Congratulations on your new camera! You are about to embark on a long and fulfilling journey into the world of photography. You are full of hopes and momentum to start taking great photos and I am here to help you get there.

But with all the buttons and dials on your camera, you may be feeling overwhelmed. So today I’m going to help you get started with your new camera!

It all comes down to just 3 settings that will control every image you take.

ISO

Aperture

and Shutter Speed.

Today I break down what each one does and how you can use them to get the photos you dream of taking!

Resources:

• 5 Essential Pieces of Photography Gear for Beginner Photographers

  
  

Did you enjoy this episode? Check out more recent interviews with other great guests!

Full Episode Transcription:

Disclaimer: The transcript was transcribed electronically by Temi.com and may contain errors that do not reflect accurately what the speaker said. Because of this, please do not quote this automated transcript.

Raymond: 00:00 This is the beginner photography podcast. And today I'm going to help you learn how to use your new DSLR that you got for the holidays. So let's get into it.

Intro: 00:09 Welcome to the beginner photography podcast with Raymond Hatfield, the podcast dedicated to helping you grow your photography skills. Raymond interviews the world's top photographers in their field to ask questions that will get you taking better photos today. Now with you as always, husband, father, home brewer, LA Dodger fan and Indianapolis wedding photographer Raymond Hatfield.

Raymond: 00:38 Welcome each and every one of you. I am your host Raman Hatfield and I hope that you have a good holiday and you were able to spend some time with family and friends and everyone that you love most. You know that the holidays are a time where many of us get the gifts that we may not buy for ourselves throughout the year, that we know we might feel guilty for spending, you know, a certain amount of money on ourselves when we have a family to feed and, you know, bills to pay. And one of those, you know, gifts very well could have been a brand new camera for you. And if that is you, then guess what, you are in the right place because today I'm going to help you learn how to use your new camera and just start taking great photos. But if you're new here, let me go ahead and introduce myself real quick.

Raymond: 01:30 I am Raymond Hatfield. I'm a wedding photographer here in very chilly Indianapolis, Indiana. And my path in photography started actually in high school. You know, a lot of people, you know get started early and then the, you know, they've been in it forever and that was kinda my path, but that's not the only path, right? So my path obviously started when I was in high school because it was a little bit different. I actually loved making movies and I loved making movies so much that I went to film school because I wanted to learn how to become a, a Hollywood cinematographer. The person who controls, you know, the lights person who controls camera movement person who works with the camera department. You know, I'd be the head of a camera department. But after graduating I found out that I actually had more of a passion for photography than I did cinematography.

Raymond: 02:20 And that was great because all of the technical skills of working a camera as a cinematographer transferred into photography. Now there were some, there were some slight changes, but overall it was the same thing. Now the camera is simply a creative tool and that creative tool, let me capture, you know, these moments in these memories, but in my own unique voice and vision, when you are, you know, working on a quote unquote Hollywood set, you may be head of the camera, department of the camera, the lenses, the lighting. But you still have to answer to people, the director, you have to answer to the producer. You have to answer to all these people around you. Even the sound guy like, well, if we do that, then you know, I can't do that and I need to do that to get my job. And then you've got to figure out, okay, so what do I do as a work around?

Raymond: 03:12 So it's not as creative in the, in the film world as it is in photography. And quickly you learn how little gear has to do with making these great, you know, images or videos. And when it came to photography, again, I, I, I firmly believe that a great photo is just so much more than the sum of its settings. And that moment is what matters most. It's not the gear. But when you come from a world of $60,000 movie cameras and you know, 30,000 like a whole box full of $30,000 lenses, and I'm not even kidding, like $25,000 tripods with a $20,000 tripod head, it's hard to get around the the point of understanding how little that gear matters because you know, you're taught that the better the gear that you have, the better result you'll get. And where I think that's true is that it just makes the T when you have a better tool, it makes it easier to achieve what it is that you're looking for.

Raymond: 04:19 But it by no means changes the overall product. But once I knew that it wasn't the gear that was making, you know, great movies or great photographs, I knew that many other, you know, new photographers like yourself will struggle with the exact same thing. And if you can get over that, once you learn that the technicals or once you learn, once you learn the technicals, you'll be able to create and capture photos that just truly mean the world to you. So it may sound like I'm talking down about gear and you may be thinking, well, gear has to matter. You know, the photos from my DSLR look way crispier then, then the photos from my cell phone and your right gear does matter. But it only matters until it doesn't. And what I mean by that is that the difference between an image taken with a cell phone and a entry level $500 DSLR is a massive difference.

