Learning the Ins & Outs of My Camera
- Kyle Benner
- Sep 28, 2016
- 2 min read
Being a Commercial Art major in college, I’m not exposed to manual camera functions as a photography major. In my Visual Storytelling class at Owens Community College, I’m being challenged to broaden my horizons when it comes to cameras. My first camera class was Digital One, and it covered very minimal aspects of a DSLR camera, it’s operations, and composition styles.
In Visual Storytelling, I’m given the task of shooting good composition, correct metering, and real life situations and instances. This adds another aspect that I am not used to, but my most recent assignment for the class has helped me become more comfortable with it.
For our third assignment, we were told to explore aspects of the camera like shutter speed, depth of field, and balancing the meter while changing these aspects. With the 10 photos that are posted in the slideshow, I tried to meet these requirements the best that I could.
The first aspect of the camera that I’m exclusively paying attention to now that I hadn’t in Digital One is White Balance. In my Digital One class, I don’t think I even touched the WB button on my Canon. In this class, however, we dove deep into what each Manual camera function actually did to a picture, and White Balance stood out to me. It can ultimately change the mood of a picture, and I’m very grateful that I truly understand it now, even if it’s another problem to fix while shooting.
Another aspect that stood out to me just as much as White Balance did while shooting during this assignment is how much ISO. The camera’s ISO setting had the same role as White Balance in my Digital One experience. I’m almost positive that I never moved it past 400. However, as we lectured about ISO, and I started to experiment with it, I realized that it made my life much easier as I shot. As my teacher Lori King put it, it acts as a bucket of light, and you add or take out light as the setting desires. This really helped me when I shot as well, because it helps me put my surroundings into perspective.
With ISO on my side during this assignment, I found it so helpful while metering as well. I remember when I was in Digital One, I always had trouble shooting things at the shutter speed I wanted because there wasn’t enough light, and I didn’t really understand how to compensate for that to make the meter even out.
Thought ISO and White Balance as individual aspects helped me immensely during this assignment, I was (and I still am) amazed at how connected all of these aspects really are. When it comes to metering on the Manual setting, the process of exposure compensation is achieved much easier when you use all elements of the camera. I had no knowledge previously about these aspects, but even though I’m technically a Commercial Art major, I am starting to feel more and more comfortable with my DSLR, and I hope I can use metering as second nature if it is ever needed. Check out my ten pictures below in the slideshow!
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