Camera Lesson-flash

So you try not to use your flash that much with a camera to get the true colors. Now that I'm learning my settings I rarely use it. This weeks lesson is to do a fill flash though. So here are a couple times I have used a flash to avoid shadows or make colors pop (top one is no flash, bottom one is with flash)

Lesson two-White Balance

Well lesson two was a harder one to master and I'm still not sure if I have it completely down, but I feel like I at least I have a good understanding of it. I just need more real life practice to nail it! So I decided to move to lesson three: White Balance. Here is what I learned---it really is important to set it correctly to your lighting. I also learned how to do a custom white balance for anything.

Auto White Balance (looks like the tungsten white balance is what the camera went to-which is the best pre-programed option):Daylight:
Shade:Cloudy:White Fluorescent Light:
Tungsten Light: (close to correct but my custom is closest to the color seen by my eyes in real life, it is a subtle difference that probably woudn't make much a difference with just regular pictures, but with nicer photos you would want to create your own)Custom Light (one I made using a piece of white paper! LOL):

Still learning

I haven't gone farther in my photo class till I feel I mastered the part I just learned. Well with all the rain we are getting during the day its been giving me some good practice. I really need to get a zoom lens! (Troy KNOWS thats what I want for Christmas this year).

I got some raindrop shots....
And trying to get a drip off the end of a leaf is pretty hard! I took 52 pictures and I got TWO drops in the pictures....I like the second one the best!
And a wet leaf look...

Shutter Speed (week 2 of Class)

Ok boys and girls today's lesson is in Shutter speed!
Ok so shutter speed is really easy. The faster the number 1/1000 (as in 1/1000th of a second) for example the faster your camera's shutters open and close (faster the picture is taken). The slower the the number 1/60 the longer the shutter is open. I learned you can't go slower then 1/60 without a tripod---it becomes to blurry by body movement. So if you taking pictures of children running or sports you want a higher speed (1/1000 is good with no other adjustments).
My camera does go much higher and lower then these two speeds but you have to play with the ISO if you get faster or slower then these (I learned the hard way LOL). And there are many in between 1/60-1/100 you just have to play with. You will notice the longer the shutter is open the more light that gets into it and the over exposed the pictures gets.

Ok so here is (ISO at 1600 since I'm indoors):
1/1000 Shutter speed
1/60 Shutter Speed3'' shutter speed (I had to lay the camera down to take this clearly). And as you can see the ISO was so high (1600) that it let to much light in the picture. So you do have to adjust ISO if your Shutter speed is slow.
So then with that in mind here is a combo adjustment (yep I'm getting good enough to change TWO settings at once).

Shutter Speed is 3'' (3 seconds open) for all of these (and the one above).

800 ISO/3'' shutter speed400 ISO/3'' shutter speed200 ISO/3'' shutter speed

ISO (week2 of photography class-ISO and Shutter speed)

Ok so your ISO is you "amount of available light" feature. If you outside on a bright sunny day you want a low ISO-100. Best general ISO-200-400. If you indoors with low light you want a higher ISO-800-1600. But why not just leave it at 1600 all the time to make sure enough light gets in--because you lose some quality in the picture.

Examples of ISO in the hotel room--troy was working lol.
Everything about these pictures are the same except ISO settings, you can see the higher the ISO number the brighter (indoors) but the more grainy it looks. (tomorrow shutter speed--I know you just dying for that) HAHAHAHA

ISO 0f 1600
ISO of 800
ISO of 400
ISO of 200
ISO of 100
Auto ISO (so I am guessing the Auto focus put it at ISO of 800)

Apeture take 2

Ok well I did the same thing today as I did yesterday except instead of lowest aperture and highest, I added a middle one. Can't tell much of a difference from the middle one and the highest one---guess I still need more practice with this. Oh I should mention this is one of the many sculptures in the pool area of my hotel.

Lowest setting, still blurry background but not as blurry as the cup yesterday (today I was about 4 feet away yesterday I was about 16 inches away from the focus item...i'm thinking closer to focus item I am the blurry the background when shooting in aperture mood)
Medium setting
Highest setting

Lesson one-Aperture

This is called a low aperture number (or a low f/stop number) on a camera, note the background is blurry but focused item is in focus...This is a higher number of aperture on a camera, every thing is clear...
This weeks online camera lesson is on aperture! LOL