Request for a tutorial

[laura11383]

Unless there already is one and I'm just missing it, could someone make a basics of photography tutorial? I'm a "rookie," if you will, and I don't understand things like aperture, white balance, etc.

[jfrancho]

Useful General Photography Education Sites

[jfrancho]

What's tough is that there are so many different camera models out there that it would be tough to do a brand neutral tut. What camera and lenses do you currently have? What type of photography are you interested in?

[laura11383]

I have a Nikon D50, and the lenses I have are 28-80 and 18-200. I'm interested in mainly portrait photography, but some nature as well.

[jfrancho]

The first link in the thread I posted should be very helpful.
Bernie's Better Beginner's Guide to Photography
Beyond that, take a look at Benji's posing tutorial for good tips on formal portraits. Maybe some others can chime in on some more stuff specifically nature oriented. My experience with it si that you need really long lenses, and lots of patience.

[laura11383]

Thanks so much!

[Tom Swaman]

Laura,

Are you interested in the specifics of your camera gear and how to use this or just in how to apply a DSLR to portrait and nature photography? Also, do you learn easily from books or not?

Tom

[laura11383]

I'm interested in how to apply a DSLR to a photo and what the basic settings of SLRs are and mean (MASP, etc). And somewhat...

[jfrancho]

Originally Posted by laura11383

I'm interested in how to apply a DSLR to a photo and what the basic settings of SLRs are and mean (MASP, etc). And somewhat...

Bernie's Guide will get you going.

[jazzology]

I personally do much better with "hands on" experience. There used to be lot's of continuing education type courses at community colleges. I dunno anymore, but something like that with some internets stuff would seem to be the best way to understand shutter aperature relationships, basic composition, digital image management.

The one thing that is certain, is no one ever knows it all or is right all the time... there are many ways to approach photography. They are as varied as an artistic medium to journalistic tool...sometimes even those are not mutually exclusive. For me it has been a few formal courses, watching others work and picking their brains, stuyding on the interweb and a lot of shooting with an intended outcome.

One caveat about the web : Ken R. .... could not help myself,,, sorry!

J

[Tom Swaman]

Laura,

You might want to take a look at Complete Nikon D50 Guide by Thom Hogan

Laura, the Thom Hogan Nikon books are way better than the instruction manuals ans these are relatively inexpensiv IMHO.

I need to run now, but I will send you more in a little while.

Tom

[Tom Swaman]

Laura,

All that has been said to you is very sincere and good advice. Yes, there is no substitute for OJT, but you also need that guide. I like readable, indexed reference texts so I can work at my own pace and refer back whenever I need. If you are looking for the same, you might do a search for John Shaw and take a look at one or more of his books on nature photography and look at John Hedgecoe's book on general photography. These books are relatively inexpensive and these are about as good and user friendly as books get.

Best of success and please do not forget to share your photos with us.

Tom

[laura11383]

Thank you, everyone. I really appreciate it!

[gpf]

Originally Posted by Tom Swaman

Laura,

You might want to take a look at Complete Nikon D50 Guide by Thom Hogan

Tom

Thanks Tom. I see that he also does a D80 book and note from the contents that he explains all the bits that the manual doesn't (or, at least, doesn't explain in English!).

I also just checked: I have John Hedgecoe's book from 1980 on my bookshelf. A super reference book - I really should read it again and stop making the same dumb mistakes. I can second your recommendation of his books as an excellent grounding in all things photographic.

Graham

[JohnC]

Here is something I put together in a PDF file for some friends:
http://johncornicello.com/articles/photointro.pdf

[JohnC]

And I'll add a vote for John Shaw's nature photography books. Even if you aren't a nature photographer. Shaw does a very good job of describing the technical side of things and he explains them correctly. I rarely (if ever) have that "oh, that's not really correct" reaction to his stuff. Too many basic photo books gloss over things or kind of explain them or just plain get things wrong.

[ljh34465]

Laura - I second Bernie's Guide - and Thom Hogan's E- book. Two totally different resources. The first is a primer on how to use ANY camera and understand the terms.
The second is the ultimate guide to your specific camera and you need both of them IMO. Brian Peterson's book "Understanding Exposure" is quite informative as are John Shaw's.
Good luck - let's see some photos and we'll tell you what we think

[Paul Shields]

Originally Posted by JohnC

Here is something I put together in a PDF file for some friends:
http://johncornicello.com/articles/photointro.pdf

John - an excellent introduction. Please post more if you have any .