Better photos in 30mins : The fundamentals of photography

so in this series we're going to talk about the fundamentals of photography the basics I hope forget us is this the best camera what's the best camera or is this lens good for this and these are great questions but when you're beginning in photography it's really important to understand the fundamentals first and that's what the series is planning on covering photography is an art form it's a great hobby it can be a great career path but like all art forms it's subjective what I think is great art maybe isn't great art to you and vice versa but unlike a lot of other art forms photography is heavily weighted in both technology and theory and in order to really achieve great art or great results from your photography you really need to understand these fundamentals so in this series we'll be covering all of those things like the rule of thirds for composition or the exposure triangle how light interacts with your subjects how it interacts with your technology we're going to talk about focal lengths what camera bodies are good for what situations what lenses are good for what situations and a whole bunch of other stuff in between so grab your camera remember to hit the like button on the page and get those notifications coming and come and join me as we learn the basics of photography [Music] [Music] so without fail the most common question I get asked is which camera should I buy it's a great question it's where we all have to start you wanted to photography you're going to need a camera obviously but the answers to which camera you should choose isn't quite so obvious let me explain [Music] okay so you're looking to buy your first camera and you want to know which camera is gonna be the best for you look there's several factors you really need to consider in choosing that first camera and let's face it what spoil for choice right now there's so many different kinds of cameras on the market from small compact point-and-shoot all the way to like full-frame professional DSLRs and everything in between they're so loaded with so many different kinds of options and technical specifications now that it can be completely overwhelming when you first start looking at it even after decades in the field of photography it's overwhelming for me sometimes but there are certain things that you should be looking at when choosing that first camera and we're gonna break those down for you now so my first tip for you is about ergonomics go out find some cameras pick them up and see which camera feels most comfortable to hold there's so many different kinds of cameras on the market and they're all a little bit different the where the dials are laid out the buttons are laid out are all going to be completely different and some will work better for you than others so go out find some cameras and pick them up I get asked quite often why I shoot Nick on Nova Cannon and that's the only reason it's got nothing to do with image quality or loyalty to the company it's simply that I like the way the Nick on feels when I'm using it I like the way this the the dials of place and the buttons are placed it feels right when I'm carrying it that's why I shoot that camera so make sure you check out which camera feels right in your hand okay so for most of you who are starting into photography you'll probably look at an entry-level DSLR these often come with a couple of kit lenses something like a 18 to 55 and a 70 to 300 mil lens and these lens is really useful for giving you like a broad coverage of different kinds of focal lengths you might need to use in photography it's great when you're not exactly sure what kind of photography you want to do yet and it gives you a chance to shoot a whole bunch of different kinds of things now these aren't the greatest lenses out there and if you stick with photography you'll probably grow out of them very quickly so think about that when you're looking to purchase that kit sometimes it's better just to buy the camera body and invest in two lenses you'll find over time that the cameras will come and go but you'll keep your lenses for a much longer period of time so keep that in mind and have a look at your different options out there okay so as I said before when it comes to choosing a camera you really are spoilt for choice there are so many different kinds of cameras available from things like this which is a workhorse a1 series these are the cameras you'll see sports photographers using war photographers using because they shoot incredibly fast frame rates and they also a really robust at hard to damaged these are great cameras they're very expensive but just because they're the most expensive doesn't mean that they're great for every situation you'll also find smaller bodied cameras like this this is the Nikon d800 series and this camera here has got incredible resolution it's not very fast for shooting action shots you can't get as many shots in a row in the burst mode but when you shoot a landscape you can find all the details because it's got so much resolution there are mirrorless cameras out there which are smaller and have you know much better form factor which are great for traveling they're point-and-shoot cameras now that can shoot RAW and give you all the options that you want to have to shoot amazing images but fit in your pocket the choices to which camera you are going to use really depends on the type of photography that you want to do like ultimately pretty much all the cameras on the market right now are capable of taking an amazing photo most of them take fantastic video as well choosing that camera will really come down to what it is that you require or what it is that you need if you were just taking photos for say social media then you don't really have to worry about getting a high-resolution camera if you're doing travel photography then maybe you want something that's gonna be smaller and more compact so it's not weighing down your bag if you're into vlogging then you're definitely gonna want a camera that has an articulating screen so you'll be able to see