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
05:52 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
Shutter Speeds
So let's talk about shutter speeds. Alright, this is an informal quiz. You guys all ready for your quiz here? Look at the screen. Which number is larger? Okay. Now the problem is, is that you didn't even think about this. Your brain just immediately says, eight is larger. And that is gonna be a little bit of a problem going forward, because we're gonna talk about shutter speeds. And for the most part, shutter speeds are listed as fractions. Where they are fractions, but they're not listed as fractions. And so when I look at eight and two, two is a bigger number to me. Because it's a half second, which is a longer period of time than one 1/8 of a second. So let's take a look at the shutter speed range that we are typically going to be working with in the world of photography. Everything from 1/8000 of a second to 30 seconds. Now as you hold up your camera, and you look through the viewfinder, at the bottom of your viewfinder over on the left hand side in almost every single case, is gon...
na be your shutter speed. But it's not going to be listed as you can see over here with Canon and Nikon. It's 500, it's not 1/500. Now I will give Sony a little bit of cred here. They actually say 1/500 of a second. They're telling you what it is. But for the most part, everyone else, you need to remember, it's one over. Which means everything is reversed. If you remember fractions. We're not gonna do a math class right now. But there's a lot of reversing when you'd go into fractions. Alright. So, these are our shutter speeds. Let's start with the simplest most obvious one. Everyone knows what one second is. So when you go from one second to two second, you doubled the amount of time, you've also doubled the amount of light. Alright. This is what we call a full stop of light. We're letting in a full stop more of light, 'cause we've doubled the light. And so, anytime you hear that phrase full stop, that means we are either doubling or we're cutting in half. It can go either direction, in that regard. And many cameras will go down to 30 seconds. Some will go beyond. Some you can customize and do as long as you want. But generally, 30 seconds is as long as we can turn the dial and make it goat. Now in the other direction, when we go up to a half second. Compared to one second, it's half as much time, it's half as much light. It's a linear scale, it's very easy to keep track off. Now a half second can be listed as two as in 1/2. Or it can be listed as 0.5. And if your camera manufacturer is too cheap to actually put a point right there. They'll use little quotation marks instead. And so that means .5, in fractions and decimals. We're not gonna have a debate over which one is better, just gonna let them be, they are the way they are, different companies choose different systems. So up at a half second, half the amount of light compared to one second. It's a full stop, less light. A 60th of a second is a pretty typical shutter speed you're gonna run across a lot. The top shutter speed in most cameras these days is gonna be somewhere around and 8000th of a second. And so, this is where I would like to dive in to a little bit more advanced background theory on this stop. Why do we call it stop? It has to do with f-stop. But actually, it goes back to exposure value. And one of the things that, I don't know, I was just brought aware of that I haven't really thought about, is that we're talking about shutter speeds, and this is a terrible name for the subject that we're talking about. This has nothing to do with the speed that the shutter in your camera is moving. What this is, is the exposure time. How much time, your sensor is exposed to light. And so this would've been better if someone called this exposure time. But it got called shutter speeds and it stuck. And it does make a lot of sense. But now you know. Okay. And so exposure time. Let's talk about exposure. There is a scale. People wanted to simplify things at one point. How much light do we have in here right now? And one way is you could say, well you need this shutter speed and this aperture to capture this amount of light. They said no, let's simplify it down to one number. How bright is it here, and how bright is it over here? And so, you can go ahead and you can buy light meters. And they have old light meters that have needles on them. I have a newer light meter over here and this one's digital Newer. This is 20 years old. And so this is a light meter. I'm gonna go ahead and turn this on. And there's different modes that I can put it in. And I am gonna put it in an EV mode right now. And so, everything falls on an EV scale in brightness. Alright. So let me give yah, a few of the, look at the key wants. Zero, is not pure black. And this is a little confusing. It kind of should be, but it's not pure black. Zero is using an f/1.0 lens at one second. And those of you who know photography. You're probably saying to yourself, that's really dark. Okay. If you need a 1.0 lens and one second to expose the image. It is really, really dark. Okay. Now, when you go up to number one on the