Posted March 8th, 2008 by Some Random Nerd

I think the most important thing about photography is the photographer. Being able to spot something worth pointing a camera at, knowing where to put the camera to get the best picture, and how to manipulate the environment to get the best picture has to be the most important thing. I firmly believe that a good photographer will be capable of getting a better picture with a disposable camera than a bad photographer is likely to get with any amount of kit. So I suppose that this log is all about me, and trying to improve myself to be a better photographer- taking the lessons I learnt, and putting them down so that I don't just forget them.

So, number zero— the one that goes without saying (so I'm not going to talk about it)— is me. Number one was lighting. Number two I think should probably be the camera.

I've read a few articles and had a few arguments about the relative merits of digital vs film, SLR versus point and shoot compact cameras and so on, so I'm not going to try to argue the relative merits of a digital SLR. (The one thing I know for certain is that there are people more passionate about the subject than I am.) What's good for me might not be good for you, and vice versa; I want a camera where I can use it as a tool— I want to be able to play with exposure levels, depth of focus, zoom, change lenses, play with apertures, and make pictures come out the way I want them to look. I want to be able to see what I've just taken and, if I'm not happy with it, try again with different settings to get the picture that I want. I want to put my pictures on a computer, play around with them, pull those extra details out of a RAW that are lost in the JPEG, put them on the internet, crop them, colourise them, destroy them and put them back together again. So I think it's clear that a digital SLR camera is very obviously what I want for the job, and that's what I've got. A Nikkon D50- very much an entry level camera, but as far as I can see, it does everything I need it to do, will print out at a reasonable size at a decent quality, and all in all, seems to fit the bill pretty well.

As I've already talked about, I'm sure that before long I'll be drooling over new zoom lenses and whatever other gadgets come along, but first of all I want to learn how to use what I've got. The first step of that is learning about how the camera works- I've pretty much got to grips with that now (thanks to three weeks of taking it around New Zealand on my honeymoon and Ken Rockwell's very helpful website), but I think the second step is the more interesting one- learning how I work, and what my own strengths and weaknesses are.

It should be particularly interesting as this is the first time I've started a hobby that's not been a solitary activity- the camera itself was a wedding present, and photography is a hobby that I've started with my new wife, so we should be learning about our own (not to mention each others') strengths and weaknesses together.

So far, my own main weakness seems to be taking a few photos, then taking a few more after playing around with white balance and ISO levels to get some crazy pictures, then forgetting to set them back to sane and sensible levels the next time I start snapping, so I end up with a bunch of fairly rubbish pictures.

But it's a lesson that's kind of fun to learn…