Digital Photography 101

Instructor: Ron Lacey

September, 2004 at LVS on Line

Other LVS courses taken

I had a difficult time getting good shots that didn't need some correcting in Photoshop and so I spent, literally, hours browsing through my digital photo files and selected some that I felt, through some stroke of luck, were not dark, miscolored or out of focus. As I gathered and re sized the images and looked into their camera data (Exif information), I was not surprised to see that just about every one was an auto mode shot.

Underexposed, overexposed, poor color, etc. never really disturbed me that much because I knew I was always going to be able to count on Photoshop to make up for what I didn't know about my camera. But, if the camera has the ability to balance colors, add sharpness, and whatever else it can do it would make sense to use that, at least to know the possibilities.

Choosing just 3 was too difficult, so I went a bit further. I like to photograph cats, my grandchildren, parades, buildings, flowers, landscapes, seascapes....well, you get the idea!

The cameras I use are the Olympus C5050Z and the Nikon CoolPix 3700. The Olympus is large and hard to carry around while the Nikon 3700 is very compact and great for taking on a walk or putting in your pocket or purse to have along in case there are any interesting things to catch. After writing and analyzing all of this, I am always either in a hurry or it takes too long to set things up. I also find myself thinking that I will fix it later in PS!

The photos I am presenting for Week 1 have not been changed in any way, except to be re sized and saved for the web. Click on a thumbnail to open a new window with the image and explanation in it.