Photography Induction

Today a group of us did the Photography induction. During the induction we were introduced to the vast amounts of equipment that the photography department had available to use and borrow. This included; digital and film SLRs; medium and large-format film cameras; medium-format, high resolution digital cameras; portable flash gear; and continuous lighting equipment. As well as this, there was a huge number of different lenses available for every situation, this would be particularly useful for shooting film and stop motion film. 

We were each given a Canon 1100D to try out and gain some experience with, and we were given a brief overview of the different functions of the camera and how to achieve what you want with certain settings. This included aspects to the camera such as, the cameras aperture, shutter speed and ISO. I was already familiar with these functions but the explanations given for the different functions were very easy to understand and gave me a better understanding of how the camera works internally. As well as this information, we were told how to format the memory card and change the sizes of the images we took in the settings menu. We were also told about different white balance and warmth of light that can be altered using the light functions such as, tungsten, white florescent, daylight and shade. 

White Fluorescent Light

Tungsten Light

After we were given the information we needed to operate the cameras with a good understanding we were given the task to take four photographs using what we learnt. One with a fast shutter speed, one with a slow shutter speed, and a photograph with a large aperture and a photograph with a small aperture. I had the idea to use the water fountain in order to freeze the water using a fast shutter speed and then take a photograph with a slow shutter speed of the same water fountain to see what kind of photographs could be produced.

Fast Shutter Speed

This was my first attempt at a photograph with a fast shutter speed, I turned the aperture to around f10 to allow a little more light in to compensate for the fast shutter speed. The focus was set to manual so I could play around with maneuvering the focus between the background and the foreground. In the end I liked seeing the remains of the water on the metallic surface so I made sure to keep them in focus and allow the strain of water in the foreground to go out of focus. 

Slow Shutter Speed

This photograph was taken with a slow shutter speed which allowed the water to move quite a distance whilst the cameras shutter was open, however I think I set the aperture a little to high because the photograph is quite bright and too much light was let in due to this. I do however like the effect created by the water hitting the metal surface as you can see some of the droplets bouncing, allowing the photograph to portray the sense of movement that was present when the photograph was taken. 

Low Aperture

Taken with a low aperture of around f5.6 this photograph consequently has a low depth of field, meaning objects very close are in focus where as objects only a short distance from the lens are out of focus. A mistake I made with this photograph is not turning the shutter speed up when lowering the aperture, this made it so the photograph came out very dark. It's not necessarily that the photograph looks 'bad' because of the level of light but for the purposes of demonstrating the depth of field it would have been more appropriate to have a more exposed.

High Aperture

In contrast to the previous photograph this was taken with a higher aperture of around f13. This not only exposed the photograph more due to the higher value but made it so the depth of field was much high, and an object has to be much further away before it appears out of focus. Shots like this were very dependent on working with others and they would have been much harder to achieve had it not been for the people I was working with and their efforts in order to create the photographs and set up the shots we wanted. 

After we'd experimented with different functions and settings we were given a demonstration of the professional lighting equipment available to us. We then set our cameras to RAW. Shooting in RAW gives you a much, better quality of photograph because it is uncompressed and is loss less. In other words is data directly from the cameras sensor. The drawback from shooting in RAW is that the size of files is huge and can be four to five times of that when you record files as JPEGs for example. 
We were told to shoot photographs of a plastic manikin, taking into consideration everything we'd learnt during the previous task. We were told to shoot it with both hard and soft light that was determined by the angle that the umbrella was held in relation to the light source. Depending on how the umbrella was angled also depended on how the shadow was cast on the manikin, and changed the way it looked in terms of form and shape. 

Looking at Shadow, Fluorescent

Looking at Shadow, Tungsten

The lighting here looks very natural, the light source in these photographs is coming from the left hand side, hence the shadow on the right side.

Overall, I learnt a huge amount during the induction about trivial things such as camera functions and the way a camera operates internally. I also learnt about lighting, professional equipment and a range of techniques to consider when setting up shots.