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Welcome to the D-PAD photography and videography megathread for anything and everything photo and video (for now) related.
Come to ask questions, learn, humblebrag and more about this topic.
For those thinking "well, I don't have a Canon EOS R5, or professional lenses", photography doesn't start with the equipment, but starts with you. A well framed and thought out photo on an outdated iPhone or Galaxy S phone can be far more beautiful and impactful than a poorly thought out and taken photo from professional equipment.
Getting Started
It's not hard to get started - most professionals will tell you, the best camera is the one you will use. Virtually all of us have phones on us all the time, and this will likely be your most used camera. As Casey Neistat mentioned, content is king, and photography is no different.
Composition
While a lot of photography is how to best manipulate light, many would argue that composition is king. While focus, shutter speed, exposure, depth of field can greatly impact image quality, treat these as tools to enhance framing and composition. In that regards, even before you plunk money down for a dedicated camera, start with your phone. Don't just snap a few pictures - pause, take a deep breath, and savor the moment. Think what you're trying to capture, what your focal topic is. These can include, but are not limited to:
- A person or persons
- Landscape highlights or grandeur of the location
- Mood of the entire location
- Emotions
- etc
Try to remember what you were trying to capture - in some cases you may not have perfect framing or composition when reviewing. It's not cheating if you need to or want to make artistic changes afterwards - after all, YOU are the story teller.
Here's an example of what my thought process was from a recent Death Valley trip:
I originally wanted to capture the desolate nature of Death Valley and the despair one can feel. This felt too modern with the colors indicative of modern comforts
I tried desaturating with a filter in-phone to give it a little more of a rustic feel for a time where one faced the real dangers of getting stranded with no-one around
The original framing felt too much like the road was the subject and didn't quite capture what I envisioned. I was trying to capture the general atmosphere of the environment and desperation one might have felt and reframed in Lightroom to put more emphasis on the entire environment
Not perfect by any means, but hopefully this snippet illustrates that it's not about the camera, but what you want to convey and how YOU want to convey it - there is no "right or wrong". If you want input and constructive criticism, don't hesitate to post and ask. And more importantly, don't take criticism personally. Photography (and videography) is subjective. What you may like, others may not and vice versa.
Camera Settings
While some may espouse that lighting is the next important thing after framing and composition, I would argue that the starting photographer shouldn't worry about introducing lighting (ie. using flashes and reflectors to paint with light), but rather work with what is naturally available. Drawing attention to the correct subjects, conveying a sense of speed or urgency, etc are all equally, if not more important than artificially introducing lighting. Even phone cameras tend to have advanced modes that allow you to manipulate a lot of parameters - if you can master these on your phone, aside from learning new layouts, you will be well on your way to mastering any camera that gets thrown at you. The key trifecta of parameters imho are aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, which are all inter-related
- Shutter speed - determines how much motion (blur) or lack thereof you will capture, but increasing this increases light captured or exposure, and decreasing this decreases exposure. Too much light and you end up with a pure white photo. Not enough light and you end up with a pure black photo
- Aperture - determines how close or far the objects in front/behind your subject are in focus, aka depth of field (in focus). The larger the aperture, the distance of focus decreases and you get a beautiful blur effect, also known as bokeh. For example, if the aperture is super wide, you may focus on someone's eye, but their ears behind the eyes and nose in front of the eye may be out of focus. On the flip side, if you shrink the aperture, you may get everything in focus, but may also lose overall sharpness of image. Increasing aperture size (decreasing f-stop number) will result in more exposure, decreasing will result in less exposure.
- ISO - determines how sensitive the camera sensor is. The lower the ISO, the less noise you will get and the more buttery smooth the image will look, but lower sensitivity means you need to somehow send more light to the sensor. Bump up the iso and you will get some graininess and splotches of red, green, and blue, but you are also increasing the ability to see your photo after pressing the shutter button.
As you increase aperture size, you will need to lower shutter speed or ISO value. Similarly, if you decrease ISO value, you may need to increase aperture size or shutter speed (or both). Camera settings are an interplay of these 3 settings to get the optimum look. In some cases, for example, you may want more grain to provide a grittier feel or a rustic feel to the photo - just because you get blur, more noise, or less focus isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you want to indicate speed, blur is a good thing. If you want to bring attention to a specific subject, loss of focus on foreground and background is a good thing. You will need to play around with settings for what you feel is appropriate for you to tell your story.
Equipment
Going to repeat myself - you can get started with phone cameras. The fidelity, details, etc will be lost or reduced with a phone camera versus a dedicated tool, but with consumption of photos (and other media) waay up on mobile devices, unless you're talking to a pixel peeper, you will be fine. That said, there are people that enjoy the full process of setting up a camera, zooming in/out to get that "right" framing, messing around with white balance, aperture, ISO, etc to get that perfect exposure. The image quality can be excellent with this, but I always treat image quality as more of an enhancement to the story. This is not a hard and fast rule, but generally will hold. The exceptions might be super low light, or super far subjects that fast and megazoom lenses will enable taking photos of.
