How long do you feel it took to learn the basics?

[minicoop1985]

I'm a pro (people pay me, therefore I'm a pro-I never said I was a good one) and I still feel like I'm learning the basics. I bring out TK the stormtrooper when I need to learn a new skill, or discover something and need to test it. I still make silly mistakes, and too many of them.

 

[imagemaker46]

I learned the basics a very long time ago, there are also times when I forget the basics and go back to them. Re-learning, or re-thinking the basics in some methods of photography can be an interesting experience for many photographers. It's one of those on going things.

 

[rexbobcat]

I didn't know about raw until about a year and a half into shooting. Like, I had NO knowledge of what it is or its purpose. And this was in 2011, so I had ample resources at my fingertips.

So...yeah...If that tells you anything...

 

[Fred Berg]

I think it took a few years of theory and practice to get to know the basics. There's always something new to experiment with and explore of course, which expand knowledge and skills, but the basics took three or four years: a bit like serving an apprenticeship, I suppose.

I'm now starting to develop my own film and I also plan to set up a darkroom for wet printing. I think it will take at least two or three years to know my way around with the basics of this as well; I mean to be able to produce consistent and predictable results.

To know something thoroughly takes time and effort and one should always be aware that just around the corner there is something new to learn.

 

[TCampbell]

You can learn the basics of a piano in an hour... but I suspect it'll take a bit longer before beautiful music starts coming out of the instrument.

Likewise, you can learn the basics of photography pretty quickly too. You could literally learn the basics of "exposure" in under an hour. But it probably won't really "click" until you PRACTICE with it for a while. It's one thing to know the basics of the exposure, but it's another to approach a shot and intuitive recognize how you should set exposure to take that particular shot. That's where the practice comes in.

I do see a lot of encouragement to "just shoot" -- but I've never been entirely comfortable with that advice as it's like asking someone to learn to play the piano by just banging randomly at the keys until you like what you hear. I think you can learn faster when you're shooting with a goal in mind (e.g. learning to shoot to "freeze action" or learning to shoot to create a focused subject, but out of focus background. Or learning to shoot to maximize the focused area.) When you shoot with a goal, you have a yard-stick to measure yourself... did your 10th shot come closer to achieving your goal than your 1st shot. Are you figuring it out and improving?

Learning "exposure" is the first "basic" thing you'd want to know (I still remember when the first "basic" thing we had to learn to do was load and unload film without ruining it.) I consider "lighting" to be one of the next things you should learn. Lighting can massively impact the quality of a photo. A beautifully lit subject photographed with a lousy lens will still look better than a horribly lit subject with a fabulous lens. Never underestimate the value of learning to do good lighting. Like the rest of photography, there are some basics to lighting that you can learn rather quickly... but there are nuances that can take considerably longer to learn.

Learning "composition" is a bit more nebulous... the photography becomes less mechanical and a bit more artistic. You can buy books to help you learn a bit more about "composition" but you can't just read through the book and go do it... this takes considerably longer. But the good news is that the "composition" books will help open your eyes to what you should consider when composing a shot.

 

[Bebulamar]

piano basic requires motor skills which requires a lot of practice to acquire. Basic camera controls like exposure and focusing requires very little motor skill just some understanding which is very easy.

 

[TCampbell]

piano basic requires motor skills which requires a lot of practice to acquire. Basic camera controls like exposure and focusing requires very little motor skill just some understanding which is very easy.

Photography skill isn't much different. Piano certainly has more "motor" skill than photography, but don't sell the brain-skill end of it short. You practice specifically to train your brain to the point that it will be very fast to work out the solution to a problem that used to require more time. The result of all that practice is that the ability to know what exposure settings you should use, how to handle the light, how to compose the subject, etc. all come very quickly to you -- as if "instinctive" (when the truth is it's not at all instinctive -- but you react quickly as though it is.)

There are certain types of photography where you can take all the time in the world to get the shot -- there's no need to be in a hurry. There are other types of photography where you have to be ready in advance. Sports photography, wildlife photography, wedding photography -- all involves situations that need to be anticipated and the camera needs to be set up in anticipation of what sort of shot is going to happen next -- because you can't stop the event from happening. There is no "pause" button.

When you are starting to learn to operate a camera "manually", you learn that the computer inside the camera will offer you advice via the light meter. So you meter the shot, see if the meter tells you that you have too much light... or not enough light... and then you adjust one of your settings to compensate until the computer suggests that you'll have just the right amount of light. This is a "reactive" way of shooting... you get information THEN you react to it. But there is a "proactive" way of shooting... where you anticipate what you're likely to need and pre-set the camera to be ready for that shot before it happens.

When you've been playing music for years, you've memorized certain "recipes" -- you understand cord structures; you've learned to arpeggiate the chords -- and so on. When you see a "new" piece of music, you recognize that the patterns you see in this piece of music, while not necessarily identical, resemble the patterns you've already learned. You pick up learning that new piece of music much faster after you've been playing for 20 years then you could have when you had only been playing for 1 year. While there's certainly motor skill... there's also a lot of brain-skill.

Photography is similar in that there are "patterns" to what you should do depending on the results you need. There's a pattern for "implying motion", another pattern for "freezing action", there are patterns for portraits, there are lighting patterns, etc. These patterns are reused over and over.

When you've been shooting less than one year, you don't necessarily pick up on these patterns -- not intuitively. Once you've been shooting a while, you very quickly recognize these patterns and how to use the camera to capture those shots.

 

[minicoop1985]

Paraphrasing this whole thread: Taking a picture is easy. Any idiot can do it. Taking great photographs takes skills mastered over time.

 

[Bebulamar]

Tim,
I both play the piano and use the camera. I learned the basic of the camera in less than 1 hr. I can't even hit the right key without looking at them on the piano for a long time let alone hitting them in time and forget about hitting them with the right velocity.

 

[Solarflare]

So I was wondering how long it took you before you realised you had the basic technical skills down?

How basic are we talking, exactly ?

IIRC I figured out how to turn my first camera on and press the shutter release pretty quickly.

As others have pointed out, the problem of
(a) having the camera in the right spot
(b) pointing the camera into the right direction
(c) focusing at the correct point
(d) having the camera in the right aperture
(e) using the right shutter speed
(f) using the right film speed
(g) pressing the shutter release at the right moment
(h) possibly also controlling flash etc correctly
is ongoing.

 

[yellow ant]

Maybe its not how long you take but how many photos you have taken before you start to feel comfortable with your camera in most situations?

I think it helps to progress quicker with the more varied scenarios you can access or are brave enough to attempt.

 

[CygnusStudios]

The "basics" is really a broad and relative term.

First it can be the basic operation of the camera, shutter, f stop, iso. Then it moves to composition, lighting, effect. Then there are the "rules" and knowing when and why to use or break them.

Personally the basics for me was learning the purpose.

A photo can be technically perfect, yet have no impact. Others can be technically okay and still take your breath away.

As mentioned, the basics can change depending on the type of photography you do and what the use will be for those images.

Some basics can be learned in hours, while others may take years to master. Some photographers get so caught up in the details that they forget what the purpose of the image is for, and why some of the "basics" are more important than others...