Skip to main content

Photo Basics

Lesson 2 from: Sony A9 Fast Start

John Greengo

Photo Basics

Lesson 2 from: Sony A9 Fast Start

John Greengo

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

2. Photo Basics

Lesson Info

Photo Basics

Alright, this next section is called photo basics and it's probably, you're probably well beyond what this is if you're seriously into the A-Nine. But I do wanna cover some of the basics for people who are jumping fast, very far forward, and they just need to cover some of those basics on what this camera is and how it compares in the world of photography. So, this is a mirrorless camera. We have interchangeable lenses that we can put on this camera. And, in each of the lenses is an aperture unit which is one of our three different ways of controlling the light that we're gathering. So, the apertures have different f/stops that we can set in the camera. And so, if we're going from 5.6 to f/4, we're opening up the aperture. If we're going from 5.6 to f/8, we're stopping down the aperture. It's letting in half as much light or twice as much light, depending on which direction we go. So, not only does the aperture control the amount of light coming in the camera, it also controls your dep...

th of field. Yes, there's one area where you're gonna focus but focus extends in front and behind that area and the smaller your aperture, the greater your depth of field. And so, we're choosing apertures for two different reasons. One, for how much light we need to gather. And two, for how much depth of field we want in photographs. Sometimes we want a lot of depth of field, and sometimes we want very shallow depth of field. Next, as light comes into the camera, it goes straight to the image sensor and that information is sent back to the LCD and the better of the mirrorless cameras, like this one, will have an electronic view finder so that you can see what the camera is looking at under bright sunlight. The EVF is much better under bright sunlight than the LCD on the back of the camera. Now, at the sensor level, it's kind of interesting what's going on because light's coming straight in so that you can see what's going on as you compose your image. And this camera has a mechanical shutter unit in it. And in order to take a picture, the mechanical shutter needs to close, the sensor is then prepped for shooting, and then it turns on. And then, the second unit comes in and blocks the light off again. But then it needs to reopen again so that you can see and compose the next shot. And this camera will do it very, very quickly. Now this camera also has an electronic shutter. We'll talk more about that when we get into the details of the camera. Now the shutter speeds on this camera can go all the way up to 32 thousandth of a second. That is an electronic shutter speed. The fastest mechanical shutter speed is an eight thousandth of a second. And so, we're gonna use those to stop motion or to show motion, depending on what we're trying to do in any particular photograph. So that's what's going on at the sensor level inside your mirrorless camera. One of the most important factors on any camera, especially today, is the size of the sensor. The larger the sensor, the more light it can gather and generally the better job it does in gathering that light and creating an image. This uses the largest of the common photography sizes, what is known as a full-frame sensor. And when we say full-frame, it's really based off of 35mm film. It's the same size as that. And so, this is commonly referred to as a full frame sensor that has a crop factor of 1.0. There's a number of other cameras. There's a lot of Sony's that use an APS-C, crop factor of 1.5. And so if you wanna know more about cameras and general photography as I said before, the two classes that I have that I think you might be interested in you might want to go check out is The Photography Starter Kit for Beginners and the Fundamentals of Photography, depending on if you just want a little bit of help or you really wanna dig in and learn all the details with the Fundamentals class.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Sony A9 Recommended Settings

Ratings and Reviews

~user-e143a3
 

I've taken lots of John's classes as my photography journey has unfolded. Like all good teachers, John has a fantastic ability to take concepts which are complex and could be overwhelming, and making them accessible and much simpler. I'm lucky enough to own this amazing camera, I'm sure I'll get even more enjoyment from using it after taking this class - John has done so much of the hard work of learning away, now I feel like I can just start enjoying it!

Jeferz
 

Great information as always, John's approach is amazing, well paced and very informative. I own so many of his amazing tutorials, I feel like he's part of my family - but a lot more knowledgeable 😏

Alexander Zlatev
 

Thank you Great Work

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES