Advice for a New DSLR owner

[zenador]

Off topic but you are owned by a parrotlet, too! I have two little bundles of energy that rule my home.

Lol, nice. Jake is fun, about a year old, and an attention seeker if there ever was one. He makes a great subject for photos. He screams in his cage, loves jewelery (takes my ring) and will occasionally preen me and my girlfriend. We have 2 cats too, and if I can catch them play-fighting, they would make fun action shots. Fritz, the older one hates, it when Jake screams for attention, so he talks back to the bird. Aries (youger one) figured out how to sit right beside the cage and plays with Jake.

Back to the topic, has anyone here taken the DSLR class from Henry's? Someone I work with said it was a decent class, and it's supposedly based around the Rebel cameras. Or, in your collective experience, is it better (or more enjoyable) to learn on one's own?

Thanks,

Z

[Mad Aussie]

I think learning with others has the advantage of being able to see things from others perspectives as well as getting feedback. Learning alone has the advantage of less distractions.

You might find with the resources you already have that a bit of practice and plenty of time spent here at ph.ca will do wonders

[Yisehaq]

I got my camera on Thursday night from my wonderful girlfriend as a birthday present.

I envy you man.

I suggest understanding exposure by Bryan Peterson is an excellent read.

[zenador]

So after the last few days taking pictures, I found something frustrating. The LCD on the camera. I find that in different lighting, reviewing photos can be a pain. Better than film where you don't know till they are developed, but still. I find myself adjusting the shutter speed or apareture till I get a "desired" result on the screen. When I get them on my PC, what looked good on the camera doesn't necessarily look good on the PC. Some that looked washed out on the camera look just fine on the PC.

I have 2 laptops that I can port around with me and tether my camera to them. One is a tablet, so I can have it just like a larger screen for reviewing. I also have a small palm-top laptop (Dell X1) that's tiny and way more portable. Should I bother? I'm just looking for more consistant results.

Zen

[Mad Aussie]

Adjust your LCD for brightness to compensate AND look for information on how to read the histogram properly. Marko has a podcast on that I think.

If in doubt then shoot slightly underexposed because that retains more information in the file, thereby keeping the colour and details whereas over exposure loses that more quickly. In this way you can use PS to save the shot easily.