Here's another freebie for you.

Here's another freebie for you.  Lynda.com  offers a free 14 day trial of their eLearning courses (and you don't have to give a credit card number to get it). 

I just signed up for the trial so I haven't taken any courses yet, but I did watch one of their sample videos from a Photography course and found it very informative and well-done.

If you haven't heard of Lynda.com, here's what I've learned in a nutshell:

1. Lynda.com sells monthly and annual subscriptions to on-line video courses.  You can also buy the courses as books or DVDs.  (NOTE: Your credit card is automatically billed each month or year until you cancel.) 
2. The subscription fees are reasonable for the unlimited access: $25 - $37.50 a month or $250 - $375 a year.  The higher fees include exercise files.  A subscription gives you 24/7 access to all of the over 900 courses and 59,000 tutorials currently available for many different subjects. 
3. There are over 100 courses in photography.  Photography courses include cameras and gear, lighting, exposure, lighting, photo editing, photo assignments, and documentaries.
4. Each course has a table of contents, description of the course, and a brief biography of the author.  You can see this information without a subscription and also sample some segments of a course.
5. You can stop, rewind, and replay segments of a course as often as you need to.  The courses can have closed captioning if you want to read along with the instructor.
6. The courses I looked at were available in 4 formats: Flash, Quicktime Standard and Custom, and Windows Media.  I did notice that some of the general videos on their site were only available in Quicktime.

The first course I'm going to take is Fundamentals of Photography: Exposure (a 12 chapters, 3 1/2 hours long course) taught by Ben Long.  

PCWorld has a review of Lynda.com.
The Santa Barbara Better Business Bureau gives them an A rating, but does show 3 complaints.
There are several examples of Lynda.com videos on YouTube; such as the one on Lenses.

The Rule of Thirds

NYIP Unit 2, Lesson 6 also covered "Developing Your Eye" which was about composing pictures.  Great composition is an essential of great photography.  It's what makes some photographs art. 

It's one of the many techniques, skills, and talents that I need to develop so I did some more reading on the topic.  

1. An article on PhotographyMad introduces10 Top Photography Composition Rules. 
2. Photography Composition Articles  has many articles about composition, including a 7 part tutorial on Guidelines for Better Photographic Composition.  (The title kind of gives away the contents of this site, doesn't it?)
3. Photoshop Essentials  has a Photoshop tutorial on cropping pictures using the Rule of Thirds.  
4. Composition: Rule of Thirds from Cambridge in Color discusses how to apply the Rule of Thirds while taking pictures and editing pictures.
5. Shootandeditmedia has an unusual music YouTube video called Application of the Rule of Thirds

A Freebie

Free workshop at creativeLIVE: Posing and Lighting with Bambi Cantrell  "An intimate three day workshop focusing on posing and lighting techniques with a focus on wedding, boudoir, and portrait photography."  Next Course: Fri, 03/18/2011 - 10:00am (America/Los_Angeles)

Check out their March calendar for other free workshops.

If you miss a free workshop you can purchase the course at what appears to be reasonable prices.  For example, a 10 session course on the Fundamentals of Digital Photography is only $129.  You can watch sample videos of the course before plunking down your money.

NYIP Unit 2, Done!

On Monday I finished the rest of the lessons in Unit 2, Digital Processing, Filters, and Developing Your Eye, then tonight I finished the Live Action Video. 

The DVD was very interesting and informative, even though much of it focused on using film cameras.  However, many photography techniques apply equally to film and digital cameras.   The video included a segment on how to assess a used camera and lens.  NYIP discourages students from spending a lot of money on cameras, accessories, and gadgets. 

About 75% of the Digital Processing lesson covered scanning.  I didn't find this relevant and skimmed through it.  There were paragraphs here and there that were pertinent to cameras, but I probably missed most of them. 

I learned that the most important filter to own is a polarizing filter, and then neutral density filters.  Many effects that used to be achieved with filters can now be done with image editing software.

Developing Your Eye was a short lesson on learning to look and see before taking photographs.

1. The Digital Photography School has an article on 10 Deadly Post-Processing Sins that's funny as well as helpful.
2. Cambridge in Color has a good tutorial on lenses.
3. There are great tips on how to take great pictures by focusing on your subject at Photography by Briana.
4. You might also want to check out the NYIP podcast on Three Guidelines for Great Photography.

I took the exam before watching the video and, as I said in an earlier post, I didn't pay as much attention to the lessons as I should have.  I only got 52 of 60 questions right for a grade of 87% (B+).

The "Sunny 16" Rule

I forgot to mention in the previous post that NYIP covered the "Sunny 16" rule in Lesson 6.  The Sunny 16 rule says that on sunny days the approximately correct exposure settings would be f/16 with the shutter speed set approximately equal to the ISO speed.  So if the ISO was 100 the aperture would be f/16 and the shutter speed would be 1/100th (give or take a little).

