31–40 of 74 posts
On the other hand, I dig that you include lens and focal length. Both are nice to know when viewing photos.
I just read the article, "Why even buy a camera?" because it's a subject near and dear to my heart, one I've debated with many photographer friends. Many insist that you should learn on a camera with manual controls, and some insist that it's all in the light and any camera will do. You handled this question perfectly. Not even kidding. Down to every finer point of debate, you nailed the balance and gave the best, mo…
Thanks...I honestly question how much reliable advice I could give, as I've arguably overspent, even as I'm not caught up in the arms race. Someone did point out that iOS has special apps that do allow shutter speed control, so I'll have to come up with a few other different usecases.
My example comes from using a point-and-shoot pocket camera, not my phone. Very little control over shutter speed and aperture and such, but I've used it with great success for landscapes in good-to-low light. I've probably sold more prints from the P&S than my SLR, all because I had it in my pocket when the light was right.
Why list the EV adjustment of the photos? The effective EV is apparent from the capture settings and listing how much you adjusted the photo based on your camera's meter isn't that useful. Each camera meter has its own quirks and it seems strange to include such a subjective setting. On the other hand, I dig that you include lens and focal length. Both are nice to know when viewing photos.
So in the section on under exposure the exposure compensation gives an idea by how much the image was under exposed.
Which IMHO is useful to know.
As someone with 25 years of photography, I cannot recommend this "book". Starting with the very first photo, a typical photojournalist shot, super wide angle shooting into the sun photo. This just continues into the book with cliched subjects (sunsets, cats) and advice like "take lots of photos" The section in aperture starts out with a photo that's hard to look at its so badly exposed. The section on metering is jus…
That section was for people who were using camera phones with on screen touch focusing (the iPhone camera app also adjusts the exposure for the area where focus was selected). The section on dSLR spot focusing was to explain how to do that with dSLR's if you wanted to.
The next chapter on frame exposure settings goes over using exposure compensation.
Your only valid criticism is that the Aperture chapter's photo is poorly exposed.
As someone with 25 years of photography, I cannot recommend this "book". Starting with the very first photo, a typical photojournalist shot, super wide angle shooting into the sun photo. This just continues into the book with cliched subjects (sunsets, cats) and advice like "take lots of photos" The section in aperture starts out with a photo that's hard to look at its so badly exposed. The section on metering is jus…
> The section on metering is just plain wrong, true only for spot metering, which most of the people who read this beginners guide are not going to be using. For the people it actually targets its misleading to talk about which spot the camera is metering on. That section was for people who were using camera phones with on screen touch focusing (the iPhone camera app also adjusts the exposure for the area where focus…
There's one good photo in the whole book, and that was taken with a p&s (s90) - something you claim cannot resolve more than 15' in front if the lens and takes a second to shoot. Both point are of course are completely wrong and misleading.
The 'book' (quoted because its really just a few dozen paragraphs) looses any credibility when it's accompanied by photos that are so awfully made.
Why list the EV adjustment of the photos? The effective EV is apparent from the capture settings and listing how much you adjusted the photo based on your camera's meter isn't that useful. Each camera meter has its own quirks and it seems strange to include such a subjective setting. On the other hand, I dig that you include lens and focal length. Both are nice to know when viewing photos.
I would guess that the author is trying to show when they've deliberately overruled the cameras exposures settings. So in the section on under exposure the exposure compensation gives an idea by how much the image was under exposed. Which IMHO is useful to know.
It would be pretty easy to generate histiograms with Imagemagick...that is probably more useful
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The section on metering is just plain wrong, true only for spot metering, which most of the people who read this beginners guide are not going to be using. For the people it actually targets its misleading to talk about which spot the camera is metering on. That section was for people who were using camera phones with on screen touch focusing (the iPhone camera app also adjusts the exposure for the area where focus…
So how about using photos that are well exposed, starting with the opening photo with the blown out sky, and then the dreadful photo of the dogs/family in front of the Hudson. There's one good photo in the whole book, and that was taken with a p&s (s90) - something you claim cannot resolve more than 15' in front if the lens and takes a second to shoot. Both point are of course are completely wrong and misleading. The…
I don't disagree with you on how those particular photos are blown out, but those were candid shots in irregular lighting. To make a conventional shot, you would set up lights and possibly do significant post processing. I chose to emphasize as much of the area that I wanted even as details are lost at the other end.
The main point of the book is that there are options in the first place and it's important to be aware of them to properly adjust...rather than just snapping a photo and wondering why it turned out so off.
It's difficult for me to show what the choices were, granted, because I didn't shoot those scenes with thhe intention of demonstrating a decision tree for the final shot. Being able to show more direct comparisons, between the exposure options, is my intention as I add new examples to the book
As far as the metering section, I think you're right that it's confusing...I decided to split off the chapter with doing touchscreen exposure and never fully fleshed out standard metering. That is something I'll work on
Great work. Do you have any plans on releasing this as a nicely packaged ebook? I'd probably pay for that instead of having to individually instapaper each page.
website feedback: The text is way too big for me and the centered layout could use some differentiation of "content pane" to "left and right emptiness". The photos are huge too and somehow make me completely lose place and orientation. I have no idea how to fix it though. It could work on wide screens (would work on 1680x1050 already) if you placed images and text side by side.
More feedback - you have a utf-8 encoding problem in the first paragraph within "for learning your camera’s manual controls". It looks like the single quote was encoded by Word and doesn't translate to utf-8 - I see it as an accented "i". Just replace the ’ with ’ in the html.
Pretty nice for beginners! I'd put more mundane shots in (like in the fourth chapter) so that people don't get discouraged because they don't have the eye for finding good subjects yet.