Photography for beginners

but I think starting with digital to learn the technical aspects makes sense.

I don’t disagree aslong as jist firing off a million shots with bo conscious efort to think isnt considered “photography” it doesn’t tech anything other than fire off a million shots and hope.

All the advice above is great but I’ll add shoot in Raw and learn post production such as Lightroom or similar as 99.9% of the best pictures will have had post production tweaks to them to take them from great to outstanding.

All aspects of photography are ultimately important – the general consensus is to learn exposure first.

it doesn’t tech anything other than fire off a million shots and hope.

I don’t disagree with either of these comments. Rather, I’m suggesting that you cannot learn everything all at once. You get a good shot by accident, you then go back and review what makes you think it’s good.

Shove it in full auto, squeeze the trigger, learn how to frame shots. There is no shame in this. Learn how to control your camera, what all the buttons do, what the HUD is telling you. Some people never get past this point, they’ll stare at the LCD screen rather than reading the same information through the viewfinder.

Then stick it in aperture priority, learn what the different settings do to your photos.

Then stick it in shutter speed priority, learn what the different settings do to your photos.

I’ve seen people advice beginners to start in full manual. That’s nuts, they’re going to get pissed off after an afternoon and shove the camera in a cupboard never to be seen again. Gotta walk before you can run. Gotta crawl before you can walk.

Got to love a photography thread. Honestly, just enjoy life. Stop faffing. F numbers, ISO, exposure meters, million different lenses, wake up before you went to bed… Not fun. Point, click, the end. Move on.

Other threads are available. “Stop faffing,” have you read any of the cycling ones?

There will be ‘faffing’ while you learn but once you understand the 3 elements of exposure (which are pretty simple) then just a case of modifying at the scene with a quick turn of a wheel (if using DSLR) which is hardly ‘faffing’.

As mentioned already, just try and stay away from the technical aspects of the cameras as people, typically men, get hung up on lens sharpness, ISO this and that when in reality (especially landscapes) what makes a good photo is the light and composition and not whether you can see the hairs on a spiders leg at 100% crop.

Shove it in full auto, squeeze the trigger, learn how to frame shots. There is no shame in this

Agree, i did say that very thing earlier.

Personally i learn much faster by “trying” to take a good photo though. Like making a concious effort to make the photo do something. Playing with depth of field, kneeling down to change perspective. Then reflect on how what i did affected the results good or bad. I just find it really hard to come back with 100shots and give enough of a shit to try and work out why one worked.

Fun games like “today i only will only use iso 100” “f8 day” “wide open day” i find quite useful to force a work around.

Still a shit photographer mind.

Bringing it back on track, what I did when I started out was buy a book or look at a website of good landscape photographer that I admired then go out and copy that photo. The photographer has already worked out the optimal time of year, whether it works best as a sunrise or sunset location and they very often put this in their book.

For me it was Colin Prior’s “Scotland the Wild Places” from 2001. I’d walked a lot of the mountains and was blown away by this book (still am).

If it works out well, then it gives you a boost and you start to understand why all the elements of the photo work well. You then take that knowledge and apply it to your own compositions.

This also allows you to develop a style in your photography. You might realise you prefer telephoto landscapes over wide angle (tip: telephotos are great for landscape, especially in the hills) or you might decide you like ultra simple compositions or abstract.

typically men, get hung up on lens sharpness, ISO

Haha so true. You forgot online battles about “dynamic range” and why Sony / Nikon / Canon are better. All men and usually terrible photographers. It honestly doesn’t matter.

Ninety nine percent of photography is what you put in the box and when you push the button, what you keep out of the frame is also as important as what you put in,  this is advice I learned early in my career from Reuters chief UK photographer and it served me well for thirty years shooting news and sport.

Modern cameras will help with exposure and focus etc, so first concentrate on learning to make pictures that please you, the technique can come a bit later, there are lots of books out there that will help.

Do not go down the film route to learn photography, having a screen that gives you feed back on what you’re doing and what results that’s giving you is an invaluable tool that will help enormously.

it doesn’t teach anything other than fire off a million shots and hope.

