Page 1 of Photography

Evening all,

I`m thinking of maybe doing an evening course or something on photography, its something I want to get into and something I seem to have a bit of a natural gift for which I`d like to harness. I`ve no idea of the best way to go about this, have any of your good selves got any suggestions i.e. courses, course venues, equipment I may need or just any general advice?

Cheers


Rich

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I did one earlier this year at the local college.

It depends what you actually want - most of the college courses seem to do very little actual photography, skipping quickly over the important technical stuff liek aperture/exposure etc, and concentrate on developing and printing.

If you want to learn how to take photos, perhaps one of the courses in the back of the many photo magazines would be a better idea.

I`ve also thought about a local camera club for picking up tips.

As for equipment, it very much depends on what you want to spend, how serous you might be and what you want to do.

If for example, you want to do film photography, things get expensive quickly, although if you buy one of the major brand SLR cameras, accessories can then be used if you upgrade the camera body at a later date.

Digital SLR is horribly expensive, but a good normal digital camera will give excellent results - it is worth getting one with a decent lense though.

The best best is to go along to a course, or the local college before you buy a camera, have a look at people`s equipment, ask questions, then decide which direction you want to head.

If you want to learn the basics of photograpy then get a manual SLR camera not a auto everything, The built like a tank Pentax K1000 was a favourite choice,trouble is the world seems to be going digital, I do miss the Kodak TRI-X black and white film.
Try Jessops for advice and pick up the free brochure they give out, it is got all the equpiment you will ever need,they do a camera called a ceneton which is a good first time buy.

Oscar Wallace.

This item was edited on Thursday, 7th August 2003, 01:12

I bought a Minolta Dynax 404si a year or so ago for around £180. It has a 28-80mm lens, and is an excellent SLR. There are various automatic modes, but then you can also set it to either partial manual or full manual mode. It`s ideal if you want to start learning particular aspects slowly - I usually use it in auto mode, but then occasionally use the manual mode if I want to experiment with a particular shot. The best of both worlds, really.

Any of the other `main` SLRs have similar features - I was originally after a Canon around the same price point, but they discontinued it just before I bought the Minolta...

I`d avoid digital for now. I reckon that to get a digital camera that gives you the same quality as a film camera, you need to multiply the price of the film camera anywhere between 3 and 5 times.

And I`d ignore film for the moment.

True a Digi SLR is going to cost you a packet, but pick up the right digicam with an appropriate amount of manual control. (I bought a Fuji 4900z on ebay for £200 a few months ago - second hand) and not only can you experiment just as easily as you can with a Film SLR, but you also get to see the results of your experimentation instantly.

Surely this is one of the best "learning tools" and one reason that makes Digital such a good medium for those wanting to learn creative photography

I trained as a photographer and used to earn my living doing editorial and advertising work, mainly studio still-life.

Just how good the evening classes or photography clubs in your area are is really a question of pot luck. I don`t think anybody can really teach you how to be a good photographer, but it is useful to learn the technical stuff in a bit of detail.

I personally would go the film rather than the digital route, just to really get to know the basics. Don`t get too carried away with which bit of kit you should or shouldn`t be using (amateurs do get a bit hung up on equipment - so do a lot of professionals for that matter). Taking good pictures and enjoying it is more important. I would say that film still beats digital for quality, unless you are talking about very expensive large format digital cameras.

As someone suggested earlier, the K1000 is a typical photography student workhorse camera. But any modern slr with manual over-rides would be fine.

Good luck

Cheers chaps, I shall mull it over for a bit.

Rich

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