"Selecting the proper White Balance: (1 hour)
Take your camera outside during daylight and photograph the same scene using different white-balance settings. Move indoors and repeat the exercise with shooting in a tungsten-lighting environment. Finally, find a fluorescent light source and repeat one more time. Pay close attention to how each setting affects the overall color cast of your images in different lighting environments and write down your findings."
For this task we had to experiment a bit with our cameras and get a feel for the different white balance and how it affects the picture.
From left to right:
Incandescent
Fluorescent
Direct Sunlight
Flash
Cloudy
Shade
Outdoor daylight
Indoor tungsten-lighting environment
Conclusion:
1. Although we are mid winter and it is very difficult for me to find sunlight outside, after reviewing the photos on a big screen I can tell for sure that the best outdoor result is in direct sunlight, flash, cloudy and shade modes. The colors seem true to life and very natural with shade mode giving a slight yellow tint to the photo.
2. The tungsten-lighting environment was a bit hard to me since we use only LED lights in our house and I do not have any additional lams that use this kind of light, but I still took indoor photos with the ceiling lights on. For me the best results are in the incandescent and fluorescent modes.
Changing the white balance helps us to compensate and correct the light source we are shooting at. Sunlight and tungsten-lighting give a golden-warm tint, while LED and florescent light give a blue-cold tint to the photo. Adjusting the white balance helps us to achieve our desired outcome in any environment and even change the light completely.
"Experimenting with Focus Modes: (1 hour)
Change your camera settings so that you are focusing using the Single-Point focus mode. Try using all of the different focus points to see how they work in focusing your scene. Then set your focus mode to AF-S and practice focusing on a stationary subject and then recomposing before actually taking the picture. Try doing this with subjects at varying distances. Lastly, change your focus mode from autofocus to manual focus and practice a little manual-focus photography. Get familiar with where the focus ring is and how to use it to achieve sharp images. Write down what you learned from the different focus modes."
Next thing we had to play with was the focus points and try out different compositions.
Single point full auto focus
My camera decided that the front objects need to be in focus, while the one on the back should be blurry.
Single point full manual focus
Focus on the closes to the camera object (the candle)
Focus on the second closes object (the plant)
Focus on the furthest object (the jar)
Conclusion:
Focus in photos is one of the most important aspects of good photography. If your main object is out of focus, the picture becomes blurry and looses all of the high quality we try to achieve, but keeping our object in focus is not always easy. Thankfully cameras now days are equipped to help us as much as possible and improve our photography experience. Single point focus is my most used mode, I have almost never changed out of it. It works perfectly with most types of photography- portrait, macro, products and even landscape.
For this task I used only my prime 50mm lens and the photos are completely unedited.
Important tip I have learned over the years: While photographing portraits of people or animals, the focus point should ALWAYS be on the eyes, if you get the eyes out of focus you should just discard that photo and try another one.
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