18:51 +0000

Image rights grab by UK based Great British Life

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Photography Basics

Bruce — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:12:11 +0000

On a number of occasions I have undertaken small wildlife and nature photographic workshops in my closest city, Brisbane. The usual preludes applied; advertisements in the local press and word of mouth through the local wildlife groups, and I usually had a reasonable group but with a very wide range of expertise, experience and camera gear! Where to start? On most occasions I went through some basic camera principles – aperture and shutter speeds etc. Then we would have a little session out in the ‘field’. It was always at this stage that I got to see exactly what the problem areas were! It was always the same: lack of understanding of how their cameras actually worked…what all the knobs and dials did…and what it all meant. Nothing to do with apertures or shutter speeds, or processing RAWs. The vast majority of people had no idea how to set their aperture or shutter speed in the first place! I had one person (I hope doesn’t read this!) who explained that he was having trouble setting the ISO value. When I looked to see what he was doing, he was fiddling with the exposure compensation setting! So number one suggestion - if you want to take better photographs, learn all there is to learn about your own camera. Take it and its manual and sit in a comfortable chair, then read and play with all the settings! Go through all the menus! Learn what patterns apply when you select different exposure and focus settings. I often imagine a particular picture-taking scenario and then think about what might be best for that situation and then experiment to see what works. With larger SLR’s it’s relatively straight forward in terms of conceptualising the best settings for a particular scenario, but with small digi cameras, sometimes its far less obvious. You must experiment and test different options.

You need to do all this and become completely familiar with all the settings and how they work before you progress any further. If you need to use manual exposure, you need to be able to go to it in an instant and know how to change aperture and shutter, how to change autofocus etc. You need to achieve technical mastery over that box of electrical parts!

Tried and True

Once you have made that hurdle, you are ready for the next step! I would suggest that you start off by developing a number of standard techniques that you can use in certain situations. For example, I know that if I want to photograph a frog with my small Canon digi camera, I set the camera to Av (Aperture priority) and f8, ISO to 200, focus to AF flexizone, macro setting and then I open up the zoom to full wide angle and then progressively zoom until I see the distance indicator sitting on 10cm. That’s it! I know I am ready to go! I have used this setting over and over. I know what the results look like and what to do in terms of composition etc. I know what angle the flash covers, how far away I need to be etc etc. I don’t have to think about it. Sure, once I have all that set, I might think about varying things a little just to see what happens! Bear in mind however that success is bred by consistency and, in turn is aided and abetted by repitition and familiarity. You most probably have a particular type of natural history subject that you want to specialise in. Work out a standard technique for that subject and use it consistently. Make any adjustments that you need until you have it mastered, and then commit it to memory. You now have standard technique #1 in the bag!

You can Never Get Too Much Technical Info!

The more you understand about how your camera works, the more you can manipulate it and bend it to your will! You can never learn too much! Some months ago I was sitting in a bird hide and had just spent a vexing five minutes trying to focus on some fast moving birds as they came in to drink at a small waterhole. I was not happy! Why can no one build an autofocus system to deal with these situations? Then I started thinking about what might be an ideal system. After another 30 seconds, it dawned on me that in fact, my camera could be set to do exactly what I needed. A few menus and some custom functions and other tweaks and I was there. Technical knowledge! I almost didn’t remember enough to set the camera there in the hide…. but I just scraped in. Maybe it would be a good idea to carry the manual around! Camera settings are not of much use if you don’t use them!

Eastern Spinebill. Tried and True Technique #32, 300mm lens and aperture priority @ f8 and fill flash!!!

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Warning to Photographers!

Photography Basics