OT: Photography

#1

Anyone into photography here?

I’ve always been “into” taking pictures but have never learned real photography basics. I should have taken that photography class in high school, but I was too busy with newspaper classes.

I’ve had a really basic digital camera for 4 years now. It takes decent pics but is in no way fancy and I can’t learn any photographic skills from it. I’ve been planning on buying a better digital camera in the future…but that won’t be happening for a longgg time since I am oh so broke.

So imagine my SHOCK and SUPRISE when my dad sent me an email saying he had this “idea”. He is sending me all of his non-digital camera equipment. Two camera bodies - the Pentax k-1000 and the Pentax Super Program. He is including all the lenses and filters and cable release stuff he has for them. He told me they would be great cameras to learn on and that if I wanted to I could trade them in for digital. But there is NO WAY I would ever do that. This is like a family keepsake! My dad has been into photography ever sice I can remember and was always hauling around the camera everywhere we went. He’s captured some great pics!

This stuff is coming in the mail tomorrow!! Now I just need to learn about shutter speeds and f-stops and all that good stuff. It’ll be fun even though it’s like a whole nother language!

I really need to go to the library or used bookstore and check out some photography books. I’ve been trying to find some websites too that goes over the basics.

Anyone else a photo nut like me?

#2

OMG what a sweet gift!!! I know nothing of photography, but I just had to comment on that…

#3

Oh I agree with KK: what a WONDERFUL gift!!! And so thoughtfull too :slight_smile:
I totally understand you’d never want to trade this stuff in for a digital camera; besides there is something about “old fashioned” pictures I think, but maybe that’s just me :slight_smile:

I hope you’ll have a great time in learning and finding out more about photography and well, maybe your dad can give you some tips and tricks to start with?

/Karen.

#4

There are certainly some great books out there… when I decided to get into digital photography a couple of months back, I started exploring the web and crawling through bookstores. One GREAT resourse I found was the Borders Bargin section… I picked up a few $30-50 large print, full color beautiful books for under $10. Score!

There’s another great book I’d reccomend for post processing digitally called The Complete Guide to Digital Photography by Mark Towse. It’s a conversationally written book that’s got great general photography advice and on how to do Photoshop retouching on digital photos (and includes sections on how to scan pictures so it will work nicely for you too if you want to invest in a scanner, which are pretty cheap). The other nice thing about it is the book comes with a disk that has a trial version of Photoshop 6 on it, as well as a bunch of practice pictures that the book uses to tell you how to do various techniques step by step, including fixing brightness, contrast, editing out unwanted features, vingettes, cutting things out of one pic to paste into another believably, etc. Very cool.

Other than that, I just started to type things like “f-stop” into google and surfed around. Lots of good stuff out there for digital photos, must be for regular print as well :slight_smile:

#5

i just upgraded from a Canon Powershot G1 to a Powershot Pro 1. Of course it was really windy when I wanted to play with my new toy. Here’s one that turned out ok from my neglected back yard.

#6

If you like to look at other pics and learn some about photography check out

http://www.megapixelworld.com

#7

Thanks…one of my favorite digital websites is www.dpreview.com

All the camera stuff came today!! I’m soooo excited. I’m going to delve into the manuals now for awhile. My dad told me to enjoy the manual cameras while I still have good eyesight…lol.

This is definately the best gift! He has been giving me some tips and tricks too. He says its easy once you know the basics.

#8

I love Photography. I took a photo class in high school. F-stops and shutter speeds sound fimiliar but I can’t explain them now. Maybe I’ll take a book out of the library,too. I love taking the pictures but i’m not really into developing my own. I don’t think my teacher thaught us right or maybe it was just me. Mine always came out wrong. Backwards and such. I have a digital camera. Here is the best picture(imho) I took last summer. Have fun taking pictures! :thumbsup:

#9

perced, that photo is great…I have one just like it too!

brookenic- that photo is really nice.

My favorite place to take pictures is the nearby Elk Park and the Butterfly House. Got some great ones there from last summer. :thumbsup: