Welcome to your digital SLR camera! Don’t worry, I’m not going to get overly technical here but will share a few key points on how that digital-dream-of-a-black-box in your hands helps you, the artist, make a photograph. Notice I didn’t say “take” a photograph, and you will see why as this book unfolds. I don’t exaggerate in my ode to this ingeniously engineered tool. Once you fully realize all that this box is capable of, I think you will be in awe too!
DSLR stands for digital single-lens reflex. Fundamentally, a DSLR operates much like a 35mm photographic film SLR camera, only it is digital as opposed to analog and offers features that are not present in a 35mm film camera. DSLRs first came on the photography scene in the 1990s, but didn’t gain popularity until the turn of the century.
The camera captures the scene you see in your viewfinder (or on your LCD). In a nutshell, when you press the shutter release button, a fixed amount of light travels through the lens and hits the camera’s image sensor for a fixed amount of time. For this to happen, a mirror flips up and out of the way and the shutter opens, allowing the directed light to hit the image sensor. Think of the sensor as being comparable to the photographic film in an analog camera. The sensor captures the light and creates the digital image from a synthesis of red, green and blue tones of varying brightness. The fixed amount of light that hits the sensor is determined by the aperture’s size (the aperture is the hole in your lens), while the fixed amount of time that the light hits the sensor is determined by the shutter speed. Aperture and shutter speed can be set automatically by the camera to yield a proper exposure (although the camera can’t always achieve it), or they can be manipulated by you in a number of ways. The latter yields much better photos, as you will soon see.
One of the most exciting aspects of a DSLR lies in the fact that you can use a variety of different lenses with it. Each type of lens produces a different creative result, so in essence you can rig your camera with lenses that best match the types of photos you want to make.
DSLR image sensors come in a variety of sizes. The larger-sized sensors found in higher-end DSLRs are referred to as full-frame sensors and are the same size as their 35mm analog predecessors. The smaller sensors found in most DSLRs are called cropped-frame sensors (there are APS-C sensors and APS-H sensors). Full-frame DSLRs produce photos with a greater field of view than cropped-frame DSLRs do, so they capture a wider angle of the scene. If you want to achieve the same field of view with a cropped-frame camera, just take a few steps back or use a wide-angle lens to compensate. Cropped-frame DSLRs allow you to zoom in more than full-frame cameras, which is great for portrait photography. Smaller sensors will be more than adequate when it comes to image quality and can produce amazing results—in fact, there are lots of professionals who use them.
OK, now feel free to forget about most of what I just said, especially the mechanical/operational stuff, because understanding that information has little or no bearing on creating stellar photos with your DSLR. When it comes to using your DSLR, it’s all about being in the driver’s seat and controlling its features to yield well-exposed, in-focus, creative photos. And that’s what I’ll be showing you in the pages of this book.
Keep in mind that full-frame lenses will work with cropped-frame DSLRs, but lenses designed specifically for cropped-frame sensors will not work on a full-frame camera.