Yes, another DSLR thread...

Commonwealth

Commonwealth

Active member
...and yes, I have searched. And no, I don't feel like searching anymore.

Also, to get this out of the way:

1. No, I have no fucking clue about photography. I know what I think looks nice, though.

2. Yes, I want to buy a DSLR. The pictures look nice. See #1.

3. No, I don't care if you have a camera you are selling.

4. No, I don't want to see your pictures.

OK, now that we're through the introduction:

I would greatly appreciate a simplified & VERY basic photography lesson. I want to learn about the basic terms and whatnot (such as exposure, iso, etc. - I couldn't tell you the difference between them) Basically, I don't want to search Wikipedia because I don't understand any of the stuff anyways, so I won't understand what they are trying to explain.

Basically, I want a crash course in photography. I will not be a hardcore photog - I am going to take pictures for fun.

I realize I am being brash, but I figure some of you will help.

Cheers.
 
if you cant understand wikipedia, how are you going to understand the majority of the members here... not to be an ass man, i know you don't wanna search, but in this case, you have to. there is a shitload to know about photography, and it's doubtful one member will be able to explain it all. maybe if you were to narrow things down?

if youre just beginning, get something cheap with basic features, like a nikon d40. its still a good camera, but it doesnt have professionel settings/features, which you don't need. cameras nowadays have auto or manual settings. you can fool arounf on manual, or just use the auto setting where your pictures will come out fine, but nothing necessarily tweaked.

anyways, i'd really suggest googling or searching these forums. there is a shitload of information.
 
In retrospect, I probably could have been more specific, and without a doubt I should have searched.

However, I'm trying to learn about this stuff and it just isn't making sense to me. For example, exposure. So I Wiki'd it. But what I want to know is WHAT the importance of exposure is and how it affects the pictures. The problem with the answers I'm finding is that there is too much information for me, so I'm looking for a REALLY simplified response.

Also, I don't know any of the terms to research, so I'm looking for some direction with those.

By the way, I've been looking into the D40, so your recommendation cemented it for me - thanks.
 
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=what+is+exposure%3F&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
honestly dude, if you're too fucking lazy to research it yourself, don't even bother getting a DSLR because its a waste of money. What makes you think you'll be able to handle a DSLR if you're not even willing to spend a bit of time to learn about it, you'll just spend your whole time on auto everything and you might as well get a P&S that has like "snow mode" or "portrait mode".
I know it sounds harsh, but its like getting hellbents because they "look cool" and "they're good skis" when you live in dubai skiing the green runs in the indoor slopes.
I really don't think its hard to get an easy to understand explanation from the web, obviously wikipedia's going to give you a dictionary definition for "exposure" if you search up "freesking" do you think it'll tell you how sick a sport it is and the feeling of community it has?
I learned everything I know about photography through the internet, sure I took a photography course in school this year but all the basics I already knew going into this course other than the film/developing part.
Go for it. Spend some time to learn about this and don't try to get others to do your work.
 
how does one not understand exposure? the word explains itself. and I agree with the last post-if your too lazy to take the 5 minutes to understand wiki than you wont want to take the hundreds of hours it will take to learn your camera. I'm still not sure why i even contributed to this thread
 
very true. don't waste your money.

and that's not an insult to say "get a point and shoot"...there are some great point and shoots out nowadays. the canon G10 is pretty sick.
 
You're spending a lot of money and making it blatantly clear that you don't want to put in the effort it takes to get a good image out of a nicer camera. If you really don't want to learn the intricacies of photography, a DSLR is just going to work against you. Go pick up a $20 photography book and learn the basic relationships between ISO, aperture, and shutter speeds if you want to figure out exposure. Once you do that, then start thinking about what camera you want to get. There really isn't much of a benefit from nicer equipment if you aren't going to utilize what you get from it.
 
shutter speed - how long the shutter is open (longer shutter speed=more light/brighter picture)
aperture - how wide the lens opens up to let light in (higher aperture=smaller hole/less light let in)iso - use a higher iso in darker conditions, reduces noisewhite balance - what the camera sees as "white" - adjust it for different conditions/different lighting

there, super basic description of primary adjustments. but seriously i agree with everyone else. if you cant handle figuring this stuff out on your own just by searching, then dont waste your time and money on a dslr
 
only because I'm bored and nice, you could easily google photography sites and probably get a good overview but here is a quick breakdown.

ISO - it stands for film speed, (standard is 50,100,200,400,800,1600,3200,ETC) the higher the film speed the more light is let into the film which creates a brighter picture in the end.

Aperture - there is a ring opening on the end of the shutter that lets in more or less light depending on our f-stop which correlates to the size of the aperture opening. f5.6 is a smaller opening then f22 which is wide opening. Aperture affects Depth of Field relatively strongly.

Shutter Speed - how fast the shutter on the camera is open for. standard time go from bulb which is as long as you want down to as fast as 1/6000 of a second on some cameras.

Depth of Field - essentially it is what is in focus, shallow depths of field only have the subject in focus while the background falls out of focus, large depths of field have the entire frame in focus.

exposure - what it sounds like, a properly exposed picture is meterd for 18% gray and the highlights and shadows are properly balances, and over or under exposed picture is just that exposed more (lighter) or exposed les (darker) then a properly exposed picture.

that really is the basics, In very simple terms.

now for what it is worth, all this is really not that hard to understand and when you have pictures it's a lot easier to explain but since you don't want to see any of my shots that would demonstrate what all these things look like it's going to be more difficult for you to understand probably.

