(light piano music)
- Welcome to Digital Photography.
This class is designed for the beginning,
intermediate or even advanced photographer
who's interested in exploring camera arts
at Columbia College.
In this video I'm going to go over
some of the basics of camera handling
and what your requirements are for this class.
This course does require a digital single-lens reflex camera
or a DSLR such as this.
It can be any brand,
there's a lot on the market.
I happen to be holding a Nikon right now.
When you're looking for a camera,
you may already have one or you're going to borrow one,
you may want to take a camera shop up on renting a camera
to try out a few different ones
if you have a local camera shop in mind.
If you do buy one from a store some things to look for
are getting a good camera bag to go with your camera.
You want a bag that's roomy enough
to hold your lenses and your camera
and importantly you want to be able to hold your manual
and bring that with you
while you're learning digital photography.
Your camera manual
is a really important guide for you this course.
It's going to go over how you control your settings
and learn basic camera functions
while you're doing the assignments.
Additionally,
you want to get a spare SD card to store your images.
With digital photography
your SD card is where your pictures are stored
and I suggest getting a high-quality SD card.
Additionally,
you want to get a tripod,
a tripod is required.
And you want to have a ...
This is a lens hood,
a lens hood is nice.
Some of your camera kits come with a lens hood
but it's not required.
I find it really helpful
when I'm photographing in situations that have varied light,
like coastal areas.
I may not be in the right direction of the sun
and lens hood served a purpose.
You always want to have a lens cap on hand.
And importantly,
the other piece is that you want to have a filter,
a UV filter.
A UV filter is a clear filter
that protects the optics of your lens.
I never take this off my camera,
but you want to keep yours on just like me.
(laughs)
You want to keep your filter on,
it protects your camera from dust
and in the case of an accident where your camera tips over
what's gonna get dented is your filter not your lens,
and believe me that's happened a lot.
Another nice thing would be a backup battery,
camera batteries are very helpful.
The assignments that you're gonna work on this term
range from photographing objects,
places,
people,
setting up a narrative,
telling a story and capturing emotion.
Make sure that you get in the habit
of taking multiple takes on each shot.
You want to practice taking a lot
so that you can edit your images.
And what I mean by that is take a large pool of images,
and then select the one that best fits the criteria
for the assignment.
The focus of this class
isn't in image editing using Photoshop or adding filters,
instead the focus
is on making minor adjustments to color balance,
to converting images to black and white
or making slight adjustments to color.
I hope you have a great class.