Photography Lesson #3

Lesson #3 of my online photography class puts everything that we have learned together. It is a hard lesson and I have shied away from doing it. Fortunately, the instructor gave us an extra week and I am at the end of that week. Today, I took my camera and my computer outside, read the lesson and practiced. With this lesson we had to use the Manual setting and choose either apperature or shutter speed as out focus. Since I was taking pictures of "non-moving" objects and wanted to blur the background, I chose apperature. Once you choose your apperature, then you choose the matching shutter speed. Confusing??? It is, but she gave us a little ruler guide to help us match them. The next thing is using the meter on the inside of the view finder to adjust for over/under esposure. To do this, you push the shutter half way down and look at the little lines and dashes inside the camera. You want the meter line to be right in the middle. Once that is in line you take your picture. A minor, but important step is letting in the right amount of light. This is the ISO. Since it was a bright, sunny day, I set it on ISO 100. These are the settings that I chose: Apperature 5.6 and Shutter Speed 1/60 and when zooming the focal length is 50 mm. My head is spinning from all these numbers and choices. Time to take a break and pick it up another day. I will have to practice what I tell Alexia, "Practice makes perfect."