Learning as I go..

I have grown up with a camera in my hand, shooting anything and everything. Always with a point and shoot, afraid of anything more technical and unknown. The past few years I have decided to learn new things-maybe because as I grow older I rebel against the saying "can't teach an old dog new tricks" HA! I'll show them! If you didn't know already, I'm a bit stubborn-ok ok a lot stubborn.

Learning a DSLR wasn't as difficult as I thought, 3 years later and I'm still learning. It is a slow process because I am self taught taking it all in and learning the ins and outs. I, of course, have all the basics down and am now learning all the things my camera is capable of doing and pushing the boundaries.

The best lesson that I will share with you, exposure and why it is important. Controlling your settings, be it on a point and shoot, cell phone or DSLR, is very important to getting that perfect picture. You can use your shutter speed and/or your aperture to control the exposure. I use spot metering on my DSLR and it will tell me if my subject is over or under exposed. If my subject is under exposed I can do a few things to fix it: 1) Lower my aperture and/or shutterspeed 2) up my ISO 3) use my exposure button to correct.

The examples are by using my spot metering and adjusting aperture and shutter only. There are many different ways to achieve proper exposure, this is just a short quick view into one of the ways and how it can affect your look.




This example my camera told me I was under exposed. ISO 640 f 5.6 1/1600

Next example I over exposed. ISO 640 f 1.8 1/1600

This example I upped the shutter speed. ISO 640 f 1.8 1/2500

You'll notice I did not make small adjustments, I made quite large ones in the beginning to really show how to control exposure. My third shot isn't quite where it needed to be, adjusting my ISO to 500 most likely would have given me the perfect straight out of camera picture. I was happy with it and my teenager was about to give me the "that's enough look". 

Since I wasn't able to get the perfect shot I uploaded them into my editing program and did a quick adjustment. Here is one of the many final products:

Creativity thrives through a new lens

I took the plunge and ordered a micro lens. I had been contemplating the purchase for almost a year, especially since there are so many and such different levels of pricing. I always knew that I wanted an 85mm lens so when I saw the 85mm micro I went with it and have not regretted going with the less costly lens. The super fast focusing and gorgeous bokeh and coloring has made this my go to lens.