Basic Photography

The book I read to research this post was Basics Of Photography by Irene Sheerow which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. This book is only around 30 pages so is quite short. This is a basic guide to photography and making money from your photos. There is also websites like twitter, flickr and instagram where you can display your work. It generally is best to specialize in one aspect of photography ie fashion. You can also display your work in a blog. There is a wide variety of types of cameras. Many use a camera phone for normal use like when out. When you are posing for photos women should keep hair away from their face and can sometimes play with it to get a nice effect. You can tilt the head slightly and have the subject slightly off the centre of the picture. Men can part there legs slightly and women can cross their ankles for full length shots. If you cross your arms it looks defensive. Men can put their weight on the front foot and women on the back foot. This gives men a more masculine appearance and women a more feminine one. This is a very interesting book I do recommend. I certainly enjoyed it and did learn a lot from it. A telephoto lens if used wrongly can decrease pixels in image and you should consider just coming in a bit closer if possible to get the subject.

Exposure and the Histagram

The book I read to research this post was Exposure and Understanding the Histagram by Andrew S Gibson which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. This book is around 60 pages so is fairly short. This book is part of a series of e-books on exposure and the various aspects associated with it and digital photography. The histagram shows your various light levels in a photo and this book looks at both adobe photoshop and photoshop lightroom. Many photographers only photo-editing is adjusting the light levels and you can achieve a lot with a pic in this way. In particular you should look at the curves slope which generally should tend to be gradual with out sharp breaks. You should bear in mind a photo is normally made up of red, green and blue and where these are all combined in equal measure makes white. You may have to adjust an individual color especially where it is an old photo that has decayed. Also you may have to adjust an individual color where it has either been under or over exposed. It also has some info on using raw mode which you generally use with DSLR cameras and provides more options especially with Photoshop. I did enjoy this book and do recommend it.

Digital Photography

The book I read to research this post was The Digital Photography Handbook by Doug Harman which is a very good book that I bought from a car boot sale. This book is aimed at hobbiests. There is some stuff on photo-editing as well as photography. The book is around 220 pages so is a decent length. You should buy the best camera you can afford. A mid-range DSLR camera is recommended. Get one that takes interchangeable lenses. You also need photo-editing software. The industry standard is adobe photoshop but many people use picasa which is a free program you can download. Many cameras have one permanent lens with different modes like different telephoto settings. These are mostly adequate but not as good as the real thing. I’d suggest for people doing photography and photo-editing as a serious hobby get adobe photoshop lightroom which is a photo-archiving program. Most people only have to adjust the light levels in their photos and this program does an adequate job of this. Finally if you are considering doing heavy duty photo-editing consider gimp v2.8 which is a free program you can download.

Smart Photography

The book I read to research this post was Smart Photography: Get Off Auto Diane Griffiths which is a very good book that I downloaded from kindle. This book is part of a Smart Photography series. This particular book looks at the basic manual settings for a camera and does a good job of it. Shutter speed is like a window shutter and you vary the speed it opens and closes. Too fast a speed darkens an images and too slow blurs it. A fast speed is needed for something moving or bright. Aperture is like the pupil in the eye varying the light getting but never blocking it entirely. Higher numbers darken an image. ISO is a left over from film speed days and for normal use use 100. A dark image might require 400 or 800 like a cathedral interior. A high number can create noise in the image. Photos are normally taken as JPEGS but can also use RAW which gives more options when working in photo-editing software. It can also be used with things like HDR or High Dynamic Range Photography where several photos at different settings are combined to create a more complete one. The camera doesn’t have the light range of the human eye but this can be overcome in HDR Photography.

Photography Hacks

The book I read to research this post was Photography: Photography Lighting Hacks by Eric Adamo which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. This book primarily about landscape photography for the enthusiast. It is around 25 pages so is quite short. When you take a photograph you decide what the main thing in the photo is often called a subject and it needs to be a little off the centre. Many people divide the photo into thirds to get this effect. You need a mid-range DSLR camera preferably by Nikon or Canon and it needs to be rugged and have decent features. He suggests having a set of polarizing filters particularly good if the weather isn’t ideal. You need to experiment with these. The ND type are good to start with. You need a tripod because sometimes you will have to take long exposures. The best thing you can do to learn photography is practice and experiment with different settings. If a photo is less than perfect you can always delete it. You also should get Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom softwares. At the moment Adobe do quite reasonably priced cloud packages with these. Photoshop Lightroom is a photo archiving software that lets you store your photos and do simpler tasks like adjust light levels. For many people this maybe all you need. Photoshop is the industry standard photoediting software that lets you do virtually anything you could possibly imagine to a photo. Bear in mind there is a steep learning curve to this software but if you do learn it, it is definitely worthwhile. I did enjoy this book and do recommend it.

Digital Photography For Beginners

The book I read to research this post was Digital Photography For Beginners by Edward Bailey that is a very good book that I downloaded for free from kindle. This book isn’t so much a guide to digital photography as a guide to the various hacks that make it easier. It’s about using a DSLR camera though. It also gives you general advice on shooting things like portraits etc. One thing is for people with glasses they can often buy a diopter eyepiece that compensates for the spectacles. This only works if you are between +3 and -3. Another idea if doing a portrait is using a reflector which if it is a head and shoulders shot only needs a small cheap. Alternatively you can tape a board with white insulation tape for a similar effect. Also if you are in a poor light situation and can’t use the flash consider using the ISO setting. This will create noise in the photo but you can always repair that in photoshop. This book is around 30 pages so is quite short. In the back there is a nice photo of the authors 2 pet dogs with thank you placards around their necks. I did enjoy this book and do recommend it. I think particularly with it being free it is great value.

