Looking to get into photography... help?

Dave!

Hi gang,

I'm back in the phase where I wanna take up photography.

I wanna take mainly outdoor, nature stuff...

Buying a new camera is out of the question as I am officially poor And it's a big enough investment for something I might not use.

So, I wanna see if I can make the most out of my current digital camera, a Kodak EasyShare CX7530.

Now, I don't have a clue about cameras, so right now I'm trying to figure out what all the crazy settings do, and what the specs mean.

These are sites that tell me about the camera:

settings
specs
more specs

I'm flicking through this book that I downloaded, and it's telling me that most cameras are advertised as "35mm equivalents", which mine appears to be:

3X optical zoom lens, f/2.7-4.6, 34-102 mm (35mm equivalent)

Now, what the hell does all that other crap mean? lol. What's the significance of the lens...thickness...?

Does anyone who knows their sh*t wanna give me a bit of an introduction to photography, based on the fact that I have this camera? Or else, do you have a site that tells me from the beginning what to do?

Thanks

PS. The moon is out now, and I can see it from my back garden. This would be a good target that one could use in an explaination. How would I take a picture of it? I messed with exposure time, put it at 4 seconds or somethin, lol, and it was brighter alright, but it was still tiny, and it was blurry. Is the camera just not capable of such shots?

Thanks again!

donncha

I think you need to get out and about and simply take photos. Don't worry about the jargon and it won't bother you.
Remember that street light down the road? What would htat look like if you put the camera on the ground and shot straight up?
That tree in the garden looks interesting, notice the autumn colours of the leaves?

Just get out there and shoot, worry about the details later

d-arke

I'm in the same boat as DaveMcG, I bought my first camera two years ago, its a Nikon Coolpix 2100. Its okay for the standard run of the mill photos anyone would expect to take such as holiday snaps etc. I'd like to get into photograph and maybe start a collection of cool interesting snaps but wouldn't know where to begin. Its not great for taking pictures when you zoom in, the pictures look blurred, out of focus etc.

Anyways, its a standard digital camera with only a handful of settings, and I'm still lost. I'd sometimes take the camera to a nightclub if it was friends birthday or something and the lighting in it would be weird, it would be like a crazy lightning effect comes out of nowhere.

Is there any nightcourses in Dublin that could help. Optical/Digital Zoom? I'm lost there. How sad is that, I just lovee taking photos and would like to get into it more. Advice?!?

PurpleFistMixer

As far as explaining all those terms, you'd probably be best off finding a website to do it for you (since anything people will say is basically regurgitating said facts). Try googling photography or going to answers.com or wikipedia.

Moon photography.. now, I don't know much about astrophotography but I know the moon is a tricky thing to shoot. Unless you've got a really magnified lens (something the equivalent of 200mm which I don't think any normal digital camera has) the moon will be tiny. If you do have a lens like that, giving you a good enough zoom you'll need a tripod anyway. However, since the moon itself is a pretty bright object you don't need that long a shutter speed. If you think about it, the moon is reflecting light off the sun so it's bright enough. Your camera, if it gauges the exposure time itself, might tell you you need longer, but you have to remember that it's taking in all the pitch black sky around, which, if you're photographing the moon, is pretty much irrelevant.


(A REALLY brief explanation of those terms:
3X optical zoom lens - the camera can zoom up to 3 times the original size, and it does this using lenses as opposed to digitally (which would be digital zoom)
f/2.4-4.6 - this is the aperture. Aperture is like the iris on the eye - controls the amount of light getting in. Without delving into the other things it does, it can allow you faster shutter speeds, the wider it is (2.4 is reasonably wide)
34-102 mm - this is the lens length. 34 is fairly wide angle, (28 is standard wide angle I believe), 102 mm is a longer lens so it'll be more magnified than at 34mm.
The 35mm in 35mm equivalent relates to the size of the space the picture is projected on to (ie the film/sensor). 35mm is standard, so mostly everything you hear about camera specifications is in relation to this size. The reason they say it's a 35mm equivalent is because with some digital cameras the sensor may be bigger or smaller than 35mm, and as a result the magnification from the mm of the lens would be different)

I hope that made some sense/was accurate...