Knowing What To Focus On - Lesson 20 Phone to Camera Course
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Taking photos with your phone, most of your composition would be in focus. This is because the lens on your phone is a wide angle and the sensor is very small. With your camera you can vary the focal length and the sensor is larger than the one in your phone. This means that sometimes some of your composition will be out of focus. This makes the choice of where you focus more important when using your camera.
You’ll usually want the main subject of your photo to be in focus. And, if your main subject has eyes, focus on them. Whether you’re photographing a person, a pet, a statue, or anything else with eyes, it’s important to make sure they are in sharp focus.
You learned about how to manage where your camera focuses back in lessons 7 and 8. Where you choose to focus has more to do with the type of photo you’re taking and how you are framing your subject.
You must train your eye to see and your mind to think critically about what’s in your composition. What are you seeing within the edges of your frame? What part of what you see is most important to the photograph you want to take?
The answer to that question is the answer to what your need to focus on.
As you progress and become more familiar with your camera, you will want to experiment with what’s known as a shallow depth of field. The DOF refers to the amount of the photo which is acceptably in sharp focus. In lesson 26 I will teach you more about this.
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Making the switch from taking photos with your phone to using a camera requires some changes. Phone cameras make it easy to take snapshot images. To use a camera well, you need to control it and understand how to take great photos. Using a camera is so much more fun and the quality of your photos will improve dramatically ... once you know what you're doing.
This course contains 30 lessons and practical exercises designed to get you started using your camera. I focus on the differences you can expect between using your phone and your camera to take photos. No matter what camera you use, taking photos happens the same way. Light enters the camera (or phone camera) through a lens. The right amount of light must enter to record a well-exposed photograph with the camera's sensor. With your phone, this process is fully automated and generally produces bland, uncreative results.
Using your camera you can control the light, timing, focus, composition, and more. With this course, I'll teach you all about how to enjoy doing this. I've been taking photos since I was a teenager, most of my working career I've been a professional photographer. I also have many years of experience teaching new and experienced photographers about their cameras and the craft of photography. You'll see how I work when I'm demonstrating the practical exercises that accompany every lesson.
Each exercise has a .pdf document to help guide you through what to do to complete it. I designed this course so you can complete it easily in one month and change your photography experience in just a short amount of time. Each lesson is short and concentrates on a single topic. There's a clearly explained practical exercise with each lesson. Take as long or as little time as you like to complete the exercise and you're sure to experience growth and development in your photography. You'll see the results in the photos you're taking. You'll easily retain what you learn and put it into practice every time you use your camera.