my camera + photography

I love my camera. Like lots of other people, I decided to invest in a digital SLR.... it was last fall. We were having a baby and it seemed a good time to take the plunge! It was a big purchase, I admit, but I saved up and it's been worth it. If we wanted professional pictures of Clare just two or three times, it would have cost about the same... maybe more!

My specific camera is a Canon Rebel XSi. I have two lenses, the one that came with the camera (which I do not particularly love) and a Canon 50mm f/1.8. This whole month I have been shooting with my new lens, and I love it! I am already dreaming of buying a wide-angle, but I really know nothing about lenses so I'll have to research it/ask my friends who know more about cameras than I do for advice.

This month I've also been shooting in Manual. I cannot believe I spent the past year shooting in automatic! (But no flash, if I could help it.) I just started messing around with it one day and took tons of random pictures of my feet, the cat, Jesse's head...

Pictures like this:

I like to play with different settings and figure out what looks the best. I also got a lot of good advice from Darby's photography post. I'm learning as I go!

I wanted share a few of the lessons I've learned... just a warning, if you know anything.... really, anything.... about a camera, you are going to laugh at me. I really know very, very little about photography, and any good pictures I have are mostly luck! For all the pictures that make it to the blog, there are about 15 sad little ones sitting in Picasa, and for every one of those there are about 15 that got deleted cause they stunk.

So here it goes!

1) Lighting is important.

I know... no way! I'm a photography genius! But honestly, I take a lot of pictures indoors, in low light, and I'm often frustrated by the fact that they are blurry or dim, no matter what settings I try. Although I'm sure a lot more experience or maybe a different lens would help... I've learned that photographers go out of their way for good lighting. They plan around the best times for good light.... something that just hadn't clicked in my brain yet! Now I know... lesson learned!

2) ISO is confusing.

For a long time, I thought that the higher the ISO, the more light that the picture would have... which I guess is true... but I kept wondering why my pictures looked so grainy! And then I read that if the ISO is high (and I had mine on the highest setting) it allows more light, but also increases noise/graininess. Who knew? Tricky ISO.

3) Try different angles.

Something that I really haven't thought about until now... seriously! Another no-brainer... but playing around with the angle can give you fun pictures you wouldn't have thought of!

For instance, I went from this....

to this....

They're fun and different, and all I did was move!

(Well, and Clare looked up and showed me her ABC cheerios!)

So I hope you're not laughing at me explaining the obvious when it comes to photography... I am a slow learner! Feel free to give me any advice!