Photography: Digital Cameras & Properties of Light

This lesson is part of the series: Digital Photography - Crafting Digital Images

In this program you will learn about how to take pictures using the digital camera. More specifically you will learn about the process of digital photography (digital capture, image crafting, and then digital manipulation), the mechanisms and inner workings of a digital camera, and the properties of light.

Today digital cameras come in all shapes and sizes and with a large range of price tags. These range from point and shoot to amateur to professional/studio/SLR cameras. All digital cameras operate on the very same basic principles as the earliest pinhole cameras, though. This operation rests on the coordination and manipulation of the lens, CCD, F-stop and shutter speeds. You will learn what each of these are and how/why they work. There are four basic image viewing systems used in modern digital cameras: the true optical viewfinder, the electric optical viewfinder, the camera viewfinder, and the LCD (liquid crystal display). Digital cameras also allow the photographer to select a specific photo resolution, and Brian will walk through what levels of resolution are appropriate for different applications.

After a throrough description of the digital camera and how it works, Brian will turn his focus to the properties of light: direction, form, contrast, and color. When directional light strikes an object, it defines the object's shape via the highlight, lit area and shadow. Form describes the nature of the light source and how its relative size and distance from the subject affects that subject. Contrast can either refer to lighting contrast or to local/subject contrast, and it often needs to be either used or controlled. All of these, in addition to color, are covered and explained thoroughly in this lesson.

As the price for digital cameras goes down, the number of new professional photographers goes up. To help you stand out amongst the increasing numbers, Brian Ratty has produced a video series on the fundamentals of digital photography. Most photographers know how to take a picture but learning how to craft these pictures is an essential step to producing images that are timeless and treasured.

This lesson is a excerpted from the DVD, Digital Photography: Crafting Images, which is a great resource for those who want to learn how to craft pictures and produce images that last a lifetime. It is the first lesson cut from the DVD and includes chapters 1, 2 & 3, the DVD's Introduction, The Camera & Properties of Light.

MORE PHOTOGRAHY INFORMATION: www.Photo-Seminars.com
MORE INFORMATION ON AUTHOR: www.DutchClarke.com

Brian Ratty, internationally known photographer, educator and founder of a multi-million-dollar communications company, hosts and writes many instructional DVDs, videos and audio programs on photography. Over the past twenty five years, he and his staff of writers and photographers have completed thousands of professional assignments around the world. Mr. Ratty is a graduate of Brooks Institute of Photography and holds an honorary Master of Science degree.

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