How did you learn to master your camera?

[Ihatemymoney]

I had no choice, I got very ill, after months in the hospital and looking at years of surgeries and to recover
I had no choice but to have to earn money and I was not employable...
I invested into certain collectable products and because of the value and the total investment I had no choice but to have sharp images of the products, and because I sale internationally, bad pictures could result in products getting shipped back to me that the loss income in shipping could run a 1000.00 bucks or more and destroy my
online reputation..

Online videos
Books, Light, Science and Magic.... and Speed liter's handbook.
Owners manual......
Photography forums ................
Trial and error.
Forcing my self to carry my camera and taking lots of pictures.
Thinking about what is the right conditions for lighting and angles.
Learning about light..... and knowing how to use it.

 

[Bebulamar]

How did I learn? More than 50 years ago at age 10 my father let me use his camera after training me for about 30 minutes. I didn't take any training after that but I do learn a lot of things by myself.
For your situation I think you should learn about lighting as it's the most important aspect of your type of photography. You should use a tripod. Use the lowest ISO setting for good image quality. Set your aperture for the amount of depth of field you need for your subject. Use the camera on A mode. Use the preset white balance for you type of lighting. Adjust the exposure compensation to get the exposure just right by taking a shot. Move it on to your computer. Adjust the exposure compensation and take another shot until you're happy with the exposure.
As I said, the most important thing is to light your subject so that they look good and shows details well.

 

[Overread16 4]

Sometimes I get good shots but I feel like I'm walking in the dark and not really sure if they would be considered ' good '.

Have a read of the critique link in my signature, then go through the motions it describes and post up a handful of photos done that way. If you read the link the first key is that it asks you questions, gets you thinking about your photo and then makes you write them down.
Then you post it up and hear what others have to say about it and about what you could do next time to get closer to what you want or to help refine your ideas as to what is possible.


In general part of photography is getting out there and learning in different situations what works and what doesn't. This gives you a pool of experiences from which to draw from and the wider the variety the more things you will learn.
I often found that once-off events were a pain to learn from because you make mistakes; you work out how to fix them but you then don't fix them in the field. Instead try setting yourself small projects and work toward improving in those areas as a focus for a period of time. That will gives you not only a new experience, but also a focus for what you want to produce and repeat lessons in the field to build your experiences upon.


Just heading out randomly with the camera will teach you things, but its haphazard and can take longer to learn from because you're not necessarily linking it together nor reinforcing what you learn as much.



I learned by

1) Keeping the manual/book in my bag the whole time and referring back to it. That way if I was trying something new I had the information there to reference in the field at the time. I'd read it before I did the new thing and I could then refer to it again after to check. Done this way you take the theory in the practical and it also means if you get confused or forget something the manual is right there to tell you.

2) Focusing on a specific area (ok in truth it was often a couple at a time but most "trips" had a general focus). This helped because
a) It gave me some idea what kind of photo I wanted. It got me thinking "Ok I'm going to shoot wildlife so I want shots that look sharp and with thin depth of field; ok so I need a fast shutter speed and a wide aperture (small f number).

b) Helped me reinforce the learning over and over by repeating those trips/themes.

c) Research and look at the works of others and network a little by finding focused communities and references in that subject area.

3) Came back and posted some of the better one and got feedback. Read it, asked questions, and repeated out in the field.


So in the end it was part getting out there; part reading and part getting feedback.
There's no one magic approach and whilst each person might use more of one than the other, using more elements together can help boost your learning rate. Networking and socialising and conversing with other photographers can also help give you ideas as well as methods, sometimes different methods for similar end results or similar situations.

 

[Trever1t]

practice, repeat

 

[mcap1972]

I like to read and re-read camera manual. I always discover a new feature.

 

[timor]

Hilarious.
Read manual - helpful in general.
Read books - despite people say otherwise, always good.
Put a gun to your head - hope you not in that bad situation.
Learn while shooting - hope you have few years of time.
Just why you need to understand how work manual settings ? Can you compute faster in your head, than the computer in your camera ? Depth of field is your interest ? Are you sure you want to touch it ?
Here, as simple as it can be.
Understanding Depth of Field in Photography
Need more ?
View Camera Depth of Field
But it is ugly complicated.
Setting camera manually may rather hinder your fun with shooting. You need max dof go with aperture priority, choose big aperture and computer will take care of the rest. You are not shooting and developing own film to be really in need to understand how exposure changes the properties of image on the print.
Don't shoot manually.

 

[Overread16 4]

Don't shoot manually.

I would never discourage someone from learning how to shoot in manual mode on a camera. There are many times when you will want to and need to use manual mode; where the cameras automatic exposure system is just not able to give you the correct settings.

In the end I think that someone who is a keen photographer and eager to developer their skills should be able to shoot and use the camera in.
Aperture priority
Shutter priority
Manual mode.
Bulb mode (note some cameras have this others just have it as a setting on the shutter speed dial)

In the end if you can master those core modes you're onto a winner. You will be able to vary which you choose based on the situation before you.



For example almost all my macro work is done in manual mode because I use flash as the dominant light source. Indeed nearly any situation where flash is dominant requires manual mode because it means the ambient light isn't strong enough for the shot. Thus the camera would never be able to automatically read the light to set the correct settings because the flash light isn't there in the ambient light for the meter in the camera to read.

On the flipside if I go to an airshow where they have propeller driven aircraft I'll likely end up in shutter priority mode because in that situation the shutter speed is something I want to define exactly. Meanwhile the aperture is of less importance so I can let the camera control that as all I will be doing is balancing it to the meter reading anyway (in fact I'll be overexposing or underexposing a little depending on the light angles and amount of sky to plane - generally overexposing since the sky is bright whilst the plane will often be darker or even shadowed)

Then again most of my typical shooting will be done in aperture priority mode where I define the aperture (depth of field) and let the camera do the work balancing the shutter speed.


Finally most of my indoor horse jumping is manual mode again, the light is fairly constant over most of the area and is often weaker than I need it to be. However I need a specific shutter speed to avoid blur and I need the aperture at a set value too (although often wide open). So really the only thing I vary is the ISO - so shift the camera into manual and I've got control. If I were outside in brighter light I'd be shifting into aperture priority mode.




As you can see with a small selection of different situations I've used different modes in each one. The mode I choose is the one that works best for ME in those situations based on what my experiences have taught me and on the type of photograph I want out at the end. If a person had no understanding of how to use those various modes they'd be really limited and honestly if you're going to restrict yourself to one mode it should be manual as it will do all; limit yourself in one of the priority modes and you can most certainly do a lot (some people never stop shooting in aperture priority mode) but some things will be impossible or very tricky.

 

[jcdeboever]

Read the manual, practice, bang your head against the wall.
Read the manual, buy a good flash, practice some more, bang your head against the wall
Read the manual, practice even more, post some images on here for c & c, bang your head against the wall.
Read the manual, switch to film, wait for the film to come back before banging your head against the wall.