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 Focus
Manually focusing, so manually focusing is an important skill to learn how to use cause there are times and places where it is the best system for focusing. Now a lot of the kit lenses, the inexpensive lenses, have terrible, terrible focusing systems on them because they know that those people generally don't like to manually focus very often. And so there's a very narrow ring. It's plastic, it doesn't feel very good in the fingers and there is no information about where it's focused at, infinity or close up. A better focusing ring would look like this, a nice, big, wide, rubber focusing ring. And a distance scale so we can see where we're focused at. That's nice to have. An even nicer one is on these Leica lenses that have a really nice depth of field scale so that we can see with what aperture, how much depth of field are we gonna get? And this is really rare because it's just harder to do this with auto focus lenses because of the way that they work and so this is something you'll o...
nly see, at least very clearly on, is on a manual focus lens. And the manual focus lenses have a really smooth feel to it. A lot of the older Nixon manual focus lenses were really nice. The Leica manual focus is really nice. A number of the other manufacturers made some very nice ones as well. And it's a nice feeling to have and we've lost a little bit of that with the auto focusing. So for those of you with SLR's this is kind of important. There's a little bit of mirrorless information in this slide here but for the SLR users, if you want to manually focus, you need to have a really good eye, and view of what's going on in your subject. And so the viewfinder of your camera is really, really important in the SLR. And so the viewfinders size and quality is affected by a number of different issues. The first off is that is larger with larger sized sensors. And so if you have a full framed sensor and we talked about this in the sensor section about the viewfinder size. If you have a full frame sensor you're going to have a larger viewfinder which is gonna make the image larger and more easy to see for focusing. There are two different types of finders. There's pentaprisms and pentamirrors. A pentaprism basically is a heavy piece of glass. It's a solid piece of glass that's cut. And it's very bright and it's very sharp. If you were to disassemble an inexpensive SLR, I've done this a few times it's kind of fun, lots of screws, you take it apart it has what's called a pentamirror. Which is just a plastic housing with some mirrored sides on it so it's bouncing the light around. It's achieving the same effect by bouncing the light around so you can see it, but it's not as high a quality and they're typically smaller in size. And so that will be listed in the technical specifications of your SLR camera. How bright of lens you have on your camera has to do with how much light is getting into your viewfinder, so the brighter lens you have is gonna be easier to see. So if you have a 1.4 lens, that's going to be easier to manually focus than an F5.6 lens. A high viewfinder magnification. We talked about this with mirrorless cameras but we have the same thing with SLRs as well. And remember you have to kind of take these numbers and see how they compare with a full frame camera. So something like the, let's see let's go with the 5DSR, has a .71 that's one of the largest. The Sony is actually a mirrorless camera but that's in relationship to a full frame and compared to all these others. And so the deceptive ones in here are the D because that is a cropped frame sensor. And the Canon 7D II that's a one time magnification but remember that's a smaller sensor in there. And so one of the things that is really good to do and you know it's nice to be able to go into a camera store and hold up two viewfinders one after the other and see which one has the bigger screen in them. And which one's easier to see. It's not the first reason we buy a camera, but that's gonna have significant implications if you do a lot of manual focusing, how big and clear is that system. The other thing you want to look at potentially especially if you wear glasses is the eye point, the distance that your eye needs to be from the viewfinder. And this varies from camera to camera. And the bigger that viewpoint is the easier it is to use with eyeglasses. I remember back in the days where they had underwater cameras that had really big eye points because people were wearing goggles. And you'd have to wear goggles and you need much more distance in order to see through it. And so once again the higher end cameras typically have a bigger, higher eye point which usually means they need more contraption and a bigger size camera to let that get bigger. So for manual focusing the most accurate way to do it with an SLR camera, is in live view. And so if your camera has live view like most of the cameras do for the last five years, you want to put your camera in live view and this is typically gonna work best on a tripod because you'll actually be able to hold the camera steady. And so once you have your camera in live view you'll be able to magnify to see a small portion of the image. Now live view is a nice option for getting a unique point of view, especially for those of you that have a tilting screen on the back of your camera. You want to get it down low, get it up high, that's kind of nice. But in general has very poor auto focus performance. This is for the SLR users. For mirrorless folks, working with the back of the camera or the viewfinder, equal quality in focusing. And so as I said, I usually do this when I'm on a tripod, because it's hard to hold the camera steady and see what's going on as it's moving around. And so we're gonna use image zoom to focus. And so the way that this works is we put our camera into live view there's gonna be a LV button or a little monitor button on the back of the camera and then you're gonna punch in using the magnify button and it's gonna magnify a portion of your image. You go over to the focusing system and you will need to manually focus. Now before you do that, you should probably turn off the auto focus system in your camera because if you manually focus and then press down on the shutter release it's just going to re-auto focus your camera and it might do so differently than you want it. Now if you have your camera in back button focusing you don't need to worry about this. You can just manually focus and press down on the shutter release, which is one of the reasons that I use back button focusing is I can go in, manually focus whenever I want to. So let's manually focus, get our subject nice and sharp, and then we can zoom back to see the whole subject and we are guaranteed that it is 100% perfect focus. So here's a video of me doing this. I'm gonna adjust the focus, just to the best of my eye's ability on the screen right now. I'm gonna then zoom in, five times, ten times. Now I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna refocus so that I am perfect in focus. Get it adjusted right, and then go back to full. And now I'm ready to shoot. And I know that my camera is 100% accurately focused. That is the most accurate way of focusing. Takes a little bit more time, but it's very, very accurate. Now the mirrorless cameras have more options. They will have the same magnification option. So what you can do is there's gonna be a focus assist button or some other button that is dedicated or that you can customize that will allow you to zoom in at various magnifications. They often have a couple different magnifications so that you can get in really tight. And as you can see as I'm manually focusing looking at the back of the camera, seeing where it's sharpest, and then jump back and now I know I'm perfectly focused.
Class Materials
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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!