Photography Tutorial: Intro Into Cameras

RSS

Photography Tutorial: Intro Into Cameras

26 Jun

INTRO TO PHOTO: PART 1 – CAMERAS

Hey FashionPhotographyBlog.com readers! I’m Alana Tyler Slutsky, a NYC based fashion photographer. For quite a while I had no one to turn to in order to seek advice and ask questions about photography. From learning the basics to testing with models, I didn’t know what was right and what was wrong. It’s this very reason that I’m so thankful for FPBlog’s editor, Ed, for giving me the opportunity to contribute. I hope to shed some light on the subjects I found difficult to understand and give all you readers some much needed help that I didn’t have in the beginning.

Now that FashionPhotographyBlog.com is back up and running, what better way to say “we’re back!” than by dishing out all of the information that everyone asks for when starting in fashion photography?! Check in weekly for information posts on a range of topics from cameras and lighting, to retouching, to producing a fashion photo shoot!

Now that that’s out of the way… Let’s get to the good stuff! Over the next three days, we’ll be breaking down the building blocks of photography.

I know that this is going to be one of those pretty generic posts that goes over the basics but I feel obligated to write it… After all, this is a blog that caters to all levels and we were all once new and unsure before.

So, here goes nothing… A brief intro to photo and how cameras work.

(Hey, maybe you experienced folks will pick up a thing or two. If not, use this as a refresher!)

Types of Cameras

There are many different types of cameras out there in the world. What the majority of photographers use is a SLR – a single lens reflex camera. (Digital SLR cameras are referred to as D-SLR cameras.).

SLR cameras use a lens and a mirror to reflect what is seen via the lens into the viewfinder. Essentially, what you see in the viewfinder is what you get.

How an SLR camera works – The mirror lifts up to reveal the film or shutter

The most common type of camera body that is used is a 35mm camera. 35mm camera bodies are designed to use, you guessed it, 35mm film. The cameras that you most of you use and own are digital 35mm cameras.

Pentax K1000 – My favorite!

While 35mm cameras are popular among professionals, it’s not uncommon to find a pro using a “medium format” camera. These cameras, in the days of film, were used with specific film which was larger in format, thus yielding a larger negative. So why is this important today? Digital medium format cameras have larger sensors, which allow them to have more megapixels. While megapixel count isn’t always that important, it helps to have the most megapixels you possibly can when shooting something that will be displayed in a relatively large format – such as a billboard. We’ll get more into this in a bit. The most common brands of medium format cameras are Hasselblad, Mamiya and Phase One.