Learn me: Taking good photos

There will still be a bit of a learning curve with light from a sunny day.  Not as much as playing in a dark room and drawing a picture with light but still something. 

For example one thing I  found out, making the transition from film to digital, digital works better if you underexpose the photo a bit as the highlights (white clouds on a sunny day) are not captured as well as the shadows.  That's the opposite in film.  So, you underexpose and play with it in post processing to lighten the shadows while keeping the highlights. 

93EXCivic said:

Thanks for the recommendations on books. I think I will start with the Art of Photography and the Understanding Exposure plus read through some of those blogs and just start messing around with taking pictures.

Is there anything I need to start out as far as accessories? The camera has a battery and battery charger. I figured some SD cards, extra battery and a strap. This model camera has an attachable viewfinder and flash. Is that something I want soon? 

You probably won't need extra SD cards for a while. Extra battery is helpful. You definitely want the viewfinder - shooting with the LCD screen is horrid, especially in bright light.

Just going out and shooting is best. While you may want to shoot in in RAW eventually, start with JPG. The pictures out of the camera will look lousy in RAW without editing, and you don't need that complication right now. Worry about what you're doing with the camera first. If you really want to pare it back to learning basics, shoot in B&W only. You'll learn more about tone and composition without the distraction of color.

02Pilot said:

93EXCivic said:

Thanks for the recommendations on books. I think I will start with the Art of Photography and the Understanding Exposure plus read through some of those blogs and just start messing around with taking pictures.

Is there anything I need to start out as far as accessories? The camera has a battery and battery charger. I figured some SD cards, extra battery and a strap. This model camera has an attachable viewfinder and flash. Is that something I want soon? 

You probably won't need extra SD cards for a while. Extra battery is helpful. You definitely want the viewfinder - shooting with the LCD screen is horrid, especially in bright light.

Just going out and shooting is best. While you may want to shoot in in RAW eventually, start with JPG. The pictures out of the camera will look lousy in RAW without editing, and you don't need that complication right now. Worry about what you're doing with the camera first. If you really want to pare it back to learning basics, shoot in B&W only. You'll learn more about tone and composition without the distraction of color.

What program should I use for RAW photos when I get to that point?

Here's how I'd do it, because you can never have too much advice on one thread (or, yes, you can, but, why not a bit more?):

1. Read, but not too much
   Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure, noted above, is awesome, but I'd start with another, simpler book: National Geographic Complete Photography, which breaks everything down in the simplest of terms; it also has fantastic images with thoughtful and narratives about why the photo is good.
   
   BTW, Peterson has to make a living, so he updates his book periodically -- while the editions evolve some, you're not going to miss out on the fundamental gist of the book by picking up the first edition used for $3.99. Or $0 from your library.
    
2. Learn
   Take a class at a camera store. There is also great content on the web, but it can be really hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, and a lot of the most "popular" folks on YouTube are, as 02Pilot noted...less than ideally suited to training or even speaking authoritatively about photography.
    
3. Shoot
   Go take a bunch of photos, of course. As noted, it's pretty important to mostly ignore what kind of gear you have. I've got a camera bag with thousands of dollars' worth of gear, but some of the best shots I've ever taken were on a $200 Canon point-and-shoot.

In reply to 93EXCivic :

Lightroom is the most popular, but there are free ones out there (that I have not used).

Mr_Asa said:

For example one thing I  found out, making the transition from film to digital, digital works better if you underexpose the photo a bit as the highlights (white clouds on a sunny day) are not captured as well as the shadows.  That's the opposite in film.  So, you underexpose and play with it in post processing to lighten the shadows while keeping the highlights. 

It's the opposite of negative film, but it's exactly what you do if you're shooting reversal (slide) film: expose for highlights. Dynamic range of digital has gotten better over the years, but it's still a good plan. Digitial still doesn't have the latitude of negative film, though.

93EXCivic said:

What program should I use for RAW photos when I get to that point?

I wish I could be more helpful, but all my work is film scanned to JPG, so I don't have a need. Darktable is an open-source free Lightroom alternative, and there are others, but again, I have no real experience with them.

My favorite RAW photo workflow tool was Aperture, but Apple killed it and replaced it with the neutered and useless Photos.  The best I've found after that is Lightroom.

My Canon bodies all support shooting RAW+JPG (it stores two copies of each photo you take), which can be useful when you're still trying to get the hang of using RAW files.

Would I be stupid for buying a manual focus only lens instead of the Panasonic? It has good reviews and is an 25mm f1.8 as well but lacks the autofocus. It is a decent amount cheaper. I didn't realize how much people want for the viewfinders.

In reply to 93EXCivic :

It would be good from a learning point of view, from an action shot point of view it may be a bit of a pain.  Then again, some automatic focus lenses just never seem to focus on what I want them to focus on...

1988RedT2 said:

I took a bunch of classes at the local Community College.  I'd recommend that route.  I completed the requirements for a "Career Studies Certificate".  Time well spent, though I am not in a photography career.  Lots of good memories.

Good pictures of people (and really of anything) utterly depends on the quality of the light, IMO.  On-camera flash is always very un-flattering.  A diffuser will help, but not a lot.  Use natural light where possible.   Shoot a lot.  Take notes.  See what works and what doesn't.  Take classes.

My favorite part of photography was darkroom, and that unfortunately is mostly a thing of the past.  But digital is cheaper and good for those for whom instant gratification is important. 

