I would like to study photography! Is it hard?

To take pictures is very easy point and shoot
To learn to frame a good shot takes pratice – weeks to years

If you wish to learn darkroom and enlarging – give yourself a
year or 2 to get good at Black And White, longer for color.

Digital cameras make learning much easier and less expensive – just delete what you do not like.

Film will cost after a while, but is a little more creative.

sorry for the open ended question, but sometimes I get so overwhelmed with the subject of photography that I need to remind myself of the fundamentals, which to me, are:
lighting
composition
technique

but, maybe even those fundamentals have fundamentals within them, and it becomes a whole big mess….so in a few words, what are the fundamentals? Thanks for looking.

Having the "eye" is rubish – what good is the "eye" without knowledge of composition? or technique?

Ok, technique could be depth/focus control, exposure, movement et cetera

composition – you know that already, thirds, balance, neg vs pos space et cetera

Lighting is the big one – so flash operation, and set ups et cetera of constant lights

You missed out conception – this is the biggy – most people just "take" pictures, the great shooters "make" images, knowing exactly what they want as the final product. they decide what they are going to make, they set up the lighting or manipulate the light available, they choose the temperature of the image (WB or film/filter choice), they determine depth and the focal point if any. then they actually "take" the shot. Once its executed they will enhance or manipulate the result – they dont do "fixing" unless they messed up.

Sorry dude vague question = vague answer

hope theres something in that for you, if not edit in what you would like added and I will try to answer you

a

I have to take portraits of people for my assignment and I want to learn different lighting techniques to get the best possible portraits with different lighting.

A company by the name of Calumet used to have some excellent tutorials that can be had for free on a CD and occasionally at their website – - and while they use the session to trumpet their own brands of lighting equipment you can easily improvise and create very similar results using other fixtures in the same lighting setups. Contact Calumetphoto.com and see if they can send you one of their CD’s containing the sessions.
One more place to get some good tips is at this site:

http://www.popphoto.com/howto/

Click on the studio lighting part which may answer your questions.

I do alot of hiking and have been dissatisfied with the quality of my digital camera. I’m interested in mostly outdoor photography. I have been interested in the Canon Digital Rebel. Thanks for any suggestions you might have on other cameras.

High pixel count greater than 6 megapixel, image stabilization, manual adjustment of aperture and shutter speed in addition to automatic modes. Because you like to hike, a small size and light weight would be good also. A DSLR would be good, but too heavy for hiking. But you will want to eventually go to that.

What is the best computer software for digital photography? Like Portrait studios use? Like Sear’s, Picture Me! Anyone Know? I already have Picasa. Iv heard of photoshop, but is it what im looking for?

Im looking to make enhancements like vignettes, sepia, black and white, mainly vignettes.

For photo enhancements and studio use, my vote for "best" goes to Lightroom. For photo manipulation it’s photoshop.

Above says it all , any cool little tricks I use hump by the way

It takes practice. I’m a beginning photographer, and I just started taking photos last summer.

-Lighting conditions are essential. A slow shutter speed can make a picture impossible to take.

-Contrary to what some people say, a lot depends on your equipment. Really your lens.
Some scenes require certain lenses to make it at its fun potential.
High focal lengths (zooms) for sports,
wide angle lenses for for sunsets, landscapes.
macro lenses for flowers etc.
wide apertures for portraits

lenses are expensive, so its always nice to have an extra 1000 around.

the best thing to do to take better pictures fast, is to take pictures everyday. I always have my photo 30 seconds away from myself when I am not at school.

If you have the cash, try to get a DSLR if you don’t have one already. They are fast, relatively easy to learn, and much more user-friendly to a good photographer who wants to control shutter speeds, aperture, sensitivity etc. I got mine for 500$ (Nikon D40x, same as D60). but the Nikon D40, with a standard lens (18-55 mm usually) can sell for 550$ which is a very good foundation for an aspiring photographer.

Photography is one of the most rewarding hobbies you can get into, hope you do well!

I’ve always loved taken pictures with my regular digital camera, but now I want to learn how to take somewhat professional pictures with a somewhat professional digital camera. I want something that isn’t extremely expensive and that I can learn without too much difficulty. Any recommendations?

