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
Manual Exposure
Manual exposure can solve a lot of problems. Aperture priority seems very easy, but can be a bit of a problem, and I'd like to illustrate it with this incredibly stupid illustration. All right, so let's say you are photographing your neighbor's house. And they have a middle-tone gray house. And you think, "Perfect, I'm gonna get "even exposures, I don't have to worry about metering." You set your camera up and you're gonna take this picture in aperture priority, you kinda like aperture priority. And you've decided that it's a fairly flat subject, you're gonna set this at 5.6, that's just nice middle-of-the-road aperture. And as far as the shutter speed, well, you're just gonna let the camera figure things out. You get to choose the aperture, the camera will figure out the shutter speed. And the camera says you need a 60th of a second. And if you take a photo, you're gonna get a really nice looking photo of your neighbor's house. But what happens if your neighbor comes home driving a wh...
ite car and they park it right in front of your camera. And you're like, "Well okay, you've got a "pretty nice looking car, maybe I'll take a "photo of that car in there." Well, what just happened, I don't know if you noticed it over here, the camera switched over to 125th of a second. You know why it switched to 125th of a second? It was at a 60. The reason it switched is because you parked a white car, which reflects more light, and the camera said, "Oh, something's brighter. "We better make this thing darker." That's why we went up to 125th of a second. And so you go, "Oh, okay, so white car's there, "I need to tell the camera that there's "something brighter in the photograph." So you go down to your exposure compensation and you dial in a plus one on the exposure compensation. There we go. And that's gonna get you back down to a 60th of a second. Because if you're gonna make it brighter here you need to let in more time with the shutter speed. So now you're back to a 60th of a second, which you knew was right in the beginning. And you're ready to take the photo. But then the wife comes home driving the black car. Okay, so now less light is getting to the camera, and look what happened to our shutter speed, it dropped down to a 15th of a second. And that's because there's a bunch of darkness and the camera thinks, "I better let in more "light to compensate for the darkness." So what you need to do is you need to go down to a minus one, 'cause this makes the picture a little bit darker than average. And so the solution to a problem like this where you are taking a photograph of a static situation is a manual exposure. Let's watch what happens in the same manual exposure. We set 5.6, we look at our light meter, and we adjust our shutter speeds, let's adjust our shutter speeds, until the light meter hits zero. Okay, we know that for this given situation, this is the perfect exposure, 'cause it's a middle-tone gray house. Now, we go back and the neighbor comes in with the white car, what happens? Does the shutter speed change? No, because we are in manual exposure. What changes is the light meter, and I'll tell you what I usually do, is I usually (gasp) light meter jumped up by a stop, something's wrong, oh wait, there's a white car, that makes sense. So there's a reason why this is over to the right-hand side. You still take the photo, you get a good photo. Black car comes in, what happens then. The light meter says, "Hey this is darker than average." And you might kinda freak out for a moment, because a lot of us like to have this indicator right below the zero. I like to have things lined up, in proper place. And I, "Okay, wait, it is darker than average, "and so that's normal." So this is the normal place because we have a darker part of the image in here. And so we still have 5.6 at a 60th of a second. That is just the correct light for that particular scene. And so if that car takes off, we stay at a 60th of a second. If the white car blows up in flames, unfortunate, but our shutter speed and aperture and exactly the same and we don't have to make any changes with that at all. And so this is a really good situation if you are shooting several photographs using manual exposure so that subtle little differences about things that are changing in there are not changing your shutter speeds and apertures. 'Cause these only change when the lighting changes. So let's talk about manual then. So that was manual. Manual you get to set shutter speeds and you get to set apertures yourself. One of the first questions that some people have is, "Well should I set my shutter speed first "or my aperture." It depends on what you're doing. A lot of times, not all the time, lot of times I will set the aperture first. Let's just say I wanted to choose an aperture of 5.6. What I'm gonna do next is I'm gonna keep an eye on my light meter, while I change my shutter speed and I'm gonna get that indicator over to the zero. 