Advanced Photography Guide

[Deleted User]

Click here for my new Advanced Photography Guide. If you have trouble with anything or find any typos (there are lots) or any part is too confusing, please let me know!

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[Deleted User]

Thanks KevinGE, we should have put this up a long time ago. Mark is going to add some settings that will usually for work various situations (indoors, outdoors, portrait, etc) to the simplified guides for people with good cameras who find the advanced guide overwhelming and just want to take significantly better photos than they would with fully automatic mode, without having to learn what all the settings do.

SueG

As always, your knowledge and ability to communicate it is so inspiring. Well done and thanks.

MikeO

Thanks David. That info will really come in handy.

charis

just want to say thank you for this....

rgr

brilliant guide!

Vangie

Hi David!
Thank you so much for your generosity and all the trouble you've gone through to provide us with some guide on various aspects of photography that are relevant to our painting. I've yet to read all 3 articles carefully, but I will definitely take a lot of notes when I do.

I bought a mid-entry level DSLR (Nikon D5200 with 3 different lenses) a year ago, but I've yet to learn how to use it properly. I have continued to use my iPad to take the occasional shots, as it seems to take better photos than my Nikon (obviously because I don’t know how to operate my Nikon properly). So I’m looking forward to going through your “Advanced Photography Guide”. If necessary, I may also have to go through relevant sections of my Nikon manual, which I've been putting off for a year now.

I very much appreciate your efforts. Thank you sincerely. ^:)^ :-bd =D>

rstall

Hi David! gonna buy the epson r3000 do you believe worth while to by $56 2 yr protection plan? Also how often should i use this thing to keep the ink from drying out and if only say a dozen prints a month how much pain cost wise for ink? read reviews but no mention of that.

[Deleted User]

@rstall Sorry I missed this question. At a dozen prints a month the ink will last a long time. You can replace individual ink cartridges rather than replacing all the ink when one color is running low, so it shouldn't be too expensive. As for how often to keep it from drying out, once a month is generally fine, but in the printer utility software there is a test print mode. If one color doesn't show up in the test, you can use the software to clear the print heads out, which has always worked for me.

The only time we've ever had a print head get clogged with our current printer (which is very similar to the R3000) is when we switch to matte black mode for something. I would recommend not using the matte black mode at all if you have a cheap printer somewhere for printing text documents. Ink is wasted every time you switch between the two modes, and since you will not be using matte black mode much, it has a tendency to get clogged.

As for a protection plan, I wouldn't know. I always take my chances on those kinds of things.

rstall

Thanks a lot David and no problem......I bought the R3000 but haven't printed any photos yet. Took a few calls to customer service (which was excellent) to set up for a Mac.  Sounds like using the test print mode every 2-3 weeks will keep the ink flowing until Im ready to start printing photos. After our still life class, I bought the printer, OMD-EM10 camera,  Adobe service and the Mac, but just now learning photography (this book The Joy of Digital Photography was recommended and Im looking for classes too 

And good to know.  I changed it to matte black for printing documents, but will switch it back. Documents don't look as good but sounds like the way to go.(my documents mainly for personal use)  no cheap printer here, that works anyhow. 

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dencal

Tim

Mark recommends natural lighting from a window. This light produces very good light/shadow tones and good modeling in the subject.

Single source natural light is best, use a white card to bounce back if you need to lighten the shadow values.

Tripod is essential. Camera on other side of the room from subject and use zoom to frame the portrait.

Denis

rstall

Any recommendations for learning photoshop?..books , websites?, obviously ill start with David Advanced Photography guide.....i found this list of resources on the web....not sure best place to start 

https://fstoppers.com/post-production/collection-10-best-resources-learn-photoshop-8038

Summer

rstall said:

Any recommendations for learning photoshop?..books , websites?, obviously ill start with David Advanced Photography guide.....i found this list of resources on the web....not sure best place to start 

After David's Advanced Photography Guide, I found Julieanne Kost's videos for Lightroom and Photoshop.  I also watch miscellaneous videos online, but I find that they always assume that I know more than I do and they lose me about half way through.  Kost is a very good methodical teacher and is extremely organized.  I'm on my 11th 20th video (I went back and counted) at this writing and I hope that qualifies me to recommend her.  Some of what she teaches you will never use, but you can pick what you want to learn by selecting from the titles of her videos.  Here is her blog: http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/lightroom-training-videos 

For the DSLR, I have a Canon EOS T3 1100D, I purchased an online video course taught by Ken Schultz and am about half way through it.  Love his Australian accent.  Years ago I learned on a film camera and used to develop and print my own images, so this is really new and wonderful for me.  Love the dslr advances.  Summer

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rstall

Excellent @dencal and @Summer-ordered those books. Will check out those other resources as well!

rstall

@Summer- that was the $35 "Easy DSLR for Beginners" course you are taking?  Hope its not too Canon specific....i see  he has a $45 Advanced Course..

heres Kens website for reference....  https://www.udemy.com/user/kennethschultz/

rstall

.

Summer

rstall said:

@Summer- that was the $35 "Easy DSLR for Beginners" course you are taking?  Hope its not too Canon specific....i see  he has a $45 Advanced Course..

heres Kens website for reference....  https://www.udemy.com/user/kennethschultz/

@rstall - That's the course that I'm taking.  I'm disciplining myself and holding off taking the second course until I finish the first one.  I'd say that he uses Nikon and Canon to demonstrate concepts equally--so far.  And, he uses a lot of different models of Nikon and Canon cameras and lenses to demonstrate camera features.  I don't think that your money and time will be wasted. The only drawback is that to get some of the features I know about now and like, ones my camera doesn't have, for instance the White Balance Kelvin icon option and the RGB bars histogram, I will probably have to buy another camera, another lens and a few more accessories.   Summer