Photography Studio & DSLR Inductions

It appears there is a whole massive area of the college that i never knew exsisted - the 'camera zone'. A whole armoury of cameras & equipment, old and new, digital and 'windey-up' are avaibalbe to hire out and use for whatever means we see fit. I'm an entry level photographer at best, only really used to using my iPhone so there was a lot of info gettin thrown at us in a very short space of time, much of it went over my head, but we got given an info sheet explaining the main principles to using a DSLR which I've look through since,plus i've checked out youtube tutorials, of real-life people doing & talking about the basics, as written words don't always find their way into my brain bag..! 


As we only had an hour with the camera i thought rather than sitting down and trying to work out the ins & outs from the info sheet, i would just do some trial and error, random settings random results in the same positions and try to get to grips with how it all works by tinkering with the settings. Which was a bit infuriating as i couldn't get my head around why my photos were coming out black when they were taken in broad bloody day light?! Trial and error and more errors below.

Turns out there's 3 main principles when its comes to using your big fat DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera.

Standard DSLR camera menu interface

APERTURE (Av mode) or 'F-stop'  - this is to do with the dilation of the lens, and how much light  is being let in,basically works like the pupil in your eyes. A low setting (F2) means the lens will be letting in lots of light. A low F-stop  will also isolate your subject from the background which is known as narrowing the depth of field (see below). A high setting (F11) means the amount of light will be a lot less and will blend the subject into the background.

ISO  - Controls how much light the camera will use. If it’s a bright sunny day and you’re taking pictures outside, set your ISO to 100. If you’re trying to take a picture inside without a flash, and need more light, try setting your ISO to 800 or higher,this will make your images grainy however. Examples of experimenting with this and white balance can be seen below.

SHUTTER SPEED (Tv mode) - this is the length of time that the shutter is open for,and how fast the camera shots the picture. A slow shutter speed will exaggerate movement within your shot and cause light trails.(see below) For a photo of a person you'd should aim for a fast shutter speed and low ISO to eliminate blur and noise.(e.g.: 1/25 shutter speed, 100 iso)