The Kit Lens and Other Techniques- Part 7

Learning What Kind of Photography You’re Interested In

I love Asian food. I love teriyaki chicken. I love rice with soy sauce on it. I love the texture of chicken made over a pan. I love using chop sticks when eating food out of bowl; it helps me to slow down and enjoy my food. I can really taste the mix of the salty alongside the sweet and smell the aroma of the simple ingredients. With photography, you need to SLOW DOWN and SIMPLIFY. It isn’t a race or a textbook. You are creating images of subjects you enjoy. You photograph things you love. Essentially, your photography is a part of you. Your photos reflect what interested you in that moment in time. Take your time, and keep it simple. The more you show in your photograph, the more hidden your subject/intent will be.

The kit lens allows you to do this for the fact that it is a lens. It’s meant to allow you to use your camera to make photos. You need to think ahead of time about what your lens can and cannot do. When a photo opportunity arises, it should be a matter of lifting the camera and taking the photo. After using the kit lens, you’ll learn everything it does well, everything it does badly, and everything you’d like to photograph. Once you’ve narrowed down what you love to photograph, you’ll know if an additional lens is necessary or not. If the kit lens does everything you need, save your money and go on a trip! But if there are things that the lens cannot do no matter what, then you might see in investing in a lens that does what you need. By doing the Prime Lens Conversion exercise, you’ll have figured out what focal lengths you might like. If you want to do bird photography, you’ll know that you’ll need a lens with lots more zoom/reach. If you do primarily indoor, low-light photography, you might want a lens with a larger maximum aperture. In turn, if you like photographing full scenes, you could get a wide angle lens. If you prefer in-your-face portraits, then you can get a lens that is more like what your eye sees, or a lot closer, to isolate your subject. You know now that your feet can help in this as well.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this short series. I tried to cover a lot of information as concisely as possible. There’s so much more, technique-wise, to try to explain. But this is a primer to get all that technical mumbo-jumbo out of the way so you can just go out and make some interesting photos. Even I deal with wanting absolute perfection in every photo and not end up with it. But it’s all about learning. It might take months or years to get to where you personally want to be. As a hobby, however, the photographic knowledge you acquire will let future generations know who you were, what you saw, and what that moment meant to you.



Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for stopping by. Everyone can enjoy photography, whether from a cell phone or a more expensive camera. Gear is rarely the deciding factor of what makes a work of art. If you can imagine it, you can create it.

The Kit Lens and Other Techniques- Part 6

Pre-focus

This is generalized as an advanced technique, but I promise you that on the wide angle end of your kit lens (setting your camera to f11) this is super easy. You can do this in full manual exposure mode, but I’d recommend Aperture priority if you’re not sure. Set Auto ISO if you like as well… this is meant to be fun!

Now, your kit lens does not have a focus distance guide. You’ll need to figure it out for yourself, but an easy way to set the focus would be to see the halfway point between focusing closely and focusing for something far away. These settings will allow for an extremely deep depth of field so almost everything between a couple of meters away to almost infinity will be in focus. So now all you need to worry about is framing, clean backgrounds, and pressing the shutter button. Easy peasy!

For those who have a camera with face detect, and plan on making photos of people, use this setting instead. You can still use this kind of focusing if you like, though!  

Tension

Short Distance Call

This is the next to the last post regarding kit lens techniques. Feel free to leave questions!

The Kit Lens and Other Techniques- Part 5

Turning Your Kit lens into a Prime Lens

Prime lenses help train your photographic eye. You physically need to move back and forth to frame your subject. You see the effects of how focal distance affects depth of field. With enough practice, you will have an idea of how much will be in the frame even before you lift the camera to your eye. You can replicate these learning tools with your kit lens simply by setting your camera to a focal length and putting a little piece of tape to keep the zoom ring from moving. My suggestion is to set the camera to where the focal length allows for a 3.5 or 4 aperture. (Background: My first SLR was a 35mm film camera, and my first lens a 35mm 3.5. I went almost a year with just this before using a different focal length). I currently have my kit lens set up like this (set to 20mm on a crop sensor, roughly 32mm field of view on a full-frame body).

