Beginner photographer?

Question

im into photography just for a hobby and to post my photos up on flick and such.

-im getting a nikon d40 next month

-any tips????????

im not really getting the exposure, iso & all that stuff

Answer 1

Start with getting to know the basics.

At http://photo.net/learn/ you can go to the first section, Making Photographers, which talks about light, exposure...

free online class:

http://www.morguefile.com/archive/classr...

(it's old, so there won't be any feedback, but if you go through the steps you will learn quite a bit of the fundamentals)

Then keep yourself busy; practice, practice, practice!

free online tips, lessons & tutorials:

http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer...

http://www.adorama.com/catalog.tpl?op=ac...

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutoria...

http://www1.nikonusa.com/slrlearningcent...

weekly assignments:

http://digital-photography-school.com/fo...

projects:

http://digital-photography-school.com/bl...

great resources:

http://www.photonhead.com/simcam/

http://kenrockwell.com/tech.htm#techniqu...

(plus this site is great for camera and lens info)

ok, that's a lot

have fun!

Answer 2

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d40.htm

I recently bought a Nikon D40 and like it.  The Nikon has a feature where you can manually set your own exposure with the shutter speeds and aperture.  This means the camera functions like a regular film SLR in that respect.  You can set the camera on auto as well where it picks the best speed and aperture combo.  ISO was used originally to mean film sensitivity.  Maybe some here can give a better explanation of how this works in digital.  These are more advanced features so you may want to take a class to learn to fully utilize these functions.  The camera can do manual focusing as well.  

Keep in mind when you use the manual setting the camera takes the pictures as you have set it.  It will over or under expose a scene when set in the manual mode and if you are using the focus on manual and have it out of focus it won't auto correct.

Answer 3

1. Google Photographic Theory and read some of the web sites that come up in order to learn about exposure, ISO and such.

2. Nature and animals. Do you have parks? Nature preserves? Forests? Beaches? Wildlife is everywhere. Look up non-profit organizations in your home town that deal with environmental areas. Volunteer for them. There will be plenty of photo opportunities. Get up early and go to places. Most animals are active in the morning. Or take pictures of people's pets.

3. Photoshop. Two uses: fixes imperfections in your images (e.g., dust on your sensor, minor movement blur, exposure imperfections, composition). Second: making your photos look as you envisioned them to be and sizing for prints or web display. As your skills progress, you will be shooting in raw mode. Photoshop lets you do all the image processing that your camera does to the jpegs. But it gives you more flexibility.