The Kodak EasyShare M853 combines an eight megapixel CCD imager and a Kodak-branded 3x optical zoom lens with a fairly standard 37 – 111mm equivalent focal range. For framing images, there’s a 2.5" 154K pixel LCD display but like many current models, the M853 has no optical viewfinder. Images are stored on Secure Digital / MultiMediaCards, or in 16MB of internal memory.

The Kodak M853 has 17 scene modes to help beginners achieve the results they’re looking for without the need to understand subtleties like shutter speeds, apertures and the like. Scene modes provided are: portrait, sports, landscape, children, night portrait, beach, snow, fireworks, self portrait, backlight, night landscape, text/document, manner/museum, flower, sunset, panorama, and candlelight. Additional shooting modes include auto, video, Favorites, digital IS, high ISO, and close-up.

The M853 determines exposures with a center-weighted TTL metering system, and offers 2.0EV of exposure compensation in 1/3EV increments. Five white balance settings are available including an auto mode, and ISO sensitivity is controlled automatically ranging from 80 to 800, or manually up to 1,250. The EasyShare M853 also offers a movie mode, capturing VGA (640×480) clips at 15 fps, or QVGA (320×240) clips at 30 fps, both with audio. Movies are encoded in QuickTime MPEG4 format.

Images and movies captured on the Kodak M853 are transferred to your computer over a USB 2.0 Full Speed connection. Power comes from a custom KLIC-7001 Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery, and features in-camera charging via USB cable.

The Kodak EasyShare M853 ships August 2007 at a suggested list price of US$179, and is available in white, red, graphite, silver and espresso.

which lighting would be best? any advice or assistance
would be greatly appreciated.

For portraits period use at least a 75mm lens.

As for lighting it’s too complex to describe in this format, but if you already have a grasp of lighting techniques look at other portrait shots on the web, (and there’s plenty), and you should be able to tell how they light a subject.

I have thought about it since last summer… And I’ve decided I want to get into photography.

I’ve decided to get the Nikon D80 for my starter camera until I can decide if I want to go pro and get a better dslr. I’ve done my research, and I’m prepared to learn and understand everything about what it is to be a photographer.

My question is, do I REALLY need to take classes to be in the best position? I’m no doorknob, and I can study off books well. I noticed at Chapters that there’s books on every element of photography like lighting techniques, photoshop books, books on specific Dslrs, the works! Books combined with the internet can be a powerful thing. But is it as good as taking a class?

I’m kind of torn about it. Because at heart I’m a penny saver and to be honest, a thousand dollar camera and hundreds of dollars for lenses can be seen as a waste of money. THEN I would have to fork out hundreds (if not thousands) more for a class?

Not all great artists took art class…

Join a camera club, here in the UK there are a lot of clubs that have Lottery funding, education is a requirement for their remit, but there are plenty that don’t have funding and still achieve high standards.

There are good and bad ones of course, but just entering their competitions can bring your photography on faster than anything.

Theres nothing to beat having a guy, or gal, who knows what he/she’s doing right there with you, it beats any book learning.

Photography doesn’t lend itself well to remote learning, at least not to start with, once you have the overall picture then you can learn from any source.

Theres not a lot to learn in the basic craft of mastering the camera, apertures, shutter speeds etc., theres a whole lifetime of study and practice required to develop the theme.

Once you’re practiced with your camera, analyse good photographs, their composition, lighting, rule of thirds, texture, shape, repetition, trines it’s a long, long list. There’s an ethereal concept called ’seeing’, which is finding the subject in the first place, most of all study light, how the angle of light alters the subject, the colour of light adds (or subtracts) from the subject, another long list, all this information will add to your pictures, this takes time to develop and you will do it differently from anybody else.

Chris

Your camera has a long enough lens for sure … 28 – 504 mm, 18 x optical lens.

Look at these links for nature/wildlife photography

http://www.geolepp.com/

http://www.leppphoto.com/

This should help you some. If you have experience tracking animals for closer viewing, then shooting wildlife will not be more than an extension of those skills.

You are going to have some problems with shutter lag. All P&S cameras have shutter lag at some level. This is way you will see most nature and wildlife photographers using 35 mm SLR’s or DSLR’s who’s shutter lag time are in the milliseconds not like P&S cameras that have shutter lag from 0.08 seconds to 3 full seconds when using flash.

A link to one of George Lepp’s books

http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Basics-Innovative-Techniques-Photography/dp/0963731319/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211651656&sr=1-4