yourself and frame yourself in the shots these are the things that you need to look at and compare and also remember to go out and check the camera itself see how it feels in the end the photography will come down to your vision to what you see and your art the camera is just a tool happy shooting now the exposure triangle sounds a little convoluted but really it's quite simple essentially it's three elements that once you understand how they work individually and together you can really control your exposure and achieve the look you're after those three elements are aperture shutter speed and ISO let's break them down now okay so first let's talk about aperture aperture essentially is the iris of your lens it's that opening on the back of the lens that controls how much light can travel through the lens into the sensor when we shoot wide open which is having that iris wide open we allow a lot more light to travel through the lens in a short period of time this also affects the depth of field of our shot well where the focus is you may see this in portrait photography where they have that shallow depth of field where the backgrounds all soft and dreamy Orbach air as some people like to say this is shot with a wide-open lens or wide open aperture having your lens wide open is also fantastic for low-light situations because you get more light traveling through the lens in a short period of time which allows you to expose more correctly in darker situations on the other hand as we close down our aperture we allow much less light to travel through the lens to the sensor this has the opposite effect on our focus point often giving us a much deeper depth of field you'll see this in landscape photography in particular where the foreground mid and background are all in focus so next is shutter speed now shutter speed is fairly self-explanatory essentially it's how fast we open and close the shutter or the curtain and how much light we allowed to travel to the sensor when we use a fast shutter speed we freeze our action you'll see this a lot in sports photography or action photography on the other side of that is when we use a slower shutter speed anything that's moving during the time that the shutter is open will have that soft blur and you might see this like when peep his dream waterfall photos or seascapes so next let's talk about ISO ISO essentially is the sensors sensitivity to light as we increase the sensitivity of our sensor say that three times real quick increase the sensitivity of our sensor increase the sensitivity of our sensor increase the sensitivity of our sensor as we increase that sensitivity of the sensor say 6400 or 12,800 we allow ourselves to expose more correctly in low-light situations the flipside is that we start to introduce noise to our image when we bring our ISO down to more of a native setting of say iso 100 we're gonna get a much clearer image however we need to extend either our shutter speed or open up our aperture to compensate for the amount of light that we're losing so let's look at a few real-world examples of how we can use the exposure triangle in everyday situations let's start with a sports event at night now we're going to want to use a shallow depth of field to really separate our athlete from the background we're also going to want to use a high shutter speed to really freeze the action and take away any kind of motion blur which means that we have to compensate for those two elements by increasing our ISO okay now what we're gonna do is we want to do say a long exposure landscape shot we've got a beautiful waterfall in front of us we want to lure out our image and have some soft water flowing so we're gonna need motion blur which means we have to slow down our shutter speed as we slow down that shutter speed we're going to be allowing a lot more light to come through in our image so we're probably going to want to increase our aperture and decrease our ISO to compensate so in a nutshell that's the exposure triangle it's really not that difficult when you think about it go out and try it with a few different situations and really begin to experiment with each of those elements and think about how they are 15 your image practice makes perfect right [Music] so it's been raining a lot which has made it quite hard to get these videos done but we've got a little gap in the weather so let's just jump right into number four and number four it's all about metering modes now metering modes are an essential part of your photography they're going to play a major role in how your workflow comes out how you're out there shooting different events or different kinds of scenes so the very important understand they're not overly complicated but at first they can be a little bit daunting to see so let's break right into them now I shoot an icon so I'm gonna be discussing the Nikon names and icons you'll find that these pretty much correlate across all the brands they may be slightly different icons or slightly different names but essentially you'll figure out which ones correlate with your camera brand if you have trouble with that drop a comment below and we'll see we can help you out but it's fairly easy to understand now let's start off with matrix metering yeah matrix metering which is this icon here is essentially a overall meter of the the entire scenes so the camera will look at your highlights and your shadows and your mid-tones balance them all out and give you an exposure reading based on all of those now this is probably the most closest you'll see that would be what your iPhone does or what a point-and-shoot camera does an automatic camera does they pretty much all use matrix metering mode to get the exposure right now you'll use this when you're doing things like big wide shots for example it's definitely going to be using matrix metering for landscape photography or just general wide shots where you want everything in the shot to be exposed correctly you don't want to have things where they're super crushed blacks whether you know they're just super underexposed or really really blown out highlights where