Photography Course

Robm1955

I have just been to Carfest, and took loads of photos, and video with my Canon Powershot SX240HS camera, and to be honest, a lot of them are rubbish. Not because of the camera, but more my knowledge of photography. It's mainly the photos of bands on stage at night, where the lighting is strong, or they are moving about that I have problems with. Say a band is on stage, and the stage is flooded with red light, I can see everything clearly, but the band appear blurred in red on the photo. Obviously down to the settings. Can anyone recommed any good free online photography courses, or even tutorials for taking the best photos in different situations?

[Deleted User]

Sounds like you need to learn about aperture priority and shutter speed.. Also, how your camera determines exposure is important.

The internet is chock full of stuff. Here's some starting points:

http://lifehacker.com/5815742/basics-of-photography-the-complete-guide

https://www.springboard.com/blog/learn-photography-online-courses-tutorials/

Personally, for a gig, I'd put my camera in aperture priority, set the aperture to as low as it'll go (f1.4 - 2.7 is the widest, depending on zoom level), set the exposure meter so that it picks a single point, rather than the scene. I'd let the camera figure out the shutter speed. Then I'd fiddle with the settings to see how things improved or changed.

Just reading the camera manual can be useful.

Fightsback

No local photography clubs or adult evening classes in your area ?

Robm1955

ringo_24601 wrote: »

Sounds like you need to learn about aperture priority and shutter speed.. Also, how your camera determines exposure is important.

The internet is chock full of stuff. Here's some starting points:

http://lifehacker.com/5815742/basics-of-photography-the-complete-guide

https://www.springboard.com/blog/learn-photography-online-courses-tutorials/

Personally, for a gig, I'd put my camera in aperture priority, set the aperture to as low as it'll go (f1.4 - 2.7 is the widest, depending on zoom level), set the exposure meter so that it picks a single point, rather than the scene. I'd let the camera figure out the shutter speed. Then I'd fiddle with the settings to see how things improved or changed.

Just reading the camera manual can be useful.

Thanks for the advice Ringo. I've looked at the manual, and although it explains the settings for aperture, and shutter speed, etc., it does give situations for using the settings, or when you should set it differently. I'll look at the links you've given me. And thanks Fightback for your comments, but no there are no photography classes nearby, but I would suspect that they would cater for the photographers with expensive SLR's and different lenses, rather than the amateur who has no idea at all

andygb

Fightsback wrote: »

No local photography clubs or adult evening classes in your area ?

Those are great suggestions IMO.
Clubs are good, because they are full of keen people with loads of experience, and you can usually go along free for the first couple of times.
I would also suggest buying old photographic magazines, reading the manual (as someone has already suggested) and then use the two to set up and take loads of shots.
You could try taking shots of still life - flowers for instance, varying the shutter and aperture settings (f1.8 means wide open giving a narrow depth of field, meaning that the background can be reduced to a blur, whilst f16 is closed down, meaning that the depth of field is very wide - great for landscapes).
Digital photography makes practice easy, so get out there and start taking pictures:)

Fightsback

Robm1955 wrote: »

And thanks Fightback for your comments, but no there are no photography classes nearby, but I would suspect that they would cater for the photographers with expensive SLR's and different lenses, rather than the amateur who has no idea at all

Everyone has to start somewhere and don't be put off. They'll probably be glad to have someone new come along and pass on the benefit of their experience, besides they'll be amateurs themselves and a good chance to meet people with a shared passion.

It's not the size of the lens that counts it's what you do with it

Farway

Fightsback wrote: »

It's not the size of the lens that counts it's what you do with it

I know it was said with a wink, but I did see an article a bit since where the magazine had given the likes of David Bailey a cardboard disposable camera from a supermarket, the ones with film in that had to processed, and the professionals' photos taken were superb

[Deleted User]

Robm1955 wrote: »

Thanks for the advice Ringo. I've looked at the manual, and although it explains the settings for aperture, and shutter speed, etc., it does give situations for using the settings, or when you should set it differently. I'll look at the links you've given me. And thanks Fightback for your comments, but no there are no photography classes nearby, but I would suspect that they would cater for the photographers with expensive SLR's and different lenses, rather than the amateur who has no idea at all

The reason your photos were probably over-bright and blury, is that your camera tries to set the exposure for the entire scene - and this is a mix of really bright, and really dark. It slows the lens shutter down to get the dark bits - and in the process blurs the bright bits.

If you can set the camera to choose the exposure for a particular spot (and most reasonable cameras can do this) then the 'automatic' bit of the camera will work better and get the bright bits in focus. The dark bits will be lost - but you don't care as much about those normally.

bouicca21

Meet up has several photography tutors. The sessions try to cram loads in though. My best intro to photography was a course at City Lit.

Johnmcl7

The shooting conditions you describe (shooting a band in poor light) is challenging for cameras and there's a lot of tradeoffs, in the poor light the camera increases the shutter time to try and gather more light but that ends up making movement blurry. The camera can shorten the shutter time but that means it has to increase the iso setting which can make for a soft, blurry photo due to the increase image noise.

The one setting I'd look at first is exposure compensation which is usually marked with a plus and minus sign, it's perhaps not available in the full auto modes so you may need to change to another auto mode to be able to use it. Exposure compensation allows you to slightly override the automatic exposure setting and make the exposure either shorter or longer. Usually you set it by a third of a stop so 0.3, 0.6 or 1.0 up to 2.0 or more.

In a situation where the scene appears to be too bright and you want the camera exposure to be faster, you want to select negative exposure compenation - if it's very slightly out you'd only want to put 0.3 but if it's way out, you'd want to choose 1.0 or more which doubles the exposure.

In the opposite situation where the scene is too dark and you want the camera to capture more light, you need to choose positive exposure compensation which forces the camera exposure to be longer.

You have to be careful with both though and it might make things worse, the difficulty is the very small sensor in the camera is limited in its capabilities and it's an area where much bigger sensors have a noticeable advantage.

Robm1955

Thanks again for all your excellent advice. I'll take on board all advice given. Practicing with different settings along the way.