Lesson #1 Familiarize myself with the new Camera.
I am a bit intimidated by my new camera, or maybe I should say intimidated a lot by the new camera. Vicki said that I should learn it in small increments instead of trying to take the whole thing on. Like learning how to take pictures of flowers. So, tonight when I got home from work, I picked up the camera and the manual and went outside to learn. Looking at this thing scares the heck out of me. What if I press the wrong button and mess everything up? Then what? So I try to calm myself down. Breathe. Then open the manual. I learn where the On/Off button is, how to zoom in and out. I play a little with the zoom features. Note the Scrub Jay. I need to work on birds next.
And the dog. This is kind of fun. Gee I can actually take pictures and view them.
Now it's time to learn how to take pictures of flowers. In the manual is a section on flowers. Looking at the top of the camera is the "Mode Dial". The manual says to turn it to the picture of the flower. That was easy. I have lots of flowers in my yard, so now it's time to give it a try. Wow. I can actually take pictures of flowers now. I'm not sure if these are what a photographer would call "good", but so far I'm happy with them.
Baby steps. That's how I'm going to do this. The camera scares me just looking at. The next lesson will be in trying to get over the fear.
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."
In this second photo, I used a fast shutter speed 1/640 and ISO of 800. Notice how crisp this picture is. Her hair didn't even have a chance to lay down. With the faster shutter speed, she is frozen in action.
