I Know How to Use My Camera Now!!!

Good evening.  Hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend.  I got a day to myself today thanks to my great Hubby.  He took the girls to see a Monster truck show and they had a really fun time.  It is funny to hear my two year old excitedly explaining how high the turtle truck can jump.
So I spent the day learning how to use my DSLR camera.  I came across this great blog called It's Overflowing a few weeks back.  Aimee started a class that is free explaining how to take beautiful pictures with your DSLR.  She breaks down the principles of photography over a series of lessons and shows you how to use the camera.  Here is the link to her photography class.
Each lesson has an assignment to help you learn the covered topic.  I decided to do all the lessons today and I really learned a bunch.  I am confident about using my camera in manual mode because of this.  Here I will show you my photos from each assignment.  This is a really techy post so if you are not interested just stop reading!!!  I will be back to my crafting next week. 

Aperture :  In the photos below I went from the lowest f-stop to the highest f-stop which corresponds to letting the most amount of light into the camera to letting in the least amount of light.  This is also how you get those cool photos with the blurred background.  If you look carefully at the first photo, the letter G is a little blurry.  In contrast, the last photo clearly has all objects in focus.  The first picture is also crisper than the subsequent photos.

Shutter Speed:  In the photos below I used a water faucet to demonstrate that a high shutter speed can show the individual water droplets.  The slow shutter speed depicts a continuous stream of water because the shutter stays open much longer.  The photos are ordered from highest shutter speed to lowest shutter speed.

ISO:  The ISO controls the sensitivity of the camera to the light.  A low ISO would be used when the light is very bright and a high ISO would be used when your lighting levels are low.  The downside to a high ISO is that the photo may be grainy.  The pictures below are with the ISO values from lowest to highest.  You can really see the noise from the high ISO in the last picture.

Metering:  This is what you do once you have your camera in manual mode.  You can set your f-stop, and ISO then used the meter on the camera to select the best shutter speed.  This helps you get really crisp photos while choosing what lighting quality in aperture and ISO you want from your photo.

White Balance:  This is a setting on the camera that helps add the proper coloring to your photos based on the type of lighting you are shooting in.  Each of the different settings adds colors to balance the photos to make them look as your eye perceives them.  I was shooting inside next to a window with no external lighting.  I think based on these photos I will keep my white balance on auto for the time being.

So that is all the lessons so far.  I have really learned how to use my camera in manual thanks to this class.  It will give me more creative freedom with my photos.  Thanks to those who made it through the post.  I realize it was a long one and not my normal post.  Aimee really explains these concepts much better in her class so I would highly recommend it.  And it is FREE!!!  Hope you have a wonderful weekend.