As for camera's go to your local camera shop and try all the cameras out, which ever feels the best in your hand, get that one. I would say go for Nikon or Canon but you can always deviate.

In my opinion though, with your seeming lack of knowledge on the subject of photography and your seeming lack of a will to learn and get better in the field of photography I would say that you look into the suede DSLRs such as a Nikon coolpix P80 or the canon equivalent. I am getting the feeling that you would never reach the potential that a DSLR had and would just be burning money on a camera you will never out grow.
 
as many others have already said, if you're not willing to look around a little online to learn, i really wouldn't recommend diving into a dslr. it's the fucking internet, and you're only going to wikipedia and this website for information?!!

i'd just get a canon G10 and be done with it. that way it has all the auto modes, and if you eventually want to learn how to use manual controls then you have that option as well.
 
OK guys, I did some soul searching and I've come to the conclusion that I was wrong, and you all were right. I sincerely apologize.

Now that that is out of the way; what experience do you have with point and shoots? My only fear is the difference in quality. I would rather save the money and get a P&S over a DSLR, but I want to make sure the picture quality is comparable.

For those recommending the G10, I checked it out - and for that price, I would rather just get a D40. Any point and shoots that are cheaper?
 
I know a lot about DSLR's but not too much about P & S ones.

I went out and went through about 20 different point and shoots when my dad was looking at getting a camera. The panasonic Lumix series are great, at least in my opinion. Carl Zeiss glass and pretty simple interface and it takes good pictures.

Check out some of the higher end Lumix series fo sho.

Hopefully that helps a little? Sorry I just don't know a ton about them.
 
yeah I figured I'd mess up somewhere in that whole thing. Thanks for checking my facts and making sure they are correct
 
I threw up a little when you said you cant tell the difference between

exposure and iso sensitivity haha....wikipedia is fine for explanations, but a camera manual (if you end up buying) will also cover all the basics and where they can be adjusted on your camera. Photography is a lot of fun though so I hope you do end up buying a DSLR because you definitely won't regret it
 
dude, if you cant understand this:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_(photography)then you really wont be able to understand a slr, yet alone the instruction book...
i mean seriously, you said you wiki'd it- thats the page. you cant understand it? jesus, just look at the picture with all the "#" second values on it. that right there is enough to get a basic understanding of what it does to a picture. I am not trying to be harsh, but seriously man, it took me 5 seconds to find that
 
My mom has a Lumix and it is nice. It takes good pictures and you can have basic functions like ISO and other stuff. The camera has a lot of preset settings like night shots and even a pet function
 
i'm still a noob but i taught myself by playing with a DSLR so i'll try to put it in terms of important things with those cameras and a simple way of how i look at it
exposure- pretty much common sense, if you've done darkroom photography you know about this, it's how long you expose the film to light, the longer you do, the brighter the picture, and vice versa. your shutter speed and aperture will influence exposure as well as the exposure meter. on a DSLR it's how much light enters the shutter between when it opens and closes. on a DSLR you can hold the A/V button and turn the dial to set your exposure relative to normal, so you can basically make the image darker or lighter
shutter speed- this goes along with exposure as do most settings, the faster the shutter speed the less light is let into the camera. you will see on a bright day you can use fast shutter speeds because there's a lot of light whereas at night you have to use like 30 second speeds to get enough light into the camera to show the image. you also need fast shutter speeds for photographing moving objects, if the shutter is open too long it will look like a blur because you don't freeze the image. shutter speed is usually in terms of fractions of a second, so 250 on your camera will be 1/250th of a second. if you turn the dial enough you will see 0"3 which means 1.3 seconds and then it'll go to 30" which means 30 seconds
ISO- this goes with shutter speed in terms of basic use, the way i think of it is the higher ISO the faster shutter speeds you can get away with. 100 is the lowest and most entry level DSLR's go up to 1600 which will give you a faster shutter speed. that being said, you tend to get a lot of noise at high ISO, noise is just kinda grainy shit around the background which looks bad, so generally try to shoot on a lower ISO but that isn't always an option. for example, at night try to shoot at 100 because you have a tripod but for sports you might need higher to get the faster shutter speeds
aperture- i find this the most important, i usually shoot on aperture priority on a camera. aperture is how wide the shutter goes and i think of it as determining depth of field. it also makes it so that more light gets let into the camera. aperture is counter intuitive, 1.2 is the widest aperture whereas 30 something is the narrowest. if you're shooting on like 5.6 (which is the lowest most stock lenses will go) you will notice that only a small part of the image is in focus and the rest is blurred. this is great for flower or portrait shots because you can get the foreground in focus but the background blurred so it's not distracting. if you want to do a landscape however, you want a narrower aperture so everything in the picture is in focus so you'd pick something like 15 or 20
so yeah those are the basics and how i look at them, but that being said i'm just figuring this out, i started learning these things about a month ago. you just need to get a DSLR, take a ton of pictures on different settings, look at the metadata and compare them, and then you'll know what each setting does...also GOOGLE EVERYTHING!!! i learned so much doing that
hope that was somewhat helpful
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top