Third entry- Digital Photography and its strength, controls and techniques, and types of media storage devices

Annyeonghaseyo everyone! I do hope you guys are feeling well for today because as I promised in my last entry, I will demonstrate the controls, techniques and strengths in digital photography. I also will discussed more on the types of media storage devices used in digital photography and here we go!

First and foremost, in order for us to use a camera, especially DSLR types of camera, we should know the camera controls and their functions respectively. In this blog, it will guide and expose you the basic of handling a camera. In this blog, it teaches you on camera controls, the usage of image sensors, camera lens, camera modes, built-in and pop-up flashes, types of viewing systems, etc.

Types of flashes

Types of lens

Camera modes

Camera controls

Camera controls

Image sensors 

 Viewing system

To master your camera, you have to know it like the back of your hand. You must know what each control does and know where each control is in order to master a specific picture-taking situation. The position of these controls varies from camera to camera. The following is a list of important camera controls and what they do:

• Mode dial: On most cameras this is a round dial on top of the camera. This is the shooting modedial. On Canon cameras, the dial is on the left side when you hold the viewfinder to your eye and take pictures. On Nikon cameras, it’s on the right side. You use the dial to choose the desired shooting mode.

• Shutter button: You press this button to prefocus the camera and take a picture.

• ISO setting: You use this feature to change the ISO setting of the camera. The ISO determines how sensitive the sensor is to light. You use higher ISO settings to take pictures in low light conditions. On many cameras, a dial is used to change the ISO. Some cameras use a menu command to change the ISO setting.

• Aperture setting: The aperture determines how much light enters the camera. When you choose Aperture Priority as the shooting mode, you use a dial to change the aperture, and the camera automatically selects the shutter speed to properly expose the image.

• Shutter speed setting: The shutter speed setting comes into play when you shoot in Shutter Priority mode. After choosing Shutter Priority for the shooting mode, you use a dial to change the shutter speed, and the camera automatically selects the correct f/stop to properly expose the image.

• Exposure compensation setting: This is used to increase or decrease the exposure. You increase or decrease the exposure when the camera gets it wrong.

• White balance: You use this setting to set the white balance. The human eye can compensate for different lighting scenarios to see white as white. If the camera gets confused due to multiple light sources, the whites have a color cast to them and may have a green, orange, or blue tint.

You can rectify this problem by choosing a preset white balance (such as Fluorescent, Tungsten, or Shade) or by manually setting the white balance.

• Metering mode: This feature is a button on Canon cameras and a menu control on Nikon cameras. The metering mode determines which area of the viewfinder is used to meter the image. In most instances, your camera’s default metering mode does an excellent job. However, in some picture-taking scenarios, you may need to change the metering mode.

• Flash control: If your camera has a built-in flash unit, you push this button to pop the flash unit up and enable it. You can use flash to light the scene or add additional light known as fill flash.

• LCD panel: This panel shows you all the current settings. When you change a setting such as the shutter speed or ISO setting, the panel updates to show you the new settings. If your camera doesn’t have an LCD panel, these settings are visible in most camera viewfinders.

In this post also I will present useful photographic techniques, tutorials and resources for various kinds of photography. You’ll learn how to set up the perfect environment and what techniques, principles and rules of thumbs you should consider when shooting your next perfect photo. Among other things, I will cover tilt-shift photography, black and white photography, motion blur, infrared, night, smoke photography, macro photography, and HDR. Hopefully, you’ll find many of the listed tutorials and how-tos useful for your regular work.

Tilt-Shift Photography

Tilt-Shift photography refers to the use of camera movements on small- and medium-format cameras; it usually requires the use of special lenses. “Tilt-shift” actually encompasses two different types of movements: rotation of the lens relative to the image plane, called tilt, and movement of the lens parallel to the image plane, called shift. Tilt is used to control the orientation of the plane of focus (PoF), and hence the part of an image that appears sharp; while shift is used to change the line of sight while avoiding the convergence of parallel lines, as when photographing tall buildings.

Examples of Tilt-Shift photographs

Black and white photography

Motion blur photography

Motion blur is frequently used to show a sense of speed. You can artificially achieve this effect in a usual scene using cameras with a slow shutter speed. Also Adobe Photoshop can be used for this purpose, though sometimes images may look unnatural and unprofessional.

Infrared Photography 

Near-infrared images straight out of the camera do not always look good and are usually not as dramatic and beautiful as normally captured images. Hence, a lot of post-processing is done to enhance these images.

Night photography

 Smoke photography

 Macro photography

HDR, photography 

Last but not least is the the media storage devices. This link will show list of media storage devices that used to keep all the pictures captured and to be saved for a long-term used in the future. Among media storage devices that mostly used by professional photographers are CD-R/CD-RW, DVD, USB Flash Drive, and as well as external hard drive that can keep thousands of pictures thanks to their large capacity of bytes. 

So far, we had covered the visual technology in education and their applications in curriculum, types of camera used to capture pictures, and as well as camera controls, techniques and types of media storage devices that discussed in this entry. For the next entry, we will cover shooting techniques, lighting and effects, which most probably my favourite part in this course. Stay on people and see you guys soon! Fighting!