DUMBFSA

Today I want to talk to all the people who have digital cameras but never bothered to read the manual. Or tried to read it but it was too complicated. For all my friends who 'just put it on automatic'.

I know the internet is full of guides to help out beginners who want to get more out of their pictures, but I always think it must be too long/boring/complicated for most people - fact is, most people I know (that aren't serious photographers) never did read any of that stuff, and quite a few times ask me basic questions about photography, most of the time about how to work their camera. This includes SLR owners (not just point-and-shoot moms).

So here is the most basic things you should know to get the best shots off your camera.

D.U.M.B.F.S.A - Didn't Understand the Manual, But Felt Silly to Ask.

Zeelim en Film

Today I have another short one for you.

Don't worry, next week's post will be really long...

I recently came back from 'miluim' in the desert. Knowing how dusty it can get I didn't take along my DSLR. Last time I had gone I took my old Sony H7 and got pretty decent pictures.

This time I wanted to challenge myself so I brought my film camera, with three rolls of film (thats 108 pics more or less).

This proved to be a good limitation, prevented me from taking loads of copies of the exact same thing and got me really thinking about each photo I took. The fact that each shot costs a few cents (in film and developing) also makes you stop and consider your frame and settings.

A sample of the best out of ~80 shots I took that week:

Food and Flashes

Doing homework for Strobist instead of homework for school... Taking pictures while making food and trying for once to give my shots a real 'studio' quality. I must say this was a lot of fun...

Conceptions change. If you had asked me what my opinion was about photshopping images when I was just starting with my first digital camera I would be very much against it. "The photograph has to represent reality as it is" and all those opinions I still hear. Since then I have moved on to use Lightroom regularly and even when I was traveling I did some RAW format editing post-capture inside the D90. Today I have no doubt that making these adjustments to a photo is just another step in the process. Which brings me to another conception I had about photography: natural light, unposed subjects and pretty much no planning of pictures at all, for the "natural picture".



This works out pretty well when traveling, especially if you can't afford to stay in one place for three days just to catch the perfect light on the mountain top - which is what I should be doing if I want to "pose" the landscape for the picture. You take the mountains, villagers and wildlife as it comes along, which was just fine for everything I did in Nepal last year (examples: https://picasaweb.google.com/112701265842357765172).


However, things changed when I finally bought my first strobe. The SB700 is a small, easy to use and optically wireless flash (fully compatible with my D90). This and reading along Strobist lighting 101 and now 102, got me doing a lot of new stuff.