'Cause that's where it usually needs to be. And if it's a 60th of a second, then that's probably the right exposure. I'll take a few photos, see if they look good, look at the histogram and so forth. And so that's basically how I'll set manual. We're gonna be doing a bunch more of this. Another good example, not too far off from my silly illustration a moment ago, about why manual exposure works. All right. So let's just say you wanna go on tour, we wanna go to Cuba, we've got some great photos tours going to Cuba here. And we wanna photograph some of the old cars driving down the street. How would we do this? I would like to do it in manual exposure. I am gonna have a choice of shutter speeds, apertures and ISOs. What am I gonna be choosing in here? Well, I like to get the best quality off of my sensor, so I'm gonna probably set that at 100. Next up, I gotta be thinking about how fast that car moves, I wanna be thinking about depth of field, don't need that much depth of field, I'm gonna go with 5.6 on this and then just you know what sort of shutter speed do I need. 500th of a second, that should stop the motion of the car driving down the street. Let's take a look at the light meter. Well, let's see, those settings make me a stop overexposed, that's too much light, I need to make it darker. I can make it darker by going to a faster shutter speed at 1000th of a second and I get an even exposure. So that's how I would set up the first shot. In the manual mode, if you could look over my shoulder as I'm shooting a series of photos of the car going down the street, here's what the light meter would say. Now, can somebody in the audience answer me this question: why does the light meter change from the left image to the right image? What's different about those three photos? Can anyone? Okay, so why don't you go ahead and stand up and. So you're showing, more sky is coming into play. So the difference between the left photo and the right photo is the sky right here. Yeah. Would you like to guess how important is the sky to me as the photographer taking this picture? Not, not that important. What's the main subject? The car. The car. Has the lighting on the car changed at all? No. No, it's basically the same lighting. And so this is just background material that's just part of the scene. Thank you very much, you can sit down. So if i was to use aperture priority, shutter priority, or program, what would that photo have, that series of photos have looked like? Well let's take a look at 'em. Okay, do you notice the difference here? It gets a little bit darker, but the camera thinks everything is even. Why does the camera think everything is even? Because it made everything darker to compensate for this light area. And so your cameras are compensating for things that you don't need it to compensate for. Because the subject, the car, is under even lighting in these three photos. So if you're in a situation that you have even lighting for what you're shooting manual exposure works very well. If you were gonna shoot a basketball game, basketball games are great to shoot, you know why I like 'em? Because it's clearly defined exactly where the athletes are going to be, and very little of the time are they outside of those areas, and I can check my light meter, I can do test shots, and I know exactly what shutter speed and aperture I need for the entire arena. And so you can keep the same shutter speeds, the same apertures for the entire game. And so in this case, with the car, I can keep my camera set in manual. The same shutter speed, the same aperture and get even lighting no matter how bright or dark the background happens to be. Another example of this is I was in Yellowstone. I wanted to photograph Old Faithful and if you've been there you know that it erupts for about one minute, maybe two minutes. But you get one minute of good spouting water going up in the air. And so I wanted to shoot as many different shots as possible in that one minute of time. But the light was not going to change dramatically in one minute. Now I determined that I wanted to shoot at f16 at a 60th of a second, you'll notice I'm a little overexposed here because snow is very white. Snow is brighter than average. And so when its starts going off I'm gonna shoot one photo, I'm gonna move to another location, I'm keeping the exact same shutter speed and the same aperture because the subject is basically the same. My composition is a little different. I have a little bit more dark area, I'm playing around with exactly what I want in the frame. But all of them are the same shutter speed and aperture because they're under the same lighting situations. So think about situations where you're gonna shoot several photographs, and the light's not changing. In those situations I highly recommend dialing in exactly the shutter speed and aperture you want, that way it stays exactly where you want for the whole series that you're shooting.
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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!