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Photography Basics
LVS
Instructor: Al Mierau
May, 2009
R. Joanne Johnson

Week 1

Camera

My camera is an Olympus C8080WZ which I have owned since 2005. In all those years, I have not progressed much further than the Auto setting. At times, I have ventured into other settings only to discover that it was not a good setting for the the next session of shooting pictures and so ended up with photos that were not so good!

Other times I have tried changing settings to try to capture something different and special, such as:

• Low light, change ISO
• Macro: Auto, Super, Manual
• Blown-out highlights/darkened beyond recognition shadows by changing the metering

Sometimes I just got lucky and got a great shot! But, when I tried to repeat the success, it wouldn't happen and I would be left wondering what I knew that I didn't seem to know now.

Until I learn about all the possibilities in the camera that I have now, I will not be getting a new one. I don't even know what an f stop really is. I know how it is explained but why is it called an f-stop???

I don't own any lenses, except for a polarizing lens which I have kept on the camera to protect its lens.

I do shoot RAW when I have time to just take photos for the fun of it. I have a Kingston Ultimate 4 GB 266X Compact Flash memory card which is fairly fast...write speed of 40 mb per second. But RAW files still take a long time to record.

I want so much to create beautiful photos! Sometimes I do, mostly I don't.

The Photos for Week 1

I have gathered photos that I have taken over time, most of them in recent months except for the photo of Lauren.

• The surf photos are from Beavertail Lighthouse in Jamestown, Rhode Island. I began to listen to the surf to try to coordinate the pressing of the button to capture a breaking wave
• The brown field, taken in early March, has the Newport Bridge as background
• Photos 4 through 8 were taken at Roger Williams Park, Providence, RI in mid April
• The last 2 photos are of the campus at Drew University, Madison, NJ, where my granddaughter will attend in the fall