DSLR Photography

The book I read to research this post was Digital SLR Guide by Nigel Pinkman which is a very good book that I downloaded for free from kindle. This guide is only around 25 pages so is quite short and describes the main features of a typical DSLR camera but there is little else here. You have to watch you don’t get dust on the sensor inside the lens which can happen if you change lenses a lot. This normally requires a professional clean and some cameras have a vibrating sensor either activated manually or automatically that can help keep it clean. Normally a DSLR will have a shutter priority which sets the aperture automatically to what you set the shutter speed to. There is also an aperture priority which equally sets you set the aperture and sets the shutter speed automatically to what that is. Most DSLR’s have an ISO range from 100 to 6400 or even beyond that. This is a left over from the days when film came in various ISO settings with the most commonly used being 100 and 400. A high ISO number is useful in poor light but adds noise or slight a grainy effect to the picture. Normally you set it to 100. To change lenses there should be a release button and then you twist it off. You merely push the lens in place and twist it to put it on. You also have to set depth for a photo and there should be some sort of guide to how much depth there is. Anything beyond that guide will come out blurred. I did enjoy reading this book and do recommend it although it only covers the basics. It is well written and easy to understand though.

Digital Photography

The book I read to research this post was Photography: Digital SLR Crash Course by Brendon Ward which is a very good that I read at kindle unlimited. This book is only around 35 pages and only covers the basics in using a DSLR but I think is great if you are a beginner. It is easy to follow and understand. A high shutter is used to capture something that is moving and gives a crisp image. A slower shutter speed can be blurred and convey motion when something is moving. When there isn’t much light a slow shutter speed combined with correct aperture can produce an image. There is a shutter stop feature where the aperture is set automatically but you are left to select a shutter shutter. Aperture selects how much light is let through the lens. There is also an ISO setting which chooses the graininess of the picture. This harks from the days when film was used and there were types such as ISO 100 for a smooth picture and ISO 800 for a course picture. Normally when you photograph something the subject is a little off centre. Professional divide the picture into thirds and will try to have the subject a third across. It makes the photo more interesting. There are also effects like the dutch tilt where you tilt the camera to get a more interesting photo. If you are shooting in poor light or at a slow shutter speed it is usual to use a tripod to avoid blurriness. I did thoroughly enjoy this book and do recommend it.

Budget Astrophotography

The book I read to research this post was Budget Astrophotography by William Becker which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. This book has lots of useful information but is only 49 pages and I think is priced at around £6.00 which seems a bit steep to me. I think the author should have made the effort to write at least 100 pages. I have to admit though a lot of the books on astrophotography are too pricey. I have a review of another book called Astrophotography which you might find interesting at http://claireabella29.com. Anyway this book does focus on doing astrophotography on a budget so in that regard does a good job. The author does suggest a DSLR which will handle the long exposures often of at least 30 seconds and should give good results unlike a compact camera. He does suggest using a 2x barlow lens & also you can buy adaptors for connecting them to a telescope. If you buy a heavy duty telescope capable of seeing other galaxies and nebulae you are looking at around $2,000 so that is probably too expensive. You probably have to make do with the Milky Way and planets. Having said don’t buy a christmas junk scope as they call the cheapest ones. You can use a webcam which there are instructions for modifying to either attach to a telescope or use with astronomy software like Registax & Astroart. Typically your camera will be set to a shutter speed of 30 seconds, an ISO of 1,600, an f-stop as low as possible and a distance rating of at least 200 yards. The stars often become distorted with a wide angle lens although that might be good for special effects. I did enjoy reading this book and will do more posts on this subject.

Digital SLR Video And Film Making

The book I read to research this post was Digital SLR Video And Film Making For Dummies by John Carucci which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. SLR cameras have been around since the 40’s when they revolutionized photography. Digital SLR’s follow the same principles although they store photos digitally often on a media card which is printed out on a computer and printer. You can buy a digital SLR camera for a few hundred dollars and buying it with several lenses works out cheaply compared to the equivalent prosumer video camera. It doesn’t cost the camera company much to add this capability to the camera and the results are so good even tv programmes like House are sometimes shot on a digital SLR. Most of these cameras shoot footage in full HD resolution although one drawback is the controls aren’t very intuitive if you are a videographer. You also need a tripod & of course a program like Adobe Premiere Elements to do your video editing. Many people shoot video and put it on websites like vimeo & youtube. You can get free screenwriting software that includes templates at http://finaldraft.com & http://screenplay.com. I think this book is an enjoyable read & there is tutorials on Premiere Elements which is quite a capable program for most film makers. It’s quite a long book and advises that you learn as much as possible about lighting and cinematography to become a really great film maker. Most tv programs like soap operas are often very similar shot and the great film makers knew how to use light to great effect which when you see their films they are very impressive. You should also watch the great movies and read books on the great movie makers to get ideas for your films.