scale, we are doubling the light. You see a trend here folks? We like to double and we like to cut things in half. Alright. And so, when we go from one to two, we've doubled again. When we go from three to four, we've doubled again. So typically, typical room wise that you might have in a normal room. Normally lit room. Might be around six. If you go outside on a cloudy day, it might be 12. You go outside on a sunny day, it might be 15. Alright. So, here in the audience, how much light is striking me right here in the forehead right now? So wants to guess what number on the scale, is right here on my forehead? I'm gonna say seven. Seven. Okay, are you guys ready? Here we go. And what's the answer? The answer is 6.7. Very good. Okay, what do you th... You're so good at this. What do you think the light is on your face right now? Your face. You know this is 6.7 right here. Well, I'm darker over here. Five. Five. Okay, let's come over here. Lets hold this right up to your forehead, and what do you get? 6.2 6.2. Okay. And so, you know what? Let's check Ken out? What's Ken here? She is 6.1. You know right here, this seems pretty bright. This is 9.1 over here. And if I go... Where is it really dark? It's kind of dark. I'm gonna go a little off screen here. So over here, I've gone out of the light, and so here, I'm down to 5.3. And so, it's just a different way of judging how much brightness. And once you knew that number, we're not gonna get too far into this. But at one point, you could have that number and go, well that means this shutter speed, this aperture. Or different combinations. Now, is there anything brighter than a sunny day? Well, the earth really doesn't get that much closer to the sun. But we do have snow which reflects the light. And we also have artificial lights. And the closer we get to a light, the stronger it gets. And so, the scale goes up. Higher. And it just depends on how bright the light is and how close we are to the light. And you know what? We now have films and we have sensors, that can go much darker than zero, and so the EV scale can keep going in each direction. But generally, you're not gonna see anything below. I saw something related to one of the new cameras that came up that works down at EV minus 4. But this is just the EV scale, and we're gonna talk about this, later on in the exposure section when we talk about exposure value compensation. And so just understanding it's a scale where you go one up, it doubles, you go one down, it cuts it in half. And so, that's kind of the behind the scene story on these stops. And so, one EV is equal to one stop of light. It's very easy increments to work out. And so, we're back onto our shutter speeds. Now, as you change shutter speeds on your cameras, you're gonna notice that you have these third stops in between. And there's nothing wrong with using them. I don't list them because the numbers are harder to memorize and it clutters up my screen, and I don't want all of them on there, but you can select you know, between 30 and 60. There's also a 40 and 50th of a second. And so whatever you need to set, you're perfectly fine setting. But as kinda talk through the class, I'm kinda keeping it on these whole shutter speeds so that we have easier numbers to deal with. On some cameras, notably Nikons, there will be an x-sync after 30 seconds. And what x-sync is, is a flash synchronization which will set the camera to the highest shutter speed that the camera can use with electronic flash. And that'll range typically between a 125th and 250th of a second. And it's exactly the same thing as just simply setting that shutter speed. The only difference is that it's way at the end of the dial and it's less likely to get bumped off slightly by one. If it gets bumped, you'll really know the difference between 250th of a second and 30 seconds. Another feature that you might see on some cameras, is a a B or a bulb mode. And what this is, is it's for people who wanna leave the shutter open longer than 30 seconds. So, on the old view cameras, in order to trigger the shutter, they have these leaf shutters in the lenses. You had a cable release hooked up, connected to and air bulb release that you would squeeze and it would trigger the shutter. And as long as you were squeezing that bulb, it would leave the shutter open. And so that's where this term bulb comes from. As long as you are holding down. And nowadays, it's an electronic cable release. As long as you're holding down, the shutter stays open. And they have little locks on them so if you wanna do a five minute exposure. You push it in, you kind of lock it in, and then you can just wait five minutes for your exposure. And so that is how you can get to longer exposures. Now, a number of the newest cameras, allow you to go into the custom settings of the camera, and set any shutter speed you want over one second. And so, if you wanna leave it open for 27 seconds, you can program your camera to do it. But that's only a few cameras. For the most part, I do night time photography, fairly frequently. I rarely go beyond 30 seconds. Rarely.
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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!