I have an Olympus OM10 that my mom gave me that I'd love to use one day. But learning with film seems like an expensive way to start. If it even still works.

Pay attention to lighting, a flash can be your friend in some cases.

I see too many pictures that are back lighted, can't see the subject.

 A bright cloudy day is a help.

93EXCivic said:

I have an Olympus OM10 that my mom gave me that I'd love to use one day. But learning with film seems like an expensive way to start. If it even still works.

If you shoot black and white and do your own processing and printing, it isn't bad.  Lots of people selling decent darkroom stuff on CL for cheap.  Paper, film, and chemistry is still available from places like Adorama and B & H.

93EXCivic said:

1988RedT2 said:

I took a bunch of classes at the local Community College.  I'd recommend that route.  I completed the requirements for a "Career Studies Certificate".  Time well spent, though I am not in a photography career.  Lots of good memories.

Good pictures of people (and really of anything) utterly depends on the quality of the light, IMO.  On-camera flash is always very un-flattering.  A diffuser will help, but not a lot.  Use natural light where possible.   Shoot a lot.  Take notes.  See what works and what doesn't.  Take classes.

My favorite part of photography was darkroom, and that unfortunately is mostly a thing of the past.  But digital is cheaper and good for those for whom instant gratification is important. 

I have an Olympus OM10 that my mom gave me that I'd love to use one day. But learning with film seems like an expensive way to start. If it even still works.

Unless you are committed to the idea of film or you really want to use specific equipment, it's probably best to start with digital. I love film for a variety of reasons and use it almost exclusively, but it is time-consuming and costly.

That said, one of the great things about learning on film is that it demands more consideration of each frame. A guy I knew who worked at my local (and now-closed) camera shop once made the very good suggestion of using the smallest SD cards you can find, treating each like a roll of film. When you've got space for 3,000 shots on a single card, you tend to blast away; when you know you're limited, you spend more time thinking about each shot. It also saves a lot of time afterward - going through hundreds of photos filled with many almost-duplicates is tedium defined.

I copy my negatives to digital; film "equipment" is a dev tank and spool and then some chemicals.  I figure I have at most a buck in developing a roll of 35mm black and white.  Maybe two at the most for C-41 color. 

What film has done for me is made me really consider film sensitivity (ISO), exposure, and f-stop to create a good image.  So many of my shots with my  digital camera were salvageable via post processing that shooting two or three stops under where the ISO should have been that I didn't realize that I needed 6400 ISO for shots that were originally taken with ISO set to 1600.  I also like that film has forced me to slow down a bit.  I take less poorly composed shots now vs. a few years ago before I took the plunge into film.

To the OP, a manual focus lens is just fine, especially with a shorter focal length.  Find something that gives a field of view similar to what a 24mm or 28mm lens gave on full frame and it won't be so bad.  I don't know m43 very well so you're on your own there.  Figure out the scenes that really interest you and show up often with your camera. 

02Pilot said:

It also saves a lot of time afterward - going through hundreds of photos filled with many almost-duplicates is tedium defined.

A good workflow tool helps tremendously here.  You do a quick scan through the photos, pick the best of the 5 or 6 very similar shots (framing, straightness, decent exposure, subject smiling, etc), give it a star or two, then move on.  After doing that you tell the tool to only display photos with at least one star and you don't have to look at the others any more.

But yes, if you can shoot one and be confident it's right then that's easier. :)

Learn the basics of composition and exposure. Lots of basic videos on Youtube, I'm partial to Tony Northrup's explanation of exposure. Take a lot of photos and then only keep the best ones. I highly recommend taking a class with a local photographer, this can be especially useful for learning good locations and the best times for lighting around where you live. 

Suggestion.  Learn enough that you never ever ever (did I mention never?) use the P or Auto settings.  Never.  They will use evaluative metering, err on the side of faster shutter and wider aperture, and won't do anything really well.  The P and Auto settings basically turn even the best camera into nothing better than a cell phone snapshot.

I usually keep my DSLR on Aperture Priority and keep a quick thumb on the over/under expose wheel.  It's like the manual setting, but a little quicker on my Nikon.  Aperture not only sets the amount of light that makes it through for a given shutter speed, it sets the depth of focus.  Small f numbers (large aperture) make shallow depth of field.  Large f numbers (small aperture) have a large depth of field.  It's why humans instinctively squint when they want to try to improve the focus of their vision.  Ansel Adams (famous landscape photographer) had a photography group he named the f32 club.  Landscapes often want to show clear detail on the mountain in the background as well as the meadow between you and the mountain.

Portraits, baby, and other closeups often benefit from wide apertures.  I have an f1.7 70mm that I use for headshots.  If I'm not careful, I will get eyes and lips in perfect focus, but the nose and ears are fuzzy because the depth of focus is so small.

You may have heard about "18% gray" cards.  A color of 18% gray is the middle of the road between white and black.  When your camera looks at the light coming through the lens, it wants to adjust to make it an average of the equivalent of an 18% gray card.  Knowing that, you can use this to your advantage.

Your hand (regardless of race, season, or nationality) is always a few percentage points away from TWICE as light as an 18% gray card.  For fast metering, meter on the palm of your hand while your hand is in the same light as the subject.  The camera will give you numbers like (for instance) 1/100th at f5.6.  To correct for that difference, all you need to do is double the light; either by going to 1/50th or going to f2.8.  Another tip... nearly all green vegetation is about the same brightness as 18% gray.  Need to do a quick shot?  Meter on some grass or a bush.