Lets Take it From the Top

In my next posts I will be starting with an introduction to the three basic things that affect how your camera takes pictures. There are a lot of other things that affect your pictures, but these are the three major ones.

First I am going to talk about ISO speed. If you used a film camera before going digital you probably remember seeing ISO speed numbers on the film boxes you purchased. Digital cameras still use the term ISO, but we are going to go over what the difference is, what's changed, and what's stayed the same.

Next we will go over Aperture. We will talk about what an aperture is, how to read aperture numbers, and how different aperture settings affect your photographs. There are a lot of different ways that various aperture settings can affect your pictures, and we won't go over all of them, but we will discuss enough to get the general idea and hopefully allow everyone to experiment and come up with some questions of their own.

Third we will cover shutter speed. Shutter speed should be pretty short since what affects it and how it affects the other two are a little easier to understand and deal with. But its important to understand what a shutter is, and to be able recognize its affect on your pictures.

Lastly, once we have those three things covered, we can bring it all together and understand how the three of them are interrelated. You can't really get the pictures you want without considering how all three of these properties are working together to create your pictures. When we are done we should understand why you can't change one of those measurements without affecting the other two.

This is going to be a series of posts that could take a while to complete, but don't let that stop you from asking other questions along the way if you have specific questions about other things.

And so, It Begins

Hello every one, and welcome to the first entry in my Photography blog.

I started this blog for really two main reasons. The first is I love photography, but I don't always get to go out and shoot photographs as often as I would like. Since it's often said that the best way to learn is to teach, I thought one of the best ways to keep learning about photography and growing within the field would be to research and learn about the questions of others.

The second reason I wanted to do this was because of the inadequate answers I often give to people who ask me questions. Too often when some one asks me a question I don't have a ready diagram or enough time to give as thorough an answer as I would like.

So on the assumption that its quality and not quantity that is important, I would like to use this space to more fully answer questions. I won't be able to answer as many questions, but I hope that here I can give answers that are more enlightening.

What kinds of questions will I be answering? In short, yours. Have a question about a photographic technique? Or maybe a function on your camera that you don't know what it is? Don't know how to set the White Balance on your camera? Or better yet, want to know what White Balance is? Believe me, there are tons of other people that want to know the same thing.

So follow the link to the right to ask me a question and lets get this party started!