Photography is the art of capturing light with a camera, usually via a digital sensor or film, to create an image. With the right camera equipment, you can even photograph wavelengths of light invisible to the human eye, including UV, infrared, and radio.
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed in many fields of science, manufacturing (e.g., photolithography), and business, as well as its more direct uses for art, film and video production, recreational purposes, hobby, and mass communication.
Typically, a lens is used to focus the light reflected or emitted from objects into a real image on the light-sensitive surface inside a camera during a timed exposure. With an electronic image sensor, this produces an electrical charge at each pixel, which is electronically processed and stored in a digital image file for subsequent display or processing. The result with photographic emulsion is an invisible latent image, which is later chemically “developed” into a visible image, either negative or positive depending on the purpose of the photographic material and the method of processing. A negative image on film is traditionally used to photographically create a positive image on a paper base, known as a print, either by using an enlarger or by contact printing.
If you buy a dedicated camera (rather than a phone), pick one with interchangeable lenses so that you can try out different types of photography more easily. Read reviews, but don’t obsess over them, because everything available today is pretty much equally good as its competition. Find a nice deal and move on.
Lenses: This is where it counts. For everyday photography, start with a standard zoom lens like a 24-70mm or 18-55mm. For portrait photography, pick a prime lens (one that doesn’t zoom) at 35mm, 50mm, or 85mm. For sports, go with a telephoto lens. For macro photography, get a dedicated macro lens. And so on. Lenses matter more than any other piece of equipment because they determine what photos you can take in the first place.
Post-processing software. One way or another, you need to edit your photos. It’s ok to start with software already on your computer, or software that comes with your camera. But in the long run, a dedicated program will do a better job. Adobe sells Lightroom and Photoshop as a bundle for $10/month, or you can buy standalone software from another company if you prefer; there are tons of options. Whatever you pick, stick with it for a while, and you’ll learn it quite well.
Everything else is optional, but can be very helpful:
A tripod. A landscape photographer’s best friend.
Bags. Get a shoulder bag for street photography, a rolling bag for studio photography, a technical hiking backpack for landscape photography, and so on.
Memory cards. Choose something in the 32-64 GB range to start. Get a fast card (measured in MB/second) if you shoot bursts of photos, since your camera’s memory will clear faster.
Extra Batteries. Get at least one spare battery to start, preferably two. Off-brand batteries are usually cheaper, although they may not last as long or maintain compatibility with future cameras.
Polarizing filter. This is a big one, especially for landscape photographers. Don’t get a cheap polarizer or it will harm your image quality. We recommend the B+W Kaesemann filter (of the same thread size as your lens). See our polarizing filter article too.
Flash. Flashes can be expensive, and you might need to buy a separate transmitter and receiver if you want to use your flash off-camera.
Better computer monitor. Ideally, you’d get an IPS monitor for editing photos.
Cleaning kit. The top item is a microfiber cloth to keep the front of your lens clean. Also get a rocket blower to remove dust from your camera sensor more easily.
Other equipment. There are countless photography accessories available, from remote shutter releases to GPS attachments to printers and more. Don’t worry about these at first; you’ll realize over time if you need one.
Three Fundamental Camera Settings:
Shutter speed: The amount of time your camera sensor is exposed to the world while taking a picture.
Aperture: Represents a “pupil” in your lens that can open and close to let in different amounts of light.
ISO: Technically a bit more complex, but similar to the sensitivity of film for taking pictures in different lighting conditions.
Basic photography concepts: aperture, shutter speed, ISO speed, exposure
Photography is all about light. To let the camera “see” what you wish, you have tools controlling how much light reaches the camera sensor: the aperture and shutter speed controls. With too little light, your photo will be too dark. With too much light, it will be too bright. In both cases some details will be lost. You use aperture and shutter speed to achieve the proper exposure, while taking into account some important side-effects you should be aware about.
Imagine that you are looking through a small round hole in a fence. How much of the scene behind the fence will you see and comprehend? I would say it depends on two factors:
How large the hole is. The larger it is, the more you will see.
How long you look. The longer you look, the more details you will notice.