it's super overexposed you want to have everything kind of exposed correctly so that you can play with it later and put that you'll be shooting with matrix metering modes now the next metering mode we have is called center-weighted which is this icon here looks like a dot with some parentheses around it and what's sent away to does is it looks at where you are focusing in your shot and grabs a little bit of the area around that focus point and it goes it does a light reading for that or a light metering for that this is really the one I use the least but it's still very very useful to have you'll find this is really good for when you doing like sort of portraits on locations and things like that where you want to meet or for your subject but you also kind of want to keep a little bit of the background exposed correctly as well so that's when you want to use Sena weighted the most in my experience now the one I use quite a lot in a lot of photography that I've done especially event and Bridal photography is the next one and that is spot metering which is that icon there now spot metering does exactly that it only made us on the point that you're focusing on it just takes a spot reading this is really useful when you're shooting something that is heavily backlit I found a lot of times with Bridal photography I'm trying to shoot the bride and groom who are standing in front of a large window heavily heavily lit from the behind so of heavily backlit and metering for their faces is very important because I want their faces to be exposed even at the expense of the background being overexposed so in these times are you spot metering and meter directly for their faces the metering mode that you're using really affects you more and more if you're not shooting directly in manual mode so for example if you're shooting an aperture priority or shutter priority or you're using auto ISO you're allowing the camera to control the exposure based on the metering it's taking so you really have to consider that when you're setting your camera what metering mode you in what situation are you shooting and do have one of those settings switched on it's so then it's very very crucial otherwise you can end up with some very underexposed images or some very overexposed images I can be a nightmare to fix later okay guys that's basically meteringmode in a nutshell it's like I said it's not such a difficult thing to understand but it can look a little daunting at first [Music] we are going to discuss a few settings on your camera I'm going to combine two of them to sort of large sections that really don't need an in-depth video on each of them so we're going to combine those two today we're going to be looking at the shooting modes on your camera and also on your autofocus modes now let's start with talking about the shooting modes so I'm going to just focus on three the three main shooting modes which we will find across-the-board on pretty much all cameras I'm not going to worry about sort of like smaller like bonus features that come with the different makers so there's three modes are your s mode your a mode and your M mode and that stands for shutter priority aperture priority and manual now shutter priority basically is where you set the shutter speed of your camera and allow the camera to choose your aperture and your ISO to complete your exposure triangle it's just really useful when you're shooting say something that's a little bit more of a fast pace or a hectic event you know live news actions things that are breaking and moving fast sporting events where things are moving very quickly this mode will allow you to set your shutter speed whether you want to have a high shutter speed so you can freeze action or a slow shutter speed for like more blurry shots or you know like different kinds of effects but you set the shutter speed and allow the camera to focus on everything else so that you're free to just focus your subject and compose your subjects and not worry too much about changing the lighting and all those various other things that go on when you're shooting an event aperture priority is where you control the aperture so you tell the camera what you want your aperture to be and it'll choose your shutter speed and your ISO I find that I use this mostly when I'm shooting something where I need to control my depth of field I want to consistent depth of field throughout the shot but I don't necessarily want to worry about my shutter speed for me personally I use this sometimes when I'm doing time lapse for talk these modes again are useful but I tend to stay in the next mode which is manual mode now manual mode is exactly that it's where you control all the functions of your camera you set the shutter speed you should set the aperture and you set the ISO that's what manual mode is and this is the mode you really should be shooting in the most if you want to improve your photography because this is the mode that's going to keep you focused on what you were doing focused on what's happening in your shot and really thinking about what your camera needs to be adjusting in order to capture that that that image that you're looking for it's just a constant training of photography and definitely if you have the option to shoot in manual mode then just stay in manual mode I tend not to use shutter priority or aperture priority very much at all in general it's maybe once or twice a year I might switch to those modes a lot of times it's easy but I'm just feeling a bit lazy as well I might throw it in there as well or about having a bit of an off deck but in general I stay in manual mode okay so those are the basic shooting modes of the camera you will find that there are the other like gimmicks that get thrown in by your camera manufacturer usually those will be the P mode often jokingly called the professional mode but it stands for program so it's all preset it's just where the camera has a bunch of settings whether it be for low-light or before portraiture where the camera will automatically adjust your settings to give you that kind of look and that's really useful