Lessons
The Camera
19:20 2The Shutter
19:17 3The Sensor
10:45 4ISO
14:12 5The Lens
14:23 6Aperture and Depth of Field
15:59 7Focusing
15:07 8Metering
12:06Lesson Info
Flash
flash, in my opinion, is the most complicated area of photography. We could spend not days, not weeks, months going through this. And I'm gonna spend less than five minutes. Okay, so I know a lot of you have cameras that have built in flashes. I detest these little things. I pretty much never use them. They can be handy in some situations. The fact that it's always there is very, very nice to have. There are additional flashes that you can get you can add on, and they're basically just more powerful versions of the built in flash. And these can be quite handy. If you do a lot of flash photography, they're going to give you more power. You can shoot it creator distances or bigger groups of people. They'll be faster recycling so that you can go from shot to shot a little bit more quickly. They'll also allow you to bounce off of a low white ceiling or white walls off under the side, and they will have additional features in them that we don't have time to get into. But special effects fea...
tures multiple flash, slow saying flash and a number of other things that are very good. But for somebody just getting into photography, here is the most important things to know about. Flash number one Flash has a limited distance that it can go. Yes, you'll be able to illuminate the penguins right there in front of you, but not the mountains in the distance. Okay. And so it's on. Lee, good for your built in flash is good for about 10 or 12 feet. That's it. Three meters, maybe. And yeah, there are ways of making it a little bit further, but that's how far the effective range ISS. Secondly, it works best on subjects that are fairly flat. You can't shoot pictures of a bunch of people all at different distances from you. They need to be kind of similar distances to you. You can't have one person three feet away from you and somebody else 20 feet away from you. The way light falls off falls off very, very quickly. So everyone kind of needs to be lined up if you want him illuminated evenly with the flash. Ah, good time to use built in flash or add on flash is with people photography. All right. A lot of times the eyes air in the shade, and we want to lighten things up a little bit. The camera has a system called T T L Auto Flash, and this is where your camera will automatically figure out how much power to throw out of that flash. The problem is for people photography. It's often a little bit too much, and you want to dial it back a little bit. You want to turn it down a little bit, and you will do this by something that is in pretty much all cameras called flash exposure compensation. It's Icon is usually a lightning bolt and a plus minus, so you can look for that within the controls of your camera. Now weaken, dial it down, Tu minus one minus two and let's try minus three in this case. And then let's do a comparison between all of these and what the camera does flash in this case is a light is very similar to spice that you would put on food. You want a little bit of spice, but you don't want too much. All right, and generally the cameras automatic TTCL system will put too much on and so you need to dial it back. My camera is pretty much set at minus one all the time. I'll adjust it a little bit from there, but that's kind of my baseline setting. That's where a lot of photographers leave their T TL flashes because it's just gonna look a little bit more natural on the face. Okay, I've got one other little flash tip, and I'm sorry, I'm not gonna be able to explain this, but if you want really good pictures, you got to get the flash off the camp, all right, there's a multitude of ways of doing this. We don't have time to do into it. There's cables, there's remote and there's all sorts of fancy, fancy things. But if you want really professional lighting, you need to get the flash off the camera.
Class Materials
bonus material with purchase
Ratings and Reviews
user-f3f891
I'm not sure my first review posted. But I LOVE this class! John Greengo is a great, engaging teacher who is really adept at representing the concepts visually and excellent at explaining them verbally. I love how he goes through examples with photographs he has taken. Even though I only have a Nikon Coolpix digital camera, it does have Manual, Shutter priority, and Aperture priority modes. Through his class I've gotten a really good sense of how to balance ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. It's a great overview for me especially since I am new to photography, I can play around with some of these settings, and I have a greater understanding of what I might need in a higher level camera in the future. Money well spend! (For $29, this is an absolute steal). John Greengo is an awesome teacher and I hope to take more of his classes in the future!
Megan Wagner
John is extremely articulate and is a great teacher with lots of visual aids and metaphors to help understand photography. I have been doing photography for a few years now and this class was a tremendous help in boosting my knowledge and refreshing my memory in multiple aspects of photography. The graphics that John uses are helpful and he even goes through images and asks which settings would be best to use and will go through the why. He makes things easy to understand and is very clear about the information he provides. I am so glad I took this course and I would highly recommend it even to an experienced photographer. Thank you John Greengo!
Victoria user-245035
I am a semi retired hair stylist who is finally following her passion of photography. I have taken a class here and there and stumbled on Creative Live and realized the potential of learning is endless. Love love love the way John Greengo teaches. I am finally beginning to understand and retain so much. Thank you John, your the best. I hope one day I can meet you up close and personal. Thank you!