Phone Cameras
Start with your damn phone! ... no, I'm not kidding! Here's a screenshot of my phone camera:
A lot of phone cameras will have granular settings under Advanced, Pro, or Enthusiast modes - not all mind you, but in recent years, this has become more and more commonplace, particularly with flagship phones. Play around with the settings and you'll be able to see changes in color balance, focus, etc in near real time. It's a fantastic way to learn without investing much money.
Point & Shoot Cameras
This is sort of the half-way point between phone cameras and exchangeable lens systems. There are some good options out there for sure. anyone able to
DSLR, Mirrorless, and Brands
There will be a lot of hot debate on this one. First and foremost, you are generally buying into a manufacturer's system and lens ecosystem. The big 3 are Canon, Nikon, and Sony. My opinion? Unless you are a pixel peeper or need to flex your e-peen, you will be happy with any one of them. This is the area where you can get specialized lenses for low light, specialized lenses for telephoto zoom, architectural adjustment, etc. The main lens trifecta most will consider will be: 17-35mm, 24-70mm, and 70-200mm. Apply a crop factor correction if you are not using a full frame camera. F4 throughout the range will work just fine, but if you're doing a lot of indoor, you may want to splurge for F2.8.
So, I used to be a diehard DSLR fanboy, but have to say that in 2021, the only advantage DSLR will get you is longer battery life. Virtually all benefits DSLR used to have over mirrorless are more or less gone now. That said, there is one critical benefit to mirrorless that make them in general a better choice, and this is the prime reason I think I am done with DSLRs:
Back-focus / front-focusing issues. DSLRs have an autofocus and image sensor, whereas mirrorless only have an image sensor. In a DSLR, if the light path from lens to autofocus sensor is off from the image sensor, you may get photos using autofocus that are focused in front or behind what you were focusing on. This can be adjusted on (some) DSLRs with microadjustments, but it is a pain in the ass. Because mirrorless camera's image sensor is where focusing also occurs, this problem is all but eliminated.
If you get a tight tolerance DSLR out of the box, it's not an issue, but I've had this issue on 2 of the 3 DSLRs I've owned. Aside from that, I'm pretty happy with one or the other.
Canon makes the best zoom lens with the 28-70mm F2.0L that has yet to be touched by any manufacturer. Fight me.
Pros use Canon, pros use Nikon, pros use Sony. If it's good enough for them, it'll likely be good enough for you. Again, if you're a pixel peeper or brag about specs, can't really help you. That said, if you are shooting in the extremes (such as night photography, low light conditions, rapid movement), you'll want to see how the camera handles those situations from a noise, rolling shutter perspective etc.
Web Resources
Some personal favorites include, but are not limited to the following:
General Information
- Cambridge in Colour - They spelled "color" wrong, but not going to ding them much for that. Really great tutorials and will explain everything better than I could dream to explain. This is the first site I send any friends that start photography to, that ping me
- Fred Miranda - Fantastic photography forum covering anything and everything related to the art of photography, including technique, equipment, providing showcasing opportunities and classifieds.
- DPReview - One of the oldest and a central location for digital camera equipment, as well as a super helpful (if not poorly threaded) forums
- PeterMcKinnon - Standout YouTuber that covers anything related to photography up to and including the business aspect for pros. Covers videography as well.
- Google Photos - If you have a Google account, you already have free space. It's possible to save-to and host images from here. I forget how much space is free, but an additional 100GB is $2/mo
- Flickr - Up to 1000 photos free. $6/mo or $60/year for unlimited storage, analytics, and partner discounts. Allows users to share detailed photo exif data and such as well
- imgur - picture hosting site, but gets the job done. If you want to upload, post on reddit, and try to build a following, this works and is largely free. More for memes and such, but should also work for this forum
There are many many many more topics that could be covered here, and for the starting person, that may be overwhelming (if the above already isn't). The important thing is to listen to your heard, explore, savor the moment, and envision what the ideal photo will look like for you, then snap away. I hope everyone (beginner, amateur, pro and alike) introduce yourselves and share your works, provide constructive criticism, and join in on the discussion while you're taking a break from Gaming
On that note, I'll leave a few of my favorite photos over the years below - looking forward to interacting with every single one of you!
Safari in Africa. The tired, yet soft expression this elephant had while being surrounded by jeep.
Newly opened Vegas show allowed for photography. Was trying to capture the mysteriousness of silhouetted motion
One of my personal all-time favorites. In the thick savannah grasses, seeing a lioness getting ready to pounce on a completely unassuming group of zebras, came with it a sense of palatable tension and hope I was able to capture this.