if you're hobbyist so those modes there I'm not going to discuss them you can figure them out yourself now we'll move on now to your autofocus modes now I again I shoot Nick on so this is gonna be really focused on how Nick go and present those modes other manufacturers will have different ways of doing it but I'm going to focus on the Nikon ones now the two basic modes that you'll find apart from your manual mode is your AF s and your AF C now AF s is single servo mode and basically what that is is that you will use your focal point within your viewfinder and set it on your subject and in that you'll have to press your shutter or back button whichever one you choose and you'll grab your focus after that you're free to either recompose what just take your shot so single servo basically will focus until it has the focus locked once it's locked focus it stops trying to adjust that focus this is really good for portraiture this is really good for still life this is good for things that aren't moving things that are very predictable your subjects that are staying still if you're shooting in like a studio environment or if you're shooting someone who's seated or you're shooting like I said still life things that are moving things like macro photography can be single servo mode can be fantastic for this you wouldn't use single servo modes so much for say if you're trying to capture a sports action you can do but it's not probably the best mode for that best mode for that kind of shooting is the next mode which is AF C and AF C stands for autofocus continuous so whatever is present within your focus point the camera will continually adjust the focus to hold focus on that subject so if you lock your focus in and you've got your focus point pressed over someone and you keep following them as they move whatever is within that focus point will stay in focus and the camera all constantly adjust that's AF C so this again this is good for when you have subjects that are moving I use this a lot when I'm shooting you know like family portraits where people I have people interacting and moving around within the scene I'll use this one I'm shooting sporting I use this one I'm shooting wildlife this is the mode that I'm gonna use what I really want to maintain my focus on a moving subject now within those two modes you'll find other modes and this is where it starts to get interesting so for example you can find a group setting now a group setting is where instead of having a single focus point you'll have for focal points and the camera will basically hold focus on what is within those force four points it'll try to find whatever is in that area and hold focus on that group this is great when you're shooting saying that's like slightly more present within your frame like say you're shooting a car that's doing a drift you might use that grouping mode so that you can hold focus a little bit better whereas if you were using a single point focus it may slip a little bit easier this just gives the camera a little bit of a wider area to find that focus another great mode in there is 3d 3d is where the actual focus point will shift to try to track and follow whatever subject was in side that focal point when you begin setting your focus and that's really good when you've got something that's moving erratically I tend to use the 3d focus when I want to follow a subject but I'm also moving and that way I can I can just focus on keeping my my composition the way I want it to look and allow the camera to track the subject and keep them in focus even if I slip a little bit with my composition or I am NOT you know they've moved suddenly they're still in focus within the frame and I can deal with that later that's where the the 3d mode is fantastic when it comes to your auto focus modes isn't a real hard set rule you know for example let's say we're shooting sporting and in general it sports you've got say a rugby team or a soccer team and you've got a player running down the field and you would most likely have your camera and AFC so you can track that player as they move and you're following them but as you're following them another player comes between you and them just for us just for a moment they can actually take your focus so the camera may shift its focus on to that other player there and you can lose the shot so sometimes in that situation you might want to be either in a manual focus or you may want to be in a s focus where you're just constantly grabbing your focus on your subject so there's no hard fast rules but just understanding how these different focus modes were and then applying them to different situations is really an important part of your photography so the best advice when it comes to your focus modes is just to go in and play around with them try them in different situations and find out what works best for you some people just prefer to shoot in AFS some people prefer to shoot in AFC some people love manual focus it really depends on the shooter how your workflow is and what you're shooting so get out there experiment around with those different photo focus modes and figure out what's going to work best for what situations practice makes perfect right okay so now this video we're going to talk a little bit about composition composition is a very broad subject and it's really really open to interpretation by the viewer and by the artists themselves but there are some basic and fundamental rules to take a look at and get familiar with and then break the hell out of them in order to make your shots your own and we're gonna start with looking at the rule of thirds so basically with the rule of thirds you divide the image or the frame into thirds both vertically and horizontally and by placing your subject or certain aspects of your image on these axes you can really enhance the whole viewing experience of the image the impact of the the image but the best way to explain this is to show you through examples so when you have your subject in the frame you will want to keep your subject either on this third axis or on that third axis and how you choose that