Kitabı oku: «Collins Complete Photography Course»
Collins Complete Photography Course
John Garrett & Graeme Harris
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Introduction
The story of photography
You and your camera
Exposure
Aperture
Shutter
Lenses
Composition
Light
Colour
Filters
Black and white
Image enhancement
Image management
Further reading
Glossary
Index
Biographies
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
This book assumes no previous knowledge of photography, though it is intended not only for beginners but also for those who have some experience and are looking for inspiration to take them on to the next level.
After an initial discussion of the equipment you are most likely to have or to acquire, the book is divided into lessons. Each includes a series of projects which are progressive, leading you from the most elementary information right through to more complicated assignments.
Your camera can be film or digital – the images in this book have been shot on both types of camera and the information is equally valid for both systems. However, it largely applies to SLR or DSLR cameras, as that is what a large number of people use for their photography today.
The thrust of the book is very definitely a creative one; it is not a techy book aimed at those photographers who like spending their time swapping the names of the newest camera models or attempting to obtain batteries from the same batch to ensure success.
Rather, it is written for people who would love to improve their photography without getting bogged down in page after page of technical information – stuff we don’t believe is necessary, and which in fact often gets in the way, since worrying about it can act as a brake on your creativity and imagination. It is also designed to be a companion to students doing a formal photographic course.
Too much information
In retrospect, we both realize that we had trouble learning from the textbooks that we read when we studied photography at college. They were too dry and too heavily weighted towards technical information. Even today’s textbooks, although more accessible, can still leave a beginner in a state of confusion.
We became aware that we could have saved ourselves considerable time and frustration in our earlier years if we had had access to a book that would lead us through progressive steps without bogging us down in reams of technical jargon, from which vital information had to be painstakingly extracted. With this in mind, we have distilled what we feel to be the most important basic steps for improving your photography quickly.
The learning process
This book aims to teach you the techniques that experience has shown us are the essence of photography, stressing that any technical decision is also a creative one.
The purpose of the projects is to cement the information in your mind by asking you to have a go for yourself. Our aim is that you will shoot examples that are based on the projects, using our pictures as a visual guide. Throughout, we are on your side, encouraging you to find the creative muse that lives inside us all.
You will contribute a great deal to the learning process if you complete the projects, as you can discover far more about photography by doing it rather than just reading about it. So pick up your camera, set out with confidence and a keen eye for an image and you will find that your photography really begins to take off.
In this close-up picture of a rose, the structure of the centre petals has a similar look to the diaphragm blades of the iris in a lens – irresistible for a photographer. GH
The story of photography
The history of photography, in terms of the understanding that light passing through an aperture can create an image, is a long one. However, it is only in relatively recent decades that photography has become so ubiquitous.
It was the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) who first noticed the phenomenon that light rays converge to pass through small holes and, on striking a surface behind them, produce an inverted image. However, it was not until the 16th century that the camera obscura came into use. This consisted of little more than a darkened room with a hole in one wall so that an image of the outside view was projected on the wall opposite the hole. The pinhole cameras that are still used today by a growing band of adherents are in fact a miniaturized camera obscura.
Who succeeded in making the first photograph is still argued over. In France, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Daguerre collaborated in experiments in photography, but it was only in 1839, after the death of Niépce, that Daguerre published his technique. Around the same time, in England, William Fox-Talbot invented the first negative/positive process. It was then possible to make any number of prints from one negative – basically the same process that we use today.
Photography took off with an enthusiasm in the Victorian era that is hard to imagine today. By 1853 New York alone had 80 professional studios, while London and Paris had similar numbers. Outside the studio environment, the effort that was required in those early days when photographers set out to record our world would seem extraordinary to us today, when we can just throw our cameras over our shoulders or slip them in our pockets.
The early travelling photographers needed a horse and cart to carry the very large and heavy glass plates and light-sensitive emulsion used to coat them in a lightproof tent, plus the tripod and heavy wooden cameras. Some of those photographers, the equivalent of the photojournalists of today, carried 45 kg (100lb) of gear in backpacks up mountains and into war zones. Men such as Mathew Brady, who recorded the American Civil War, were tough and talented people.
To combine the ancient pinhole camera with the latest digital technology, I drilled a hole in a camera body cap (black card would have sufficed). I then made a pinhole in a piece of kitchen foil and taped it over the hole in the cap. The image of the garden table and chairs were just visible in the viewfinder. I used a high ISO speed on the camera to keep the exposure time short. This was a very simple pinhole, but a very sophisticated pinhole camera. GH
Although this technology seems very crude and clumsy compared to the DSLR photography of today, our forefathers produced a great archive of pictures of beauty and extraordinary technical quality. The glass plates and, later, 10 × 8 inch film negatives were capable of recording exquisite detail and tone, but by its very complicated, expensive, bulky and time-consuming nature photography remained something largely beyond the reach of the general public.
The revolution that gave photography to the masses was in 1888, when George Eastman, through his Kodak company, marketed a camera loaded with film to take 100 pictures. When all were exposed the camera was sent back to Kodak for processing and printing. Kodak’s slogan ‘You take the pictures and we do the rest’ was a sensational success. Once colour negative film was invented, the photographic world was transformed and people set about documenting their everyday lives, recording holidays, parties and portraits.
