Lessons
Class Introduction
17:26 2Welcome to Photography
13:08 3Camera Types Overview
02:00 4Viewing Systems
28:43 5Viewing Systems Q&A
08:45 6Lens Systems
32:06 7Shutter Systems
13:17 8Shutter Speeds
10:47Choosing a Shutter Speed
31:30 10Shutter Speeds for Handholding
08:36 11Shutter Speed Pop Quiz
09:06 12Camera Settings
25:35 13General Camera Q&A
14:38 14Sensor Sizes: The Basics
15:33 15Sensor Sizes: Compared
19:10 16Pixels
20:13 17ISO
21:13 18Sensor Q&A
13:34 19Focal Length: Overview
11:09 20Focal Length: Angle of View
15:09 21Wide Angle Lenses
08:48 22Telephoto Lenses
25:23 23Angle of View Q&A
09:29 24Fish Eye Lenses
10:39 25Tilt & Shift Lenses
23:42 26Subject Zone
17:19 27Lens Speed
09:56 28Aperture Basics
08:46 29Depth of Field
21:49 30Aperture Pop Quiz
13:23 31Lens Quality
18:30 32Photo Equipment Life Cycle
03:57 33Light Meter Basics
09:25 34Histogram
15:25 35Histogram Pop Quiz and Q&A
10:58 36Dynamic Range
06:03 37Exposure Modes
15:58 38Manual Exposure
09:38 39Sunny 16 Rule
05:54 40Exposure Bracketing
10:18 41Exposure Values
27:21 42Exposure Pop Quiz
26:43 43Focus Overview
16:15 44Focusing Systems
05:15 45Autofocus Controls
11:56 46Focus Points
07:35 47Autofocusing on Subjects
20:19 48Manual Focus
07:52 49Digital Focusing Assistance
03:40 50Focus Options: DSLR and Mirrorless
04:58 51Shutter Speeds for Sharpness and DoF
05:20 52Depth of Field Pop Quiz
12:14 53Depth of Field Camera Features
04:54 54Lens Sharpness
09:58 55Camera Movement
05:20 56Handheld and Tripod Focusing
04:32 57Advanced Techniques
07:12 58Hyperfocal Distance
06:50 59Hyperfocal Quiz and Focusing Formula
04:36 60Micro adjust and AF Fine Tune
05:34 61Focus Stacking and Post Sharpening
06:00 62Focus Problem Pop Quiz
18:07 63The Gadget Bag: Camera Accessories
25:30 64The Gadget Bag: Lens Accessories
12:46 65The Gadget Bag: Neutral Density Filter
20:43 66The Gadget Bag: Lens Hood and Teleconverters
08:55 67The Gadget Bag: Lens Adapters
05:43 68The Gadget Bag: Lens Cleaning Supplies
04:34 69The Gadget Bag: Macro Lenses and Accessories
15:57 70The Gadget Bag: Flash and Lighting
05:08 71The Gadget Bag: Tripods and Accessories
18:50 72The Gadget Bag: Custom Cases
11:20 7310 Thoughts on Being a Photographer
07:37 74Direct Sunlight
25:04 75Indirect Sunlight
18:49 76Sunrise and Sunset
18:39 77Cloud Light
14:48 78Golden Hour
09:50 79Light Pop Quiz
07:53 80Light Management
14:00 81Artificial Light
13:56 82Speedlights
16:02 83Off-Camera Flash
27:38 84Advanced Flash Techniques
09:49 85Editing Overview
08:24 86Editing Set-up
08:06 87Importing Images
16:45 88Best Use of Files and Folders
20:54 89Culling
20:56 90Develop: Fixing in Lightroom
18:13 91Develop: Treating Your Images
10:53 92Develop: Optimizing in Lightroom
14:51 93Art of Editing Q&A
06:01 94Composition Overview
06:53 95Photographic Intrusions
10:10 96Mystery and Working the Scene
16:18 97Point of View
09:11 98Better Backgrounds
16:02 99Unique Perspective
11:02 100Angle of View
15:06 101Subject Placement
41:14 102Subject Placement Q&A
05:18 103Panorama
07:39 104Multishot Techniques
13:57 105Timelapse
16:13 106Human Vision vs The Camera
20:07 107Visual Perception
08:35 108Visual Balance Test
22:56 109Visual Drama
12:25 110Elements of Design
28:57 111The Photographic Process
12:28 112Working the Shot
27:38 113The Moment
04:42 114One Hour Photo - Colby Brown
1:04:32 115One Hour Photo - John Keatley
1:03:05 116One Hour Photo - Art Wolfe
59:01 117One Hour Photo - Rocco Ancora
1:01:20 118One Hour Photo - Mike Hagen
1:01:20 119One Hour Photo - Lisa Carney
1:00:52 120One Hour Photo - Ian Shive
1:08:00 121One Hour Photo - Sandra Coan
1:10:29 122One Hour Photo - Daniel Gregory
1:06:07 123One Hour Photo - Scott Robert Lim
1:05:41Lesson Info
Light Meter Basics
Let's get into the serious stuff, exposure. We're gonna be talking about how we're gonna be setting our shutter speeds and our apertures and the whole method to the madness. And there's a lot of things that we're gonna need to cover, so we will do it starting with some light meter basics. What we are concerned about, as photographers, is the amount of light that is striking the subject that we are gonna photograph. It's not the biggest concern where that light is and how much light is coming out of that light. It's how much is striking our particular subject. If you saw me yesterday, I took out the handheld light meter and I went over to the subject. With modern light meters and light meters from a long time ago, you could go up to your subject and get the light reading and take a look and it would give you the magic, perfect numbers for shutter speed, aperture and ISO. So if you would like perfect exposures on every single photograph by yourself a light meter, go up to the subject, ta...