it's dependent on pond where the subject is looking so for example you don't want to have your subject looking towards the edge of the frame you want them to be looking to the wider area of the frame this creates a sense of space and gives a little bit more interest in image because you're wondering what is the subject looking at much like I'm framed in this video now if I was simply to turn myself and face to this way while talking to you it would feel very condensed very very small it feels very claustrophobic almost but by turning and facing this way I open myself up and also you to what is here in this empty space it creates a more pleasing image another example of how to use this is with landscape photography one thing that is considered a mistake with landscape photography is when the horizon is placed dead in the center of the frame a lot of people believe that you should keep your horizon at the top of the frame or the bottom of the frame and it creates a much more pleasing image when you do this it's not always the case but in most cases it does look a lot better okay now I'm going to show you a few examples and have the subject both Center framed and then placed out into one of the three accesses of this this grid and just show you the difference in impact that it does make its subtle in some cases but it does create a difference [Music] [Music] another place we can really use the rule of thirds is when you're framing a close-up of someone's face in general you all want to keep their eye line in the top frame in the top 1/3 of the image even if they're centered in the frame you still want to have that top 1/3 across the eye line it just creates a much more dramatic image allows your your viewer to really focus in on the eyes ok so there is no real hard and fast rules when it comes to composition in my personal opinion I think that we can all find that images that are pleasing to us and and that's really the essence of photography so when it comes to working on your composition one thing that's good to know is these fundamental rules like the rule of third but also to go out there and just try a bunch of different frames within the same shot I've often seen photographers shooting frame after frame without really moving or adjusting their camera just slightly changing settings to me this is such a waste of time when you feel like you've captured an image in a certain frame adjust your frame you can still shoot the same image but just change the way you're composing that shot shoot a whole bunch of different compositions and then when you get back into the computer you can find the ones that you really like but figure out what it is about that image that really stands out to you what did you change when you recompose that image that made it better than the last composition work on creating your own style because composition is key this is just a basic run over of composition in later tutorials I'll be talking with more advanced specific lessons based on a certain type of photography we're going to delve into landscape photography and really look at composition and how it affects the landscape photography we're going to look at portraiture and really focus on how you can compose your photos for portrait photography to create an image to create a feeling another thing to consider when composing shots is negative space you see this a lot in portrait photography negative space essentially is the area that has no real point of focus on it your subject is not using a lot of times you'll see people framing shots where there's a lot of headroom above the subject to give you an example I'll just crouch down for a moment it creates a sense of someone being quite small and not very important in the frame it also detract from the user so that your eyes are not pulled to focus on that subject whereas when you have the frame cutting more across the head here like this you create the sense of of being full and impact your frame what are you're seeing in the frame is more important and needs to have your attention have the viewers focus with composition as well it comes down to more than just how the image is friend but also how the camera is positioned by shooting from a low angle you can create a sense of power or authority within Europe within your subject shooting from a high angle can you have the adverse effect of creating someone that feels small or diminished by simply changing the angle or the height of your camera you can really create a different experience for the for the viewer by bringing the camera down to a very low level you're showing people a scene that they may be seeing on a daily basis but from an angle that they maybe haven't looked at before I've also taken the camera much higher turning the camera slightly on its axis these are all different techniques you can use to take something that we see on a day-to-day basis and compose it in a way that it's unusual interesting or different and that creates impact when it comes to composition be creative find out what looks good play around enjoy yourself and most importantly happy shoot ok thanks for watching that concludes our fundamentals course in photography for beginners from here on out we're going to take more deep dives into specific genres of photography an X video series will be on landscape photography so please subscribe to the channel and ring the notification bell so you'll get notified when the next video drops most importantly happy shooting [Music] [Music]

Channel: Blue Pacific Media

Views: 9,768

Keywords: photography, learn photography, DSLR, DSLR Photography, auto mode, camera, nikon, cannon, take better photos, photography tutorial, iso, aperture, camera settings, shutter speed, dslr, exposure, basics of photography, understanding exposure, photography tricks, photography hacks, photography mistakes, photography tips, posing tips, vs, diy photography tricks, beginner photography tips, photo ideas, photo hacks, photography ideas, photography tips and tricks

Id: 4csIeUsfoik

Length: 31min 10sec (1870 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 18 2020