THEY GAVE YOU THE WRONG ADVICE THE WHOLE TIME. BREAKING DOWN THE PHOTOGRAPHY MYTHS!

hi everyone welcome back to a new video when everyone starts off in a new hobby or Endeavor it seems like everyone around them starts pulling out these old axioms well you know they say or when someone is stuck they volunteer some advice with well what I heard was so in today's video I'm going to go over the most often repeated photography myths and tell you which ones indeed are true and which ones are just that myths if you stay till the end I'll share with you the myth that held me back and once I dispelled it I was able to get photos like this and this my name is Simone adaltermal I'm a professional nature and wildlife photographer living in Eastern Canada I make weekly videos giving you photo tips for taking you behind the scenes for nature and Wildlife photography subscribe if you want to see more [Music] shut your mouth [Music] sometimes first off a disclaimer to protect you my viewers some really unscrupulous people are pretending to be me with fake accounts using my photo and making comments under my videos claiming you've won a prize and asking you to connect with them via telegram stay away I never want any of you to ever get hurt you can report them by clicking the three dots next to their post and hitting report so let's get on to the subject of our video myths or truths a couple of disclaimers here one there's never a situation where one can be a hundred percent certain that this is better than that so if I say something is a myth and you think well it works for me that's a hundred percent great and keep doing it my viewpoint is going to be is this the advice that most people especially beginners should follow secondly the applicability of advice about photography will vary greatly between genres making for lots of exceptions so if I say use a lens hood on the front of your lens it will protect your front element from scratches and block lens flares the aviation photographer who shoots airplanes out of an open window of helicopter will say no don't use a lens Hood as it will catch the wind and rip the camera from your hands of course this person is right but it doesn't mean that the advice is invalid does that sound fair okay myth number one a good photographer has to have a good camera false but not in the way that you think good photographers have good lenses that's right Advanced photographers fall in love with their favorite lenses more than their favorite cameras now do most Pro and advanced photographers have good cameras too yes but in most cases if you ask a professional photographer that he or she can only pick one piece of gear to have forever and that everything else needs to go and to be bought back used from the local buy and sell website most of them will pick a favorite lens to keep that's because the look you get in a photo or the type of photo you can get or the type of art you can make is more often a trait of the lens than the camera fast lenses are prized by portrait photographers and they'll often have a favorite but usually any of 20 different camera bodies can make a similar picture using that lens a wildlife photographer like me will favor a big sharp lens like this one I could put this lens on an Etch A Sketch and I can take great photos so to translate this advice on what it means for you spend your big bucks on glass you'll get the most out of top quality it will last a long time and it won't depreciate as fast as camera bodies second myth compose your photo using the rule of thirds this one I would call true ish the rule of thirds is a guide of composition that says you should divide your photo vertically and horizontally into thirds and place your major lines features and subjects on the lines or at the intersection of the lines this is actually a very good tool for compositions in Landscapes setting Your Horizon on one of the lines of the thirds is a great idea if your photo has an amazing Sky make the sky two-thirds in the land one-third if the sky is boring make the sky one-third and the land two-thirds when looking for somewhere to place a subject in the photo the intersection of the thirds is a great place it seems balanced and interesting but my view is these lines aren't magic points on the map instead they help reflect two ideas that are also important first they prevent you from placing your subject or lines too close to the edge which if not done well seems to be too crowded on the edges and doesn't look right here's an example that doesn't seem to work that well if too crowded but looks fine if given a bit of room second they prevent you from placing your subject or lines in the dead center which is often the least interesting place for your subject or important features like in this photo my take is it looks better on the thirds seeing that the thirds aren't magic places but rather helpful guides to keep you from the center and from the edges many new opportunities show up that don't need to be on the lines to look good here are a few examples this is especially true of placing your subject on the thirds lines doesn't allow you to properly show off some of the other features of the photo like in this photo don't cut off the pretty accompaniments to your subject in the photo just to get your subject on the lines of the thirds in this photo the intersection line would crowd my subject so placing it here makes more sense and still looks balanced also as I mentioned there are always exceptions subjects looking right at you often look good in the center as the Symmetry is part of the photo and Landscapes can indeed have the Horizon in the center if the two halves feel balanced and that's what serves the image best third myth you need all these accessories especially filters with your new camera mostly false now there are indeed some filters and other accessories that are very helpful in photography a neutral density filter can slow down your shutter speed to shoot movement and intentionally make it blurry like on this waterfall polarizer is helpful in cutting glare from water so you can see through it but how many of these do you need when you just bought your first camera and are just learning when I see someone on a used buy and sell website selling a camera with the description saying hardly ever used camera 6mm memory cards a case four batteries a flash a strap a tripod and six filters it makes me sad they pay two thousand dollars for the whole thing and eight hundred dollars might have done the job the balance spend on an amazing lens someday