In the earliest days of photography, before George Eastman introduced his first “KODAK” camera, taking a single picture was a messy, expensive process that was out of reach to most would-be photographers. Eastman didn’t invent photography, but he did put it into the hands of the public by creating a camera that was affordable, small enough to carry, and most importantly, that didn’t require special training to use. All you had to do was POINT, SHOOT, and then send the whole un-opened camera back to Rochester, NY for developing. Ironically, today’s modern digital cameras – in addition to providing extraordinary images automatically — have brought us full-circle by also making it easy to return to the days when photographers were in control of HOW their pictures were created for themselves.
Point and shoot cameras are still very popular today of course, and if you own a point and shoot that has the letters P, S, A and M on a round dial, then many of our comments in this program will apply to your camera, but owners of digital SLRs will probably benefit the most.
SLR stands for “single lens reflex”, and it describes a camera design that won popularity in the film days and has been carried over into the digital world. “Single Lens Reflex” cameras have a mirror inside the camera body that reflects the image up to the viewfinder, allowing the user to view the scene through the same lens that will carry the image to the sensor. One nice thing about that is that we never need to worry that our lens cap is still on when we’re shooting an SLR! When we press the shutter release button to take our shot, the mirror flips up out of the way to let the image strike the sensor, and then back down again after the shutter has closed. SLRs also have easily interchangeable lenses, and they’re usually larger and more expensive than their more common point-and- shoot cousins. As you may already know, they’re also equipped with automatic settings, but shooting an SLR in automatic makes them little more than point- and-shoots with much better “glass”, or lenses. This book isn’t about the automatic settings, but it’s important to know that they’re there, and when and how to use them, just in case.
Your camera’s MODE DIAL is located near the top of most SLR’s, and is divided into the two different ways to use your camera. Find the letters P,S,A, and M. Your camera may have those letters in a different order, or with slightly different names like P, Tv, Av, and M. This instruction is about using those four settings, and you’ll get to know them a lot better before we’re through! Now though, look for a series of tiny icons, or little pictures that are arranged alongside each other on the mode dial. One of those icons may be a brightly colored rectangle, or labeled with the word AUTO. That setting is full automatic, where your camera is making all of your exposure decisions without your help at all. The other icons are also automatic settings, but their purpose is to let you tell the camera a little about the scene to enable it to choose special programming for each one, in order to do a slightly better job, but again, automatically. Check your manual to see what each of those icons stand for.
As we’ve said, we’re here to teach you how to use your camera without having to depend on the automatic settings. Still, even when you succeed by becoming fully functional in all of the creative manual modes, don’t turn your back on automatic altogether. View auto as a kind of “safety net” whenever you need to get a shot right, but for whatever reason are distracted, or confused, or if you just don’t have enough time to dial in your own setting adjustments.
Also we’ll make the point here that while your skills are building, you should divide all of your shooting into two kinds: Number one; shots that you need to get right, and two; those that are just for practice. If you’re at your sister’s wedding for example, and she’s depending on you to get good pictures, do yourself and your sister a big favor: GO TO YOUR STRENGTHS. That is, if you only know the automatic settings, shoot the event in automatic! Later when you’re confident in Program mode or Aperture Priority or some other setting, then shoot there, but don’t practice new skills that you don’t know yet at your sister’s wedding! That’s very important! The other side of that though, is that when you’re photographing your dog in your own back yard, why waste the learning opportunity by using skills that you already have? Discipline yourself to go to your weaknesses then by choosing settings that you don’t know, and build new skills when it’s alright if you ruin several pictures in the process. The goal is to eventually become confident in each of the PSAM modes, including full manual, and under all lighting and shooting circumstances! Until then, know where your confidence level is, and when to stay there.
Did you know that the word “photography is taken from two Greek words that together mean drawing or painting with light? Good artists know the characteristics of their paints, and good photographers need to know how their cameras work. It’s important to never lose sight of the fact that all cameras are primarily light management tools. Over half of our time will be spent learning just how to manage light with certain key camera controls, so here we go… and by the way, we’ll be careful to use correct terms as much as possible throughout our discussion, and will use upper case fonts to draw attention to them, and to emphasize other important points.