Raymond: 05:24 But the difference between a $500 DSLR and a $5,000 DSLR is unnoticeable unless you are in the top 1% of the top 1% of photographers who have, you know, just been shooting forever. But that's, that's off subject. Let's go ahead and learn how to use your new camera to start capturing the world around you. Okay. What do you say? Are you ready for this? I am. So let's kind of tackle that main thing like I was just talking about a second ago. What is then the difference between the camera that's in your cell phone and your new DSLR camera? Well, there are several differences, but mainly it is the ability to change lenses and it's the size of the camera itself. And when I say size, I mean size is more than just the physical size of the camera that's in your hand. It's also the camera's sensor.

Raymond: 06:23 Now every single camera has a sensor. In the film days, the sensor was the film itself. It's the piece that light falls upon and captures the image. As I said, this is the replacement to film, but unlike film where you would take one photo and then you would move to the next slide of film to take another photo, and then you're limited to 24 or 36 photos, a digital sensor, it resets after every photo of it's taken and then saves it to the memory card. So you can take hundreds hundreds of thousands of photos with a single digital sensor, whereas you can only take one photo per piece of film. But what makes the sensor and your cell phone different from the sensor in your DSLR is the physical size of the sensor. So the image sensor in your DSLR is, is simply much, much larger of a sensor than the one that is in your phone.

Raymond: 07:31 And when you have a larger sensor, this allows you to take in more light in dim situations. And it is also in part responsible for that out of focus background that everybody loves so much. So now with cell phones, I know that we can kind of replicate that with a portrait mode. But that's a, that's a, that's a digital thing. That's not a physical change in the image itself. And with a DSLR, you're actually creating a physical separation between your subject and the background. Okay, so let's get back to lenses for a second. So I know that new phones have multiple lenses to give you different fields of view, otherwise known as focal links or how wide or how zoomed in a photo is. Now with a DSLR, you have the ability to have a pretty much endless focal lengths, which really opens up the door to letting you have complete control of an image.

Raymond: 08:32 You have the ability to use vintage lenses, which give you a specific look or a tilt shift lens to take a specialty photo. Now these are things that you can now do with your DSLR that you can not physically do with a with a phone. Now there's apps that help create the effect, but it's all digital and it's not, it's not true. So it, it appears more fake. So those are, those are really the two differences between a the camera that's in your phone and your new camera that you got for the holidays, your new DSLR. Now let's talk about the main advantage of a DSLR and that it has over the cell phone in your pocket and that main advantage to you as a photographer. Now we're not talking about anything like technical here, but it's simply control. Now a DSLR can take, it can take snapshots and I consider a snapshot just to be like a, a reactionary photo.

Raymond: 09:31 You see something happening, you pull out your camera and then you just snap. You just, you know, you just snapped the photo, you just press the button, you let the camera make all the decisions that capture that photo. But with control, you can be intentional with your photography. And when you're intentional, you grow and will become a better photographer. So then that begs the question, how does a DSLR give us control over our images? Now you may not know this because now we're going to kind of talk about the technical side of photography. And it may not be clear by looking at the dozens of buttons on your camera. But every photo ever taken was made by controlling just three simple settings. And that is ISO or ISO, aperture and shutter speed. Right now those words may seem totally foreign to you. Don't worry.

Raymond: 10:31 Let me explain. With the DSLR, you have independent control of these three settings to use and manipulate to get literally any photo that you want, any photo. So just to be clear, your phone and you know, a, a, a point and shoot camera also use ISO, aperture and shutter speed. But generally the, the camera automatically controls what those settings are going to be to grab the image. So guess what, without knowing it, you've been taking photos using ISO, aperture, and shutter speed your whole life. But now that you have a DSLR, you can be in control of those three settings and control how those settings are used. So ISO, aperture, and shutter speed all have the same job to control the amount of light that is captured by the camera sensor. Now while all three settings have the same job, they just simply do it in a, you know, indifferent ways that all compliment each other.