Jim Pickeral Digital Grin has an entertaining explanation of the Sunny 16 rule and explains how to adapt it to different conditions and apertures.

Ben Long at Complete Digital Photography defines exposure and discusses the 3 exposure controls (ISO, shutter speed, and aperture), the Sunny 16 rule, and reciprocity.  We studied reciprocity in Lesson 6, but I didn't pay much attention.   In my opinion, this article explains it much more clearly.

NYIP Unit 2, Lesson 6 cont.

I finished Lesson 6 yesterday.  The one on Exposure.  Frankly, I didn't find this lesson all that informative.  Maybe I wasn't paying attention.  This is the stuff you have to know to take better than average pictures.  There will probably be more information in the video. 

I have found already, just 6 lessons into the course, that they do repeat topics and go into more detail in following lessons or even in different parts of the same lessons.  For example, yesterday they discussed light meters in more detail and explained more about how to use them.  

They also talked a little about using auto exposure features on a camera.  And they gave some hints on special situations such as photographing snow, night scenes, fireworks, and the moon.

I would recommend that anyone taking this course practice what is taught as soon as possible after the lesson.  (This applies to any other course for that matter.)  I'm not heeding my own advice and I know I'll regret it later when I won't be able to remember a darn thing. 

While exploring photography topics on the Internet, I read over and over that Bryan Peterson's book on Understanding Exposure is a must have in every photographer's library.

I also "completed" lesson 7 yesterday which was about developing black and white film.  This was a short lesson and one which I'll probably never need.  They didn't discuss it much, but recommended that students keep the lesson booklet for future reference if needed.

NYIP Unit 2, Lesson 6

Lesson six = exposure.  This is one of the most important lessons in the course, or so I was told in the first part of the lesson. 

The lessons come on CDs with several tracks on each CD to help break up the lessons into manageable segments.  With Unit 2 I received a lesson explaining that Track 6 was really Track 2 and Track 2 was 6.  I listened to Track 1 last weekend and listened to Track 6 this morning.  I'm old and forgetful so I thought I'd forgotten something when they started talking about page 50 in the book when I'd only read to page 21.  Turns out, they'd fixed the error and Track 2 actually was Track 2.

So far we've discussed evaluating correct exposure and light meters.  The instructors said the reflective light meter in your digital camera is probably all you'll need unless doing specialized photography, such as advertising.  However, you can't rely on the meter alone - it can't do all your thinking for you.  They also said that if you were going to buy a meter, get an incident meter and they mentioned the brand name Sekonic.

1. The NYIP web site has a short article on incident light readings and use of an 18% gray card. 
2. Cambridge in Colour does a nice job explaining camera metering and exposure.
3. The Digital Photography School has a lesson on using your camera's light meter in their (free!) Photography 101 course. 

We also discussed digital cameras and histograms.  I didn't even know digital cameras had histograms, much less what they were used for.  Now I do.  Here are some tutorials if you want to learn more about using the histogram to improve your photographs.

1. Cambridge in Colour has a 2-part tutorial on histograms.
2. The National Parks Service has a 4 page pdf leaflet on Understanding Histograms.   While I was there I noticed they also have a leaflet on Digital Storage Media.
3. Digicamhelp  also has a good little tutorial on using histograms.

NYIP, Unit 2, Lesson 5

I started on Lesson 5, Image Capture, last week.  The first section was about how film works.  This is the kind of information that somebody feels is important to teach, but that few students appreciate.  It's suppose to help you understand why you set certain measurements to what on your camera, whether it's film or digital.  It's probably very useful information, but it was still boring.

OK, maybe it wasn't that boring.

How Film Works:
Yes Mag has a simple explanation of how film works.  Visit this page to see one of the earliest color picture even if you don't give a rat's hat about how film works. It almost looks 3-D. 

Visit the University of North Carolina's article from How Stuff Works for a more thorough, but still readable, explanation. There is a simple ISO (film speed) chart that you might find useful.

ISO Settings:
The ISO settings rate the "speeds" of different films.  The film speed refers to its sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO rating the "faster" the film (the more sensitive it is to light).  Digital cameras also have ISO settings and the relationship between ISO speed to light sensitivity is the same as film cameras.

Face the Light Face the Light explains ISO and adds a summary at the end of each section so if you don't want to read all the details just look for the "Summary" section. 

For visual learners, Digital-Camera has a video tutorial. 

White Balance:
There's a simple explanation of white balance on Sandro Digital Photography as part of their free photography course   There's a video that shows how to set custom white balance on Canon cameras.

Memory Cards:
The professionals who conversed for this lesson said that any name brand memory card is good, but they mentioned SanDisk and Lexar by name.   They also said that it's better to buy several smaller cards (1 GB) than cards with more memory, format the card in your camera, and that it's better to delete the pictures from your computer than your camera.

The Digital SLR Guide explains digital SLR memory cards and memory card reader.