of just the right focal length that would have been a much better asset for them and their hobby one good camera and one good lens and a tripod only if you shoot indoors or Landscapes maybe a carrying case all those extra things should have waited for the benefit of experience and picking your genre of Photography that you like and finding your photography Voice once a problem shows up that needs gear to solve like needing a flash for macro or to shoot portraits or indoors get it then once you know what you need this is especially true of the UV filter which is sold as a protective filter for the front lens element it's not needed use a lens Hood and the front of your element will get all the protection it needs specialized accessories are something you should buy once your skill level goes up and you have a need for an extra tool for your craft by it then once you know what you need why because if you buy an accessory on the same day you buy your first camera you're probably not even buying the one you need myth number four you need to shoot in manual to look like or be a pro super false cameras today are amazing and have amazing features built into them to allow photographers to worry less about getting the right exposure and to worry more about finding and capturing interesting stories discovering the natural world meeting new people and finding amazing compositions they're there to be used let's use them there are plenty of genres where people are totally agnostic about the shutter speed all they want is a blurry background for example they can shoot in aperture priority where they can choose the aperture and the camera can choose one 250th of a second or one twenty five hundredth of a second for shutter speed and they don't care perfect I do shoot manual often enough but that's because as a wildlife photographer the shutter speed and the aperture are important to me I have this lens that's amazing wide open at F4 so I want to shoot it at F4 and let in tons of light allowing me to get faster shutter speeds and blow out the background but when conditions allow I shoot in auto ISO because I don't want to fuss with it and it reacts quickly to changing conditions the shooting in auto ISO make me less of a photographer not at all I actually don't even scoff at people who want to shoot an automatic if they want to document the flowers they saw on their walk or take reminders of where they've visited or have photos of their crafts shared on Facebook and it works let them better a shot taken and automatic than a shot missed by someone faffing around with their settings myth number five nice photos are all done in Photoshop anyway mostly false now this can be made True by people who excel in digital art photo manipulation Sky replacement but to say that all nice photos are made in Photoshop is false am I saying that I don't process my photos at all or that you shouldn't not at all I do process my photos and sometimes you can indeed change the look or take an okay photo make it better but most Wildlife photography contests for example only allow minimal retouching so you have to have a great photo right out of the camera they actually ask for the original raw file to check here's a photo of mine that placed in the bird photographer of the Year contest here's the original raw file and here's the final image you can see there's not much difference here's another before and after so do you need to be a Photoshop expert to get great results absolutely not and I said if you stay till the end I'll give you an extra tip this is the myth that you should always shoot at your lowest ISO this is false and the leading cause of poor photos that I see now there are clearly genres where everything is controlled like lighting or your subject isn't moving like in product photography and Landscapes we're shooting at your lowest ISO makes perfect sense that's because you're not trading anything off for it but I see people posting photos all the time on forums asking why is my photo poor quality or sending them to me and asking me why their photos look so bad and their photos are noisy and blurry eighty percent of the time it's the shutter speed is too low or the original photo is underexposed and the exposure raised in processing and the reason the photographer gives for this was I was trying to keep my ISO low keeping the ISO low is actually the problem in these cases they didn't have enough shutter speed to freeze the action or the original photo is really dark under exposure and blurry images are a bigger problem than high ISO make the iso what's needed to properly expose your subject and get enough shutter speed to freeze the action then if there's some noise remove the noise in processing or use noise reduction software given that this software is getting better all the time and that most processing software has decent noise reduction capabilities and that modern cameras are getting better and better all the time at high isos this myth is one that's getting less true all the time when I started in Wildlife photography I too came home with poor underexposed and blurry photos once I overcame my fear of high isos amazing things happened I started getting great photos in low light situations using High isos here's a nice little warbler shot at ISO 12800 and here's an owl also shot at ISO 12 thousand eight hundred and you might say yes that's nice for you with your full frame camera well here's another owl I shot which I took with a crop sensor camera a Canon 7D Mark II from 2015 eight years ago at ISO 6400 and this is without using any modern noise reduction software it can be done I have a whole video about shooting in low light and high isos you can check it out right here if you enjoyed this video and learn from it give it a like and YouTube will show it to even more people I hope you can take this advice and go out there and take your own amazing photos I know you can do it

Channel: Simon d'Entremont

Views: 229,742

Keywords: photography, photography tips, photography tutorial, photography hacks, digital photography, photography tutorials, photography tips for beginners, photography tips and tricks, quality photos, better photos, photo tips, landscape photography, learn photography, photography for beginners, photography ideas, camera, sharp photos, focussing, photos in focus, photo myths, photography course, photography basics, photography tricks, photography composition, photography 101

Id: 91HZT18jbBQ

Length: 12min 14sec (734 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 13 2023