Raymond: 11:34 Let's think about your car. Your car is a hunk of metal and plastic, right? It gets you from one place to another. Well, a car would be useless without an engine. It would just be a shell. Okay? So let's go ahead and put an engine in your car. Fantastic. But even with an engine, you're not going anywhere without tires. So as you can see, all of these things work independently on their own, but together they compliment each other to get you from point a to point B. And your camera is the same with ISO, aperture and shutter speed. So let's break them down and talk about how they work and why you would want to control them independently. But let me preface this by saying that you can only control all of these settings by shooting in manual mode on your camera. So if you look at your camera, there's going to be a dial on the top of the camera itself.

Raymond: 12:36 Something maybe with a little small green box on it. Turn it from that. Turn the dial from that green box to theM dial for full control of your camera, which is infer manual. Okay, so ISL, this is how sensitive your image sensor is to the light that comes in the camera. Think of this almost as like, I'm fake light. Okay? If you're in a low light situation, you can rise up your ISO or you can raise up your ISO and your image will get brighter, almost like more light is being introduced to whatever it is that's in front of you. And it's fantastic to be able to control this because in the film days you had to buy a whole roll of film that had a specific ISO. So you'd buy an entire roll of film that was ISO 400 and you were not able to adjust it.

Raymond: 13:30 You know, you weren't able to adjust it on a shot per shot basis like you can today with digital technology. With film, you had to run out the entire roll of 24 36 photos until you could change your ISO. But again, you could change your ISO for every single photo with digital technology. So this is fantastic stuff. A note though about ISO and that is the higher that you go ISO 3,200 ISO 6,400, your image will get brighter, but it will also get noisy or grainy or not as sharp because you're, what you're doing is you're artificially boosting the digital sensor, the digital signal to the sensor. So be aware of this and you know, the problem is, is that every camera's ISO performance is a little bit different. So some cameras will get, I mean, I'm unusably noisy and ISO 800, which is pretty low, while other cameras can shoot up to ISO 12,800 and you're still able to deliver a perfectly usable image.

Raymond: 14:42 Now that's just something that you have to discover on your own. And it also changes according to your own tastes. Some people want to shoot everything in ISO 100 or ISO 64 to get the least amount of noise possible while others, you know, myself included, will shoot as high as I need to go to get the shot. Because once again, it's the moment that matters most and not the gear so much to me. But anyway, that's a personal taste and that's something that you, you just have to go out and experiment and find on your own. So that is ISO. So next to the next setting is aperture. Now, aperture controls the amount of light that passes through the lens. So the aperture is not in the camera itself. It is physically in the lens. So when you buy a new camera lens, this is one of the most important technical specs to look at, which is how large the maximum aperture is.

Raymond: 15:33 And it's the reason why you can buy a a hundred dollar 50 millimeter lens and a $1,500 50 millimeter lens. It's simply because, well, part of it is the, the lens construction, but mainly it is the, it's the maximum aperture. So the larger the maximum aperture, the more light you can allow in. And this is great. Once again in low light situations, having the ability to allow more light into the lens, you can keep your ISO lower. So the difference between F two and F 2.8 is one stop of light, which means that you can go from shooting it ISO 1600 times. So 800 and ISO 800 is going to be much cleaner, less noisy than shooting at 1600 so your lens, having the ability to open up even further allows you to keep your ISO lower. Now the lens that comes with your camera generally has a maximum aperture of F 3.5 and as you zoom in, like you know, when you zoom in close to something, it goes from 3.5 to F 5.6 and that's because to save cost, the camera makers use what's called a variable aperture lens, meaning that the maximum aperture will change and get smaller as you zoom now it works.

Raymond: 16:58 You can, you know, you can capture photos, but it's no one's definition of ideal. And it an aperture of F 5.6. It is very hard to get an out-of-focus background. Now it's ideal to have a maximum aperture of F two or larger. And that's because aperture not only controls how much light you allow to pass through your lens, but it also controls how out of focus your background is. Yes, if you want that out-of-focus background, you need a maximum aperture of F two or larger. And that is why I cannot recommend enough the Nikon or Canon 50 millimeter 1.8 lens. As you are first lens purchase at F 1.8, you can get beautiful out of focus backgrounds that really are, you know, professional looking results for just $150. I mean, in the camera world, that's, that's a no brainer to purchase. And that's why I included it on my list of five essential pieces of gear every beginner photographer needs which you can find that in the show notes of this episode by swiping up on on this episode in your podcast player or by going to the resources page at beginner photography, podcast.com.

