Basics of Non-Auto Photography

Whether you are using one of the cheapest Point and Shoot cameras available, or you have sprung hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for an expensive SLR (we'll cover the difference later) the basic concepts of how your camera is working are still the same.

 Once you know these basics and have control over these three components of a properly exposed image, you can use this knowledge to create great images in a wide variety of lighting, and not just when your camera happens to guess correctly how you want your photo to work.

In photography, the three main technical components affecting image exposure, depth of field and a whole slew of other really important things are  Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO.  We cover the Terrible Trio in class, but each of these three vital components to photography deserves more time and attention than we can give in class, and so this series, Basics of Non-Auto Photography, we will spend a little time exploring each of these, and hopefully remind you that you are smarter than your camera and you have to tell it what to do. 

So grab your camera and manual, get ready to spin some dials away from Auto, and learn to harness the technology at your fingertips.