So I've started the Intermediate Photography course at the Met and just though I'd keep track of things on here. This might all be a bit disjointed because it's going to be the accumulation of scribbles and assignments, so please bear with.
Week 1:
We talked a lot about portraits and lighting, with off camera flash being a main topic. DS was keen to stress that if you can afford a speedlight then great, but at the end of the day it's just a light. A cheaper model works fine; just use it on manual and turn it up or down. The one important thing to remember though is that once you've got it set, be sure to maintain your distance; move and everything changes.
Here's a link to a blog all about using off camera flash - I've had the quickest of glances and it looks good so I'll be following it and hopefully posting some results here as we go along.
Something that I've always heard but never fully appreciated the meaning of is the use of the term 'stop of light'. Increasing exposure by 1 stop means that you are doubling the quantity of light, and vice versa. This can be achieved through adjusting the aperture, shutter or ISO setting. Here's a blog post that describes it in a bit more detail:
Another thing we talked about was aperture settings. Now he mentioned that F16 tends to be a good one for landscapes, and that with some lenses the quality of the picture goes down at the highest F-stop. He also said that F8 tends to be the sweet spot on a lot of lenses. I'm just jotting these things down by the way - please don't take them as a given but it may be something interesting to try out.
I asked him about shooting landscapes and where you should pick your focal point when you're aiming to have everything in focus anyway. The basic rule it seems is 1/3 in front, 2/3 behind, but he also mentioned hyperfocal distance. Basically if you have your lens focussed at the hyperfocal distance, everything from half that distance to infinity will be in focus. The hyperfocal distance is dependent on your lens and what F-stop you're shooting at. Below is a mobile web app which might be a good referenc tool, and also an article with more detail.
http://dofmaster.com/m
http://www.dofmaster.com/hyperfocal.html
Also mentioned was something I have noticed on some of my lenses - that aperture changes by itself when you zoom in. This is just a limitation of cheaper lenses, but something to be wary of when shooting in manual.
Last thing for this entry is again on the subject of light. I've just had a quick look at the websire for LEE filters and it looks very interesting. They basically make neutral density filters, which allow you stop down the amount of light for various effects. Something to investigate further...
One last thing: Full frame DSLRs are those whose sensor is the same size as 35mm film. Most DSLRs have smaller sensors, which means that when you use a lens designed or specced for a 35mm camera, only the centre of the image is captured while the edges are cropped off - the equivalent of having zoomed in.
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