ke a meter reading and set your camera to those settings and you will get a perfect exposure on every picture. The problem is it's rather inconvenient to walk up to every single subject you're gonna photograph and get that meter reading. So our cameras use a different type of metering system in them. They use what's called a reflected light metering. So it's not measuring the light that is striking the subject. It is the light that is striking the subject and then bouncing towards the camera. Here's where we have a little bit of a problem, because we have the light, the subject and both of these might affect how bright or dark that particular light is. In our cameras; on our SLRs, and it works slightly different with mirrorless cameras; but with our SLRs light bounces down through a sub-mirror system down to an assembly down at the bottom of the camera, so that there is a meter down there that is constantly reading how much light is coming in the camera and that is how it can read the light while you are actually looking through it. Mirrorless cameras will be using the information hitting the sensor, but it's the same concept. So it's the amount of light being reflected back to the camera. The camera's light meter is based on the assumption that your subject is middle tone gray, an average of light and dark, this middle tone gray. And if it is middle tone gray you are gonna get a nice, even exposure. No matter the light, as long as it's a gray subject, you're gonna get a correct exposure. Where things get a little interesting and a little problematic is when your subject is darker than average, because what happens is less light is sent to the camera. The camera senses that it's much darker and your camera doesn't wanna take dark photos. It likes to take photos that are in between, average of light and dark. What it's gonna do is it's gonna recommend shutter speeds and apertures which will give you an average result. The problem is that this is a very dark subject. And this is something that you, as the photographer taking the photo, need to be aware of. Is the subject I'm taking a picture of lighter than average or darker than average? The same thing happens on the opposite extreme. If your subject is extremely white, it's gonna bounce an excessive amount of light back to your camera. Your camera is gonna see this as extraordinarily light and it's gonna recommend shutter speeds and apertures that are more in the average area, so that your subject comes out a little bit darker. It only works well with middle tone subjects and will be slightly misled by subjects that are darker or lighter than average and this is where you have to use your own eyes, own brain and your own experience to judge when you are in one situation or the other. A common example would be if you're out on a snowy day, up in the mountains, for instance, and there's snow everywhere. There's a lot of light being reflected back to the camera and that's going to fool it. And that's something that we're going to be working with throughout this entire section. Where this is gonna be shown to you, in your camera, is most cameras will have what's called a graphic light meter. It shows you, down there, whether you're overexposed or underexposed. This meter right here in the blue box is showing us that we are two stops underexposed. That means it's gonna be dark by two stops. If the indicator is under the one, that means that we are one stop overexposed. The plus is over; the minus is under. Normally we're gonna try to get most of our photos with the indicator right in the middle. Sometimes there's a zero there, right below that triangle. That means that we are at even exposure. It's not overly bright; it's not overly dark. Some cameras use a numeric scale and they'll just simply say -2, for -2 exposures. They'll say +1 for one stop overexposed. And normally, those situations, you would have that set at 0. That's just some of the basics about how you're camera is reading the light and giving you the results. Let's talk about exactly how your camera is metering the light and which patterns, because there are different patterns that you can choose. Traditionally, cameras used a center weighted metering system. It was a good, fairly simple averaging system that looked in the middle circle of your image and measured the light in that particular area, and a little bit more heavily the closer it was towards the center of the frame. And this was a pretty good general purpose light meter, but there was a lot of situations in which it failed. A good example of where it wouldn't work out too well is in a situation like this, where you have a very bright background. The next development in meters was a spot meter, which was a highly concentrated area that you were just reading, typically, straight in the middle of the frame. This is very good if you wanted to check the skin tones of somebody who was wearing all black and you wanted to check how much light is reflecting off of their cheek or forehead. You could do that with a spot meter. So very good for getting a detailed reading of a very small area. So you would take a reading off the cheek. It could also be used in landscape photography, where you would take multiple readings and you would see the range of brightness. What's the brightest thing in the photograph and what's the darkest thing in the photograph and then they would choose which aperture or shutter speed settings to set to get in between this. So this is a multi spot metering system. The next development is what I call a multi-segment system. This is something that goes by different names by different manufacturers. I'll share those names with you in just a moment, but this is where it breaks the scene, essentially, up into a bunch of spot metering areas and now