Things You Will Learn

 1.       Cleaning up your backgrounds. The depth of field will be deep. This translates to having more in focus. You will need to pay attention to what is behind your subject. Is there a tree sticking out of their head? Are there cars behind them? Is there something distracting in the background? You will learn how to put both your scene and your subject together. This contextual balance is key.

2.       Tunnel Vision Correction. When you take a photo, your eyes get fixed on what you’re photographing, but the camera sees more than what you’ve zoned in on. When you zoom in, you further minimize the effects of background issues. However, having a wider field of view and deeper depth of field will mean that, consciously, you need to decide what does and does not belong in the frame. If you’re trying to capture the beauty of a slow moving creek, you would want to include different rocks, flowers, and shadows. However, you would want to exclude signs, floating trash, cars, etc.

3.       Learning the benefits and faults of different focal lengths. There’s no magic setting for a good photo. There’s no perfect camera or a do-it-all lens. Your camera can’t tell you what is beautiful and what is dull. You make these decisions. Once you spend a couple of months on this single focal length, you can zoom in or out a bit more. Rinse, and repeat. You’ll see certain things change. Going from wide angle to zoomed in all the way, you’ll notice that the depth of field is narrower. There’s less perspective distortion when getting very close to your subject. In my opinion, it’ll be more flattering to people’s faces (research the effects of wide angle lenses and focal length compression).

4.       Self-Fulfilling. The more you understand your camera and how to use it, the better you’ll feel. The more settings you set manually, the more you’ll understand the effects of light, aperture, and shutter speed. Beautiful photos can be made even with your camera is set to Full-Auto, so don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. The point I’m trying to make is that the more you understand the settings, the easier it is for you to utilize the automatic and Semi-Automatic features. YOU are the photographer, so if your camera can’t make the right decision you need to be able to get the photo you want yourself. This is your hobby/passion/obsession. Don’t let the camera, the tool used to express yourself, get between you and your art.


I'm glad you've hung in there through-out this series! Things are starting to wind down, so there'll be two more posts to round out this topic.

The Kit Lens and Other Techniques- Part 4

Finding Light

Photography is all about light. Without light, there’d be no photography. The quality of light, its direction, and the number of light sources all change the mood and impact of an image. In the case of the kit lens, light is even more important. There’s artificial light, via your flash and lights around the house, and then there’s natural light. You don’t need to just be outside for sunlight, you can use light streaming in through a window (the larger the better). There are many resources out there on how to use sunlight, including these topics that you should look into: the Golden Hour, photographing in harsh/direct sunlight, How to Diffuse sunlight.

Learning how to use sunlight will help you make the most of your kit lens. Have your photographic subject (whether that be a loved one, a plate of food, an interesting object) sitting in front of a window. You can diffuse the light with a sheet, a thin curtain, or simply with the blinds. You can use a large white poster board to help direct more light to their face or to fill in shadows. When you’re outside, you can have your subject's back to the sun and use the on-camera flash, in this case referred to as ‘fill flash.’

BunBun- Gone, but never forgotten

For inanimate objects, a tripod can work wonders. Or you can just find a stool or any steady object. If this is the case, you can go ahead and turn the IS off. Set the camera to a two to ten-second delay. This will ensure that the camera is completely still before the shutter fires. This works with every kind of camera. There’s also mirror lock-up, and if this feature is offered, which it would not be on a mirrorless camera as it has no mirror, you’ll be able to find out how to use it you’re your camera manual. If you’re outside in bright sunlight, go ahead and keep the IS off. The shutter speed will be more than high enough for taking handheld images. Remember, available light can always be used. It’s your eye and knowledge that will determine the best way to use that light. Your settings will affect the final image. 

As a photographer, you use shadows, blur, textures, and shapes to tell your story. Look for interesting angles and opposing ideas in your photos. An easy to digest, visually appealing idea is more interesting than just a sharp, well-focused image that says nothing.

In my next segment, your 'zoom' kit lens will become a 'prime' lens.