There is a gulf in thinking between that and the ability to take enough variations to learn what might work.

Finding what you think looks like a good photo composition – and setting up your tripod. Maybe take 5 photos bracketed 2 half stops either way of what the light meter suggests to see what works to see what really is best (or stacking them). Or shot with both a landscape and portrait orientation to work out what works better. Move back or down to include a focal point of interest in the foreground and see if that works better. Wait another 20 mins to see if the fading light gives a moodier image or too much detail is lost in the shadows. etc etc.

You might end up with 20 or 30 images of the same subject taken over 30 mins to an hour – with the intention of keeping just one (or none) after an evening with a good whisky on Lightroom. That might be your idea of ‘millions’ and consequential hell. For me it’s all part of the joy of it. And a very long way from going for a walk with a camera swinging round your neck pointing and shooting at everything as you go. It’s also why I never bother trying to mix photography with a trip into the landscape with others, especially my wife! Anything to puts external time pressure on doing it as I’d want to do it just ruins the experience totally.

It’s also why I never bother trying to mix photography with a trip into the landscape with others, especially my wife!

Best tip ever! It’s a solitary thing for me. I have a chuckle when I see 10 old men standing next to each other with tripods out all taking the same thing. That’s a nightmare for me.

What you’ve got there is a hobby like fishing or stamp collecting. It’s not really about photography, it’s about doing zen stuff by yourself.

Take lots of photos, in whichever way works best for you and you’ll get better at it. Like learning to play any instrument.

I started as a young teenager by spending my paper round money on a Truprint envelope to get that weeks roll developed and another roll back by return. I would say it took my many, many years to reach a  professional level, but that’s not necessary to get a great deal of enjoyment out of it  as a hobby.

What you’ve got there is a hobby like fishing or stamp collecting. It’s not really about photography, it’s about doing zen stuff by yourself.

You might be right. It’s also a hobby that I think meshes well with being into biking or epic kayaking etc. To my mind the best photography happens in the worst months for those pastimes. The long days and clear skys with lots of bright light of the summer work brilliantly for epic biking adventures but not so well for photography. A bit like the 30mins of exercise for 100 days of Christmas thread, I see my photography ‘hobby’ keeping me getting out when I might not otherwise bother. And the night with the whisky and the lightroom works well for long dark evenings.

And there’s nothing wrong with that!

Namechecked on an STW thread as a potential expert? That’s a first!

I do teach Photography but tend to bump heads a bit with other teachers as they approach it from the technical angle and I really don’t…

My advice would be similar to what a few folks have already suggested.

– Find a few photographers whose images you like and nick their ideas. You’re not copying, more using their work as a jumping off point. Your own style(s) will soon emerge.

– Forget about kit and settings (just find a camera you don’t mind carrying around and that you enjoy using, even if it’s your phone) – 90% of photography happens using just your eyes and your brain – look around you and practice ‘seeing’ the image before you even pick a camera up. Use a cardboard viewfinder or your fingers if it helps, but you’ll soon develop the mental ability to frame stuff just by looking.

– If you like knowing the ‘why’ of things, by all means start to read around exposure, depth of field, colour theory, composition, etc. BUT this is in no way necessary to create decent images. Nothing wrong with sticking to automagic settings until you understand enough to move away from them.

– Digital and film are both photography but they are wildly different beasts. Unless you have a real hankering for film (and the patience and resources to use it), stick to digital to start with.

– Don’t worry about raw vs .jpg. Shoot whichever you find easiest to work with. FWIW I very rarely shoot in raw (but then I’m admittedly a bit of an edge case in that I quite like digital artifacts).

– Spend time learning your processing/editing tool of choice. Processing/editing is as much a part of photography as pointing the camera at something. Just like with the taking of the actual photograph in the first place, go in with an idea about what you want the outcome to look like rather than just loading the image up and playing (although sometimes there is a place for this too). Avoid presets unless you built them yourself for whatever specific use case.

– If you’re not enjoying it, stop doing it and find another way.

– Don’t worry about what others say (or don’t) about your photography. Unless you need to make money from it, none of that matters.