Same story happens in a photo camera. I am now probably risking to get a negative evaluation of my physics knowledge, which would unfortunately be quite fair… However, although the physical reasons might differ, the conceptual comparison seems to be quite adequate. When shooting with a photo camera, you let the sensor see the scene through a hole in the lens called aperture. The larger this hole is, the more light reaches the sensor. Normally the sensor is closed by a curtain called shutter. When shooting, the shutter opens, light reaches the sensor through the aperture hole, and then it closes again. The longer the opening lasts, the more light reaches the sensor. This time is called shutter speed.
When shooting, your goal is to expose the right amount of light to the camera sensor (that’s why it is called exposure). If you provide insufficient amount of light, the photo will be too dark. If you expose too much light, the photo will be too bright. The larger the deviation from the normal exposure is, the more chance you have to hopelessly lose image data. Software post-processing can fix the perceived exposure (for example make a dark photo look brighter), but it cannot re-create the image data lost while shooting. For example, a very common landscape photography problem is loosing clouds in a bright sky. When it is overexposed (too much light reaches the sensor), the whole sky becomes completely white, and the clouds cannot be distinguished any more. On the other hand, with underexposure (too little light reaches the sensor), shadowed parts of the image lose details, become completely black. Software cannot rescue such details, because they do not exist in the original image.
Thus, it is very important to get the exposure right when shooting. But what is “right”? Does it mean “the photo must look so bright/dark as I want it to be on the final photograph”? No! By “right” I mean that the exposure must be such that the maximum number of the scene details is captured by the sensor. Recording the visual information, as much as possible – that’s what the camera is for! Then you present these data in the way you like, create the final photograph in Photo Sense . In fact, the best properly exposed photos often look terribly dull before software post-processing.
Fortunately modern photo cameras often provide accurate automatic exposure evaluation. At least with a natural, more or less even lighting, their evaluation is usually great. In automatic mode, the camera suggests the aperture and shutter speed values to use. They guarantee a good exposure. But are these really the best possible values? Why not to enlarge the aperture hole twice and halve the shutter speed? The amount of light reaching the sensor will be the same, thus it does not make any difference, does it? Well, in fact it does. Although the exposure is still the same (and correct), this change can make a great difference in the resulting photograph. Both aperture and shutter speed affect more aspects than just how much light reaches the sensor, and a photographer must always keep them in mind to get good results. However good your camera is, it is still unable to read your mind, and thus to know what exactly you want. Let’s look at the aperture and shutter speed in more detail, and discuss their important side effects.
Aperture and depth of field:
As explained above, aperture defines how large the hole is through which the sensor sees the world. In photography, aperture is measured in units called F-numbers, F-stops or whatever else with this F-. Without going into details about what exactly this F- is (I would need to look it up myself to explain, physics again), all you really need to know is the following. The smaller the F-number is, the larger the aperture hole is, and the more light reaches the sensor. From now on by “large aperture” I will mean a large aperture hole (and a small F-number), and vice versa by “small aperture”.
In practice, depending on the lens you have, you usually use F- values from about F4 (large aperture) to approximately F16 (small aperture). Some quality lenses support much larger apertures, for example my favorite Nikon lenses (85mm and 50mm) get to F1.8 or even F1.4. These are very light-sensitive lenses saving you in dark conditions (more about lenses and low-light photography).
In addition to the amount of light reaching the sensor, aperture affects another very important aspect: the depth of field. Imagine several objects located at different distances from the camera. Say a person 5 meters away, a bear 7 meters away, and a tree 10 meters away. The camera sees them all, but the question is: which objects are in focus? The larger the depth of field is, the more objects are in focus. And the smaller the aperture (the larger the F-number) is, the larger the depth of field is. Thus, to get only the person in focus (with the bear and tree out of focus), focus on the person and set the maximum aperture, such as F1.8. This is great for portraits with nice blurred backgrounds. To capture the whole scene, you also want the bear and tree in focus – use a greater F-number, such as F8 or more.
Note that aperture is not the only parameter affecting the depth of field. For example, the distance between the photographer and the subjects also plays a very important role. The closer you are to the first subject, the smaller depth of field becomes.
Shutter speed:
Shutter speed is the time while the shutter curtain is open, exposing the sensor to light. Don’t worry, there are no frightening F-numbers here :-). Shutter speed is measured in normal seconds. At bright day light, we usually use hundredths of a second. When cloudy, in shade etc., might be tenths of a second. At night it comes to full seconds.
While the shutter is open, the sensor records everything it sees. It does not realize what the objects are, it just divides the scene into millions of dots and records the color of every dot during the exposure time. Imagine that it is quite dark, and we are shooting a moving car at the shutter speed of 1 second. With the speed of only 50 km per hour, the car will move by almost 14 meters during this time. The sensor will see the car at the initial position at the first moment. Then the car will move to a place where the sensor previously saw only the background, and the sensor will now see only the background at the car’s initial position. And so on until the final car position. What will be on the resulting photo? A 14-meters long semi-transparent car! 🙂
The car we obtained is not sharp, it has what is called motion blur. The motion blur is the result of shooting moving objects with long shutter speeds. This is the shutter speed side-effect you should always keep in mind. If you want to get a sharp object, make sure the shutter speed is fast enough to freeze its motion. If you want to get a motion-blurred object to emphasize the movement, make sure the shutter speed is slow enough.
ISO speed (sensitivity):
When you cannot get the right exposure with the aperture and shutter speed, it is time to think about the ISO sensitivity (also called ISO speed). It defines how sensitive the camera sensor is to light. With the same amount of available light, the higher the ISO sensitivity is, the more light will be captured by the sensor.
The ISO sensitivity is measured in… numbers! 🙂 I do not know what exactly these numbers mean, never needed it (now, when writing this, I became curious 🙂 ). The “normal” ISO speed depends on your camera. In my experience it is either ISO 100 or ISO 200. This is what you start with. If you cannot get the right exposure by altering aperture and shutter speed, try to adjust the ISO speed. I cannot remember a situation when I needed to reduce the normal ISO speed. Aperture and shutter speed can reduce the amount of light as much as needed in most cases, with rare exceptions. There are also other ways to reduce the amount of light, such as lens filters. The ISO sensitivity control is usually useful with insufficient light. When ISO 100 is not enough, try ISO 200, ISO 400, etc.
This is not so simple, however. Aperture and shutter speed controls can be considered safe, because they alter a natural measure: the amount of light. The ISO sensitivity is more artificial, its increase comes at a price. The more sensitive the sensor becomes, the more image noise it creates. This is when the equipment quality becomes important in photography: expensive professional cameras usually allow much higher ISO speeds before the image noise becomes prohibitive. With my entry-level DSLR Nikon D80 I never shot above ISO 800. With Nikon D700 I often get to ISO 1600 (twice more sensitive) and sometimes even to ISO 3200.
Types of Cameras
Digital cameras come in a variety of forms, from point-and-shoot pocket cameras to advanced digital SLRs. There is no right or wrong type, though a specific one may be best for you and your photography.
Simple point-and-shoot digital cameras can give surprising quality when they have the right lenses and sensors. Because they are totally automatic in focus and exposure, they just have to be pointed at a subject and clicked. They have limited capabilities for controlling the image, although even very inexpensive cameras often have white balance controls. Some are exceptionally compact, able to fit easily into a shirt pocket, making them ideal cameras to keep at hand so you won’t miss a great photo opportunity.
Advanced point-and-shoot cameras are similar in that they mostly rely on automatic controls; however, this group tends to add special features to make the cameras a little more flexible. Such features include exposure compensation, more white balance controls, limited manual settings, and more. Still relatively inexpensive, these cameras can be a good introduction to digital and are perfect for the families of serious photographers.
Interchangeable-lens, digital SLRs offer all the controls of a 35mm SLR, including lenses that give you a wealth of focal-length possibilities. These cameras are definitely bigger than the other digital cameras. They include complete and extensive photographic controls, the best in image-sensor and processing technology, high levels of noise control, and more. The LCD panel on the back of an SLR can be used only for reviewing images, since the sensor cannot provide “live” images due to the mirror design.