Raymond: 18:25 You know, and I also have recommendations for reputable memory cards so that you don't lose all of your images from a shoot. So a check it out. There's a lot of great stuff there. Okay. Lastly, the third setting that we have is shutter speed. Now shutter speed controls how long the light coming in through the lens falls upon the sensor. So shutter speed is measured in a fraction, like one 50th or one 320th. That is a fraction of a second. So a shutter speed of one, three 20th or one three 20th means that the shutter is only open for one, 320th of a second. That is a tiny fraction, but shutter speed also controls the amount of motion blur. So you know, not background blur that everybody loves, but motion blur. Like when somebody is walking fast and you go to take a picture in there, they're blurry in the frame.

Raymond: 19:23 The faster the shutter speed that you have, like one 500th of a second or one one thousands of a second or even higher, the quicker the shutter opens and closes to freeze that motion. Now on the opposite side of that spectrum, you can also slow down your shutter speed for a creative effect. A show's a slow shutter speed of a race car can make it look like that car is moving much faster than it actually is. A slow shutter of a moving waterfall can make the appear. The water appears silky smooth in glass, like it's 100% up to you. So together you use these three settings to control the light and capture an image. Now once an image is captured, you have two options as to what to do with your image. You can either share it right away or you can edit the photo before sharing it.

Raymond: 20:17 Now with editing, you can be as light or as heavy as you want. You know, you can raise up the shadow slightly to bring out more detail or warm up the white balance. Now these are just light edits. These are things that that can be done in just seconds and don't really change the overall photo. Or you can take the image into Photoshop and remove blemishes or add sun players and then you are creating more you're creating a piece of digital art. Now there's no right or wrong way to edit just because like photography editing is also subjective. Whatever you know you love, somebody else is going to hate. So your goal however, is to make something that you like, make something that you are happy with. And in the beginning, see you're going to find that you are just limited in what you know, so you won't be able to get exactly what you want on the first try.

Raymond: 21:19 But to me, that's the beauty of it because photography is an art and it is not a technical trade. So therefore it's it's never ending. There's always something new to learn. Now, right now in the beginning you're learning these foundations, how to use the camera, how to see light, how to edit and process your images. And then after that it's going to go deeper and then it's going to go deeper and then it's going to go deeper. But the key to photography is to always be curious, to always pursue what makes you curious because you don't know what you don't know. So try not to get upset when your photo doesn't turn out how you want it. Simply ask yourself, what is it about the photo that isn't how you saw it in your head? Maybe it's that you don't like how the sky is overexposed and it's all white and you can't see the clouds.

Raymond: 22:22 Okay? Then you need to learn how to get a better exposure. And then after that you can learn about the capabilities in editing, you know, select portions of an image. And then after that you can learn about a physical gradient, neutral density filter. And that's going to give you the look in camera. But it all starts with that curiosity. And it's only satisfied when explored and looked at with that beginner's mind. So remember that photography is a long road and you're about to embark on it and it's much easier to just sit back and enjoy the ride instead of, you know, always looking at your watch, wondering why it's taking so long. So if you want more helpful tips like this, consider subscribing to the podcast because it is free and it means that every week the newest episode of the podcast with world-class photographers is going to be delivered right to your phone and you won't want to miss next week's episode where I edit together the biggest lessons that I learned from the top 10 most downloaded interviews of the year.

Raymond: 23:31 It's, it's a photography masterclass if, if you've ever heard one and it's all free and it's delivered to you weekly when you subscribe to the podcast. So I hope that that helped you today. Learn or get a basic understanding of your camera and how to get started using, you know, your new camera that you got for the holidays. So that is it. Until next week, I want you to get out or start shooting. I just want you to start shooting. I want you to make more. I want you to do more and I want you to make more with the gear that you got because it's perfect. All right, talk soon.

Outro: 24:11 If you enjoy today's podcast, please leave us a review in iTunes or your favorite podcast player and continue the conversation with Raymond and other listeners of the podcast by joining the beginner photography podcast Facebook group today. Thank you. We'll see you again next week.