@Mounty_73 I’m no photography god (mainly because I follow that last piece of my own advice), but by all means message me if you have any specific questions.

There is a gulf in thinking between that and the ability to take enough variations to learn what might work.

Um thats what i have been saying! Go oit and make conscious decisions and see what happens. Rather than go out and fire off hundreds with no real thought, hope you get a good shot then wprk out why it was a good shot and realise the next time that the conditions are different.

It will work but it will take ages becasue you are waiting for accidental success and working backwards. 25bracketed photos will teach you loads. Its also worth noting what you are doing or trying to do and generally what led you to wanting to take a particular picture. Because thats the bit that improves your “whats a good photo”

Nobody has mentioned the fundamentals yet which are learning to look and the desire to capture or create images that communicate how you feel about what you see in front of you.
Start shooting and fail to get the results you wished for will make the understanding of fstop/shutter etc something that needs mastering to the point there is no longer a barrier to realising the images you wished to make.

These essentials are however redundant if it’s cats and sunsets that float your boat, mobile phone cameras do this very well.

Whether I’m  any good at photography is a question i can’t answer.

But i did get better. Here are my tips

Try and find a forum for sharing a critiquing photos. I learnt so much from honest feed back. I also learnt loads deciding what i thought of other peoples photos.

Set up some projects. Say made an annual photo book. I’ve also done calendars. Its a huge motivation to take photos. I’m hoping to upload this years book tonight

learn to post process

Don’t expect to great photos very often

One other thing to remember….

Take photos for yourself, not likes – if you have a penchant for posting on social media that is

What you might see as a brilliant capture (and it may well be) may not always be seen that way by others. Then the next dude posting a poorly composed, over saturated picture with excessive HDR gets 100’s of likes. The majority of viewers without a clue will be attracted to the one that burns their eyes without necessarily seeing the intricacies of a really visually artistic or well taken shot. If it pleases you and you are going to still look at it a decade later, that’s what matters

This was the first photo I took (and I have posted it before with a similar comment) that actually made me think about photography. Shot on an old Olympus Trip compact and was my first go at editing a photo too. I obviously didn’t compose it that well when taking it looking at the subsequent crop and there’s really nothing outstanding about it at all, but….

It’s the photo that started my journey and the fact that I’ll still dig it out 13 or so years later means that it’s special to me

– Don’t worry about raw vs .jpg. Shoot whichever you find easiest to work with. FWIW I very rarely shoot in raw (but then I’m admittedly a bit of an edge case in that I quite like digital artifacts).

I don’t know if it’s commonplace but “both” is an option on my camera.

I shoot in JPG. The argument goes that if you shoot RAW then when you get better you can revisit old images. Personally I shoot JPG because a) I’m crap at post-processing and b) I cannot be ringed to spend hours learning how to get better. If I shoot something I particularly like then I might spend a couple of minutes with cropping or sliders but, meh, what comes out the camera comes out of the camera.

But as you say, I’m probably in a minority here also.

I prefer RAW, because I actual enjoy the Lightroom experience.

What I enjoy most about RAW is the mockery it makes of the #nofilterrequired moniker/brag….that photo you took on your phone – you might not have got busy with the filters, but your phone sure as hell did!

Could I have taken it on a phone – absolutely not

…probably could’ve got pretty damn close nowadays, TBH

OP, for your needs, you need to get a Fujifilm GFX100. Nothing else will do.

(Except an iPhone, of course).

I don’t know if it’s commonplace but “both” is an option on my camera.

I generally shoot raw only on my camera as I’m always going to edit in LR

Raw + jpeg also an option on my phone though

What I have noticed with my phone, even if I’m not fussed about shoving the raw file through LR Mobile, the associated jpeg it creates comes with much less processing applied by the phone than if I were to shoot in jpeg only

OP, for your needs, you need to get a Fujifilm GFX100. Nothing else will do.

Ha! And big pockets, both types.

I prefer the GFX50s because of its larger photosites – more headroom to push and pull in post processing. If only it was the size of my phone.