I recently mentioned in an early post that I got a new Digital SLR Camera for my birthday back in March. I havn't really had a chance to take a lot of photos with it as I haven't been anywhere or do much in the past few months as I have been so busy with other things. It is a CANON EOS 450D, it is fantastic, the quality is so much better and I was so much happier with this than my old Digital camera. That was until I went to Convention and was trying to use it in the Main Theatre, I ended up taking over 550 pictures, but I was really disappointed with how they turned out when I downloaded them at home, probably under half were any good!
I really struggled with trying to figure out which settings it should have been on.
When I got my camera, I did look into going and doing a Basic Photography Course with either a Camera shop or photographer, but then I was unsure about attending a course as I didn’t know all the proper lingo and thought I wouldn’t understand what they were talking about, and I didn't want to look like a idiot, so I thought I’d wait.
At the end of this week, Anthony and I are off to Singapore. We are going on a 7 day cruise with the Virgo Star, which cruises up and down the Malacca Straight, we are going for 9 days in total and each day we have the option to do different day trips to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Malacca. It still hasn’t sunk in yet, but as I start to pack and get organised I think things might change!
So with my new camera in mind I’ve been thinking of all the thousands of photos we are going to be taking, and this scared me a little as I was thinking of my bad experience I had at Convention!! I would be really disappointed if I ended up with crappy photos from our cruise. Anyway, during the week I received my monthly newsletter from my local Scrapbooking Shop (Daisy Chain), and there marked for Saturday 16th May was an Introduction to Digital Photography (ohh was this a sign!!) So I rang and spoke to Jenny (the lady who was running this) as my concerns were that it was for general point and shoot Digital Cameras rather than SLR’s, but as I was talking to Jenny, she told me that she had the same camera as mine, and that I would probably benefit from it also. So I decided I would go along.
I had a fantastic day, I learnt so much that I never knew, even general things about digital cameras. There were only 5 of us in the class (all ladies) and Jenny explained and showed us different settings that were on both styles of cameras, I didn’t even know these settings existed on my old point and shoot camera!! Most of us who attended actually had SLR’s which was really good.
We learnt about ISO, Resolutions, White Balance, Aperture and Shutter Speed (this still scares me, but I have a better understanding what it actually means), I had no idea what some of these meant or let alone what they actually did! We learnt how to improve your photographs, plus so much more. (Gee, I almost sound like I know what I'm talking about!!)
I would stronly recommend taking a class to anyone, new or old to using Digital Camera’s! We covered so much, my head was spinning with details when I got home. Anthony wanted to see if I actually learned anything so he suggested that we head down to the beach and take some photos! So off we went, camera in hand (and my notes)
Above are some photos which I took (using my new found information), usually I would have left the settings on auto or landscape!!
I can tell the difference already, hopefully I can remember all this and come back with thousands of GREAT photos of our trip!
Sorry it’s such a long post, but I had so much to say as I learnt so much, and a huge THANK YOU to Jenny.
Thanks for reading…Jules
