I made some good progress today. It's Sunday, so the last day of the weekend (i.e., the last day that I have an appreciable amount of free time until next Saturday :)) and I made the most of it.
Well, alright then, rookie, what did ya do? Well, I'll tell you. I finally FINALLY figured out what ev single button on this old thing does. Now can I maximize everything to te a perfect picture? Not on your life. But at least I know, in theory, what everything does,
I also joined a community called clickinmoms. I found a coupon code on Retailmenot that gave me 20% off membership, so I bought a 6 month membership for $24. The price per month goes down if you buy a longer membership, but I'm just dipping my toe in right now. I will say, though, that it is AWESOME. I have learned a TON from reading their resources already and it's just my first day! They have fabulous tutorials and courses and stuff like that. I've already told my husband not to buy me anything for Mothers Day because I'm signing myself up for one of their classes as my gift. (A word to the wise: the classes are not cheap, but from what I hear, you get really top-notch feedback, so I'm splurging.)
The best thing that I learned about today is metering. Did you know that your light meter says that a scene is balanced when 1/2 of the light is reflected back at it? In a big landscape, things even out: white clouds, blue sky, green grass, dark bark, etc. altogether absorb about 1/2 the light and reflect about 1/2 the light. But if you're shooting a whit snow covered mountain, just about 100% of the light is reflected. That totally freaks out your camera. The camera wants to make the picture seem like 1/2 of the light is absorbed (in other words, grey, not black or white) so it sets the exposure of the camera to underexpose the shot, making everything darker, and turning the snow grey. To compensate, you have to select settings that would make it seem (by looking at the meter) http://www.bissell.com/manual-sweepers/ the picture is going to be overexposed (e.g., +2 on the light meter). The same holds true if you're photographing, say, my Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost white kids or husband. You need to compensate some. Amazing, right? It all made sense to me, when I read it from a professional, so hopefully it makes sense to you here now... I'm sure I'm not doing the subject justice.
Along those lines, I also today realized that there is a button on the back of my camer that says Av (not the mode selection dial, but an actual button on the back). I had previously thought that, no matter what mode you were in, you could press that button and turn the main dial to change the f-stop. WRONG-O! If you're in MANUAL mode and you press that button and turn the dial, it adjusts aperture. If you're in any other mode and press that button and turn the dial, it affects the exposure. D'oh! No wonder my shots were previously all incorrectly exposed. Facepalm.
What else? I set up an Amazon.com wishlist with a bunch of stuff that I'd like to get. Notably absent, however, are any lenses. I know I would like another lens at some point, but I'm just not there, yet. When I figure out some more, I'll let y'all know on tht point.
But as much as this all seems like, I haven't even hit the piece de resistance: I took some pictures in "Manual" mode! Go me! Were they ready to exhibit? Nope. But they were in focus (by and large) and were (mostly) correctly exposed. I felt like it was such a victory.
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