So I purchased a digital camera (re: RFI thread). I got a Sony DSC V3, which I’m quite happy with, so far.
So, what suggestions do you have on what to do next? Specifically:
[ul]
[li]How do I learn to be a good photographer (books and other references)?[/li][li]Hints on photography techniques.[/li][li]Accessories I should buy or consider (right now it’s just the body and a 1Gig CF card. I’ll get an extra battery soon. What else?)[/li][li]Anything else you think is relevent.[/li][li]Hi Opal![/li][/ul]
Come on, everybody likes to give advice. Go to town, Dopers.
Shoot. Shoot a lot as your incremental cost is nil. Take notes on conditions so you begin to understand the process of getting the image you want as the camera does not see as your eye does. This is a subtle thing that a lot of photographers don’t understand. Get some books by photographers you admire and deconstruct what you like about their photos. Get some good books, even old ones as the fundimantals of photography did not go away with the film process.
Learn to shoot in raw mode and post provcess images. Raw files are the “digital negative” as they include the most amount of picture data possible, completely unprocessed out of the sensor with the camera settings as “advisory” data for the post process of turning a bayer map into a conventional bitmap.
If you get a flash don’t mount it in the camera unless you are striving for the instamatic snapshot look. With my DSLR I only use a potato masher or a bounce type flash mounted in a stroboframe.
Depending on what kind of work you do get an external meter. The histogram display is not a substitute for a good incident meter. I have a Sekonic L-358, the most indispensable accessory I own. Barring that get an 18% gray card and learn how to use it. It can be a poor man’s incident meter but I still use them as a reference for color and exposure when doign studio shots.
Do you want to be a good photographer technically or artistically?
Actuallly, I don’t have much advice, since I shoot mostly on gut these days. The sooner you get your photos off onto a computer, and examine them full screen, the better. If you are planning on doing much flash work, get a big flash that you can bounce.
Once you are back on the computer, examine each shot carefully for composition, try and figure out which ones you like and why. Look a exposure, and lighting in general. Get close up for focus, and motion blur.
Shooting in B&W can provide a lot in the way of photo education. It teaches you much about contrasts and composition, because it’s an unforgiving medium. After shooting and editing hundreds of B&W shots, you will start seeing your subjects’ compositions in B&W in your mind’s eye, which will improve the composition of your color photos immensely.
How easy is it to adjust the aperture/shutter speed and focus (it’s hard to tell from the specs I found online)? If it’s simple like your typical SLR film, you’ve really got all you need. If it’s difficult, you won’t have the same control over your images and have to figure out how your camera responds and shoot around that.
Basically, if you can easily adjust the a/s functions, head outside, set up a tripod and take pictures of the same thing with each combination of settings. When you get back to the house, download them and examine them to figure out how the different settings affect depth-of-field and etc.
If you are stuck with some hard-to-use controls, taking photos of things on the fly will be much more difficult, but you’ll quickly learn what you camera likes to do to things and be able to work around that.
It’s actually really easy to adjust aperature, shutter speed, saturation, and so forth. I picked this one specifically because it has several modes from a fully automatic to various “intermediate” modes where you can adjust the f-stop or speed with “parallel” automatic adjustments to being able to set all parameters. It also feels and handles more like a 35mm SLR (though it isn’t an SLR ) than other digital cameras.
I was thinking about buying a tripod first. I was going to hold off on a strobe until later, as I don’t really plan to do a lot of interior shots at this point (though the build-in flash is a pathetic little job.) My general thought process was to use this to learn how to take pictures without, as Padeye notes, the expense of film or processing, and then decide if I want to go into film or buy a more commercial grade digital camera.
Thanks to everyone for the input so far, and keep it coming; it has all been very useful.
Unfortunately this is where some of the shortcomings of a small sensor consumer camera are revealed. Manual focus can only be done with the LCD screen as this camera doesn’t have an EVF and that is difficult at best. It doesn’t have continuous focus but a number of discreet steps. When I had a Dimage 7 I rarely found reason to switch off autofocus.
Depth of field of focus is a problem. Because the small sensor size, 1/1.8" in this case, the magnfication ratio for a given area of view will be much smaller than for a larger format camera. This combined with a relatively small maximum aperture means far greater DOF. This is terrific for macro work where DOF is razor thin but bad if you want to intentionally limit DOF. Think of a shot where the subject is razor sharp but anything behind of in front of them is blurred and points of light take on the shape of the aperture which is called bokeh. When you do the exercise that Chairman Pow suggested you probably wont’ see any differences between combinations of aperture and shutter speed that give the same EV with a non-moving subject.
Please don’t take this as a slam of your camera I just wanted to point out something you will face. You still have lots of room for creativity.
Oh, one other bit of advice, if you want B&W then you should shoot in color and raw if at all possible. You’ll have greater tonal range available and you can use photoshop manupulation to get the same results that B&W film photographers get with color filters. Sounds crazy but a B&W shot of the sky with a red filter darkens the blue sky and makes coouds just snap.
) than other digital cameras.