The most recent technological leap has of course been digital photography, which has democratized the medium still further by making it both easier and cheaper. Nonetheless, no matter how far photography evolves, the same principles will apply – it is the confluence of light, a lens and a creative mind that will bring about great images.
A family portrait from the original Kodak ‘you take the pictures and we do the rest’ period of mass enthusiasm for photography. Unlike today’s rectangular framing, the pictures were the full circle produced by the lens.
Now everybody takes a camera on holiday, but as recently as 25 years ago this gentleman would set up his great wooden plate camera in front of all the great historic sites in Paris. Tourists would pose for photographs they could take home to remind them of their travels.
You and your camera
Camera types
While the following pages are mainly concerned with DSLR cameras, there are many other cameras in use. Although digital technology has galloped ahead of traditional film technology, film is still very much alive and well.
Large-format cameras
Early photographers are associated with peering into giant cameras with black cloths over their heads. However, these cameras are not just of the past – large-format cameras, producing 10 × 8 inch and 5 × 4 inch negatives, were until recently always used for the highest-quality landscape, architectural, food and still life pictures that it was possible to take.
In the commercial world digital cameras have mostly taken over this area, but the large format is increasingly used by art photographers. It’s human nature that whenever there is a strong movement forward technologically there will always be a small but determined movement defiantly working with the older technology because it’s believed to be more elegant and to give a more aesthetically pleasing result. There are many young art photography students going right back to shooting 10 × 8 inch black and white film in search of the quality of images produced by the old masters of photography such as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and Minor White and very many more.
A 1930s 35mm Leica rangefinder camera which incorporated the latest technology of its day and a cut-away of a 21st-century Canon DSLR, showing all its technical complexities.
Large-format cameras have many camera movements that allow the correction of perspective and the holding of focus from foreground to background on wide apertures. They are the ultimate recorders of tonal values, sharpness and fine detail.
Medium-format cameras
This category of camera includes those producing negatives measuring 6 × 9 cm, 6 × 7 cm, 6 × 6 cm, 6 × 4.5 cm. All use 120 and 220 roll film and the number of frames per film depends upon the format size.
Medium-format cameras have been the professional’s workhorses for years and with the digital age they still are, producing the highest-quality digital images possible. Most of the manufacturers make a film camera and a digital equivalent; some, such as Hasselblad, now embrace both film and digital technology in the same cameras, allowing you to attach either a film magazine or a magazine that contains a digital sensor.
Medium-format cameras are more expensive and more difficult to handle than 35mm cameras, but they are very versatile in their use. Most fashion and advertising photography is shot on medium format.
Seeing the big picture
The double-page photograph on pp.12-13 is of pressed campanula flowers, from a series of images I made of flowers and leaves. I placed a sheet of Japanese paper on top of a lightbox and put the flowers on the paper. The light coming from beneath has passed through them, giving the appearance of an X-ray (see p.121). The textured background behind the flowers comes from the paper. GH
35mm cameras
DSLRs are of course digital versions of the time-honoured 35mm ‘miniature’ film camera – so-called because when it was developed in the 1920s it was so much smaller, both physically and in the negative size it produced, than the large cameras used at the time. These cameras gave birth to photojournalism and many people still choose to use them rather than DSLRs.
Compact cameras
The film compacts usually called ‘point and shoots’ have bred the digital compacts. These vary considerably in price according to the quality of the lens and resolution and the sophistication of the controls. The compact camera comes into its own for trekkers, mountaineers and extreme sports fans who are often in spectacularly beautiful places and are keen photographers but can’t carry an SLR around with them.
Underwater cameras
These cameras are increasingly in demand as scuba diving becomes more popular. As well as the traditional 35mm film cameras such as the Nikonos (now only available on the secondhand market), there is a large choice of digital underwater cameras available in a range of prices.
Cellphone cameras
The rapid advance of cellphone camera technology has added to the ubiquity of the digital image. The cellphone camera is already beginning to take over from the compact camera as a visual notebook, and it won’t be long before they all have zoom lenses and can produce higher-quality prints.
What seems to be the weakness of cellphone cameras is that they are totally automatic and we cannot alter anything. However, this can liberate us from all technical decision-making responsibilities and leave us with just the subject, composition and light to play with.
Remember, most of the great pictures from the past were shot on much less sophisticated cameras than compacts and cellphone cameras. It is still the photographer who takes a great picture, not the camera.
Cellphone camera tips
• Keep the lens clean.
• Shield the lens from the sun when shooting.
• Use the highest-quality setting.
• Fill the frame – don’t use digital zoom, since it’s poor quality.
• There may be up to half a second shutter delay, so make sure the subject doesn’t move.
• Hold the camera very, very still for a sharp picture.
Getting to grips with your DSLR camera
The modern camera is really a computer with a lens attached. Navigating the menu will be familiar to anybody who is used to modern electronic equipment.
It’s easy to be daunted by all the clever things your camera can do and just how much information there is in the instruction book about all the various functions. The easiest way to deal with this is to learn on a need-to-know basis. After you’ve worked out the essentials, tackle the more complex things as you need them.
There are still many photographers, both professional and amateur, who are devoted to film and there will continue to be for a long time. While the emphasis of this chapter is on DSLR cameras, much of the information on aperture, shutter, focus, lenses and so on equally applies to SLR film cameras.
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