Saturday, January 15, 2011

Photography 101 (AKA I want...)

Peter and I got to go on a date today.  A for real one.  Not a date to Costco, or a date to Jewel, but a real date.  Including a nice dinner at Opa!, which is one of my favorite restaurants.  Oooh... feta cheese, how I've missed you so!  It was so nice to get reacquainted with you, my non pasteurized friend.  And no, I haven't forgotten you, my chocolate coated baklavah dessert... you were just so tempting that I couldn't resist...  *sigh*

Anyway,  when Peter got me my fancy pants Nikon D5000, I was pregnant.  I knew that the camera came with free photography classes, but the sessions came and went.  First, I was too sick.  Then, it was summer and I didn't want to take time out of the season (the perfect season for picture taking) for sitting inside.  When the fall sessions came around, I was as big as a house, and the thought of sitting on a folding chair for 2 hours at a time sounded simply horrid.   In December, I took a look at the 2011 schedule of classes, and signed up for as many as I could.  I'll be able to get in all the classes I want before I go back to school in March.

Tonight's class was Photography 101.  I didn't know what to expect, and so far I'm not too impressed.  But hey, the class was free, and we randomly sat next to one of my mom's old boyfriends.  :)  We were the youngest people there, and the teacher definitely fit in more with the older crowd.  He talked really s-l-o-w-l-y, pronounced words like "what" as "h-wat" and was impressed that Peter and I had sent pictures to other people using "electronic mail."  However, he explained things about aperture, contrast, while balance, and other manual stuff that my camera can do that I've never tried before, so I'll be playing with the manual settings these next few weeks, and will hopefully post pictures to show you what I've learned.  

While we were sitting there, I decided to come up with a wish list of all the photography things that I want.  Instead of pictures of my own, please allow a little self indulgence... and feel free to drool along with me!

First, with all of this expensive equipment, I need a good case to carry my things in, right?  I'm absolutely adoring this wonderful bag from Jo Totes... I even think I could fit diapers in there!!






And since my bag will be so cute, I'll have to get a new camera strap that will tie the whole ensemble together...

Now for actual camera stuff... I want a filter to put on my lens so I can make pretty stars out of light :)

And how about a wireless remote control so I could actually BE in the pictures some of the time?


One more lens wouldn't be too much, right?  I'm not technical enough yet to understand what lens I want, or even if I already have one that works.  I just know I want to take pictures like this!  See how the girl is so clear and the background is blurry?  I love it. 



Finally, if I'm taking all these pictures, I might as well be able to make them all fancy and professional looking, right?  I did a bunch of searching last summer, and found a great, cheap way to edit photos with Funtastic Photos, but right now its just not cutting it.  I would just love to be able to play with Photoshop's Lightroom 3.  Drool...


Thank you for letting me take the time and get out some of my "gimmies."  At least I'm drooling over things that the whole family would get something out of, right?

Tomorrow is football (go bears!), and then Peter's off to the Blackhawks game.  So, no new recipes tomorrow.  However, Monday is the start of a whole new week!  Like I said before, it's Peter's choice this week, so we'll see what that will bring.

1 comment:

  1. The blurry background/focused subject is called depth of field. You need to set your F-stop really low. Some lenses will only go down so far. The kit lens that came with my camera will only go to 4.0. To get a really nice blurry background it needs to go to pretty low. . .maybe 2.0? Your camera should have a setting on the dial that's "Av". . . .it's Av on my camera (I have a Canon), it's called the "aperture priority" which allows you to switch the F stop really quickly. You should also be able to manipulate the F stop in manual. So I would just try the lenses you have, and see how low you can get the F stop.

    Hope this helps. Have fun experimenting.

    The lens I want that has a low F stop is like. . .400 dollars, but I bought this one last year and it works pretty well. It takes the F stop all the way down to 1.8. It's a nice lens, the only down side with it is it won't zoom at all, but it's great for beginners.

    http://www.amazon.com/Canon-50mm-1-8-Camera-Lens/dp/B00007E7JU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1295216960&sr=8-2

    I'm not sure if Canon lenses work with Nikons. . .I would think they would, but you might want to ask that in your class.

    ReplyDelete