what it can do is it measures the bright areas; it measures the dark areas and it comes up with an average for the entire scene. The fact of the matter is these multi-segment metering systems, they do a fantastic job. They're really, really very advanced. They're using a lot of technology and processing in order to get this information and it does an amazingly good job, but it's what I recommend most of the time. In fact, it's what I use pretty much all the time, because it's very, very accurate and we also have some things that we're gonna talk about, in the next section, where we don't need to spend a lot of time in this topic here. For Canon and Nikon, that multi-segment metering system goes by the name either Evaluative or Matrix. They also have spot metering and they have center-weighted and it's illustrated by their little icons that they have in their camera. Nikon has a special one that we're not gonna get into, called highlighted weighted metering. That's something I'll talk about in my Nikon D750 and D810 class, for instance. Canon has another one called partial metering, which is kind of a step between spot and center-weighted, so it's just a different size circle. But most of the time, to be honest with you, I just keep it on the multi-segment metering system. It does a great job. I haven't forgot about all the other users out there. For everyone else, the multi-segment metering system, they all kind of look similar if you look at their little symbols as to their digital ESP or multiple segment, things like that. But on most of the decent cameras, these days, you will have a multi-segment metering system. You'll have a spot metering system and you'll have a center weighted metering system. If I was teaching this class 20 years ago and this was being broadcast on CreativeLive 20 years ago; think about some problems with that (laugh); we would probably be talking quite a bit about our film photography and I would probably go on for a whole section about how to spot meter your photographs. This used to be the most accurate way of reading the light so that you could set the exposure and it's a tricky, kind of complicated way to get into it and I don't even bother with it anymore, because in the days of digital, you can look at the results and you can have much better feedback out in the field knowing you got the right exposure without having to get into the tricky use of spot meters. Having said that, you're gonna find people who do like using the spot meter and it's a great, great tool. It's just not a tool that I particularly use and I think it's a little bit more complicated than most people need to get into, but it is a valuable tool out there that some people very much like.
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Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
Love love all John Greengo classes! Wish to have had him decades ago with this info, but no internet then!! John is the greatest photography teacher I have seen out there, and I watch a lot of Creative Live classes and folks on YouTube too. John is so detailed and there are a ton of ah ha moments for me and I know lots of others. I think I own 4 John Greengo classes so far and want to add this one and Travel Photography!! I just drop everything to watch John on Creative Live. I wish sometime soon he would teach a Lightroom class and his knowledge on photography post editing.!!! That would probably take a LOT OF TIME but I know John would explain it soooooo good, like he does all his Photography classes!! Thank you Creative Live for having such a wonderful instructor with John Greengo!! Make more classes John, for just love them and soak it up! There is soooo much to learn and sometimes just so overwhelming. Is there anyway you might do a Motivation class!!?? Like do this button for this day, and try this technique for a week, or post this subject for this week, etc. Motivation and inspiration, and playing around with what you teach, needed so much and would be so fun.!! Just saying??? Awaiting gadgets class now, while waiting for lunch break to be over. All the filters and gadgets, oh my. Thank you thank you for all you teach John, You are truly a wonderful wonderful instructor and I would highly recommend folks listening and buying your classes.
Eve
I don't think that adjectives like beautiful, fantastic or excellent can describe the course and classes with John Greengo well enough. I've just bought my first camera and I am a total amateur but I fell in love with photography while watching the classes with John. It is fun, clear, understandable, entertaining, informative and and and. He is not only a fabulous photographer but a great teacher as well. Easy to follow, clear explanations and fantastic visuals. The only disadvantage I can list here that he is sooooo good that keeps me from going out to shoot as I am just glued to the screen. :-) Don't miss it and well worth the money invested! Thank you John!
Vlad Chiriacescu
Wow! John is THE best teacher I have ever had the pleasure of learning from, and this is the most comprehensive, eloquent and fun course I have ever taken (online or off). If you're even / / interested in photography, take this course as soon as possible! You might find out that taking great photos requires much more work than you're willing to invest, or you might get so excited learning from John that you'll start taking your camera with you EVERYWHERE. At the very least, you'll learn the fundamental inner workings and techniques that WILL help you get a better photo. Worried about the cost? Well, I've taken courses that are twice as expensive that offer less than maybe a tenth of the value. You'll be much better off investing in this course than a new camera or a new lens. I cannot reccomend John and this course enough!