Your Oven Makes Really Great Pie

 

Alternate title: “Your camera takes really great pictures”

I’ll admit it, this statement coming from friends and family doesn’t bother me too much. I do have a REALLY nice camera (two of them actually because I shoot weddings and you can’t do that without duplicate everything) and some of the best lenses on the market. I’m a professional photographer, so I have my bag stocked with the best equipment. And if I were a professional chef, I’d have a Viking oven or something, right?

But everyone knows that you can make a great tasting pie on a Sears special. What a lot of beginning photographers don’t realize is that you can take the pictures you want on what you already have. None of the images below were taken with anything new or fancy and I feel like they fit in with all of my other images just fine. Let’s get to the details… oh – and no fancy editing here either. Just my usual quick simple editing from the adjustment panel. Nothing here has been changed drastically from the original.

I still have the digital SLR camera that I started out on a few years ago and I teach my girls how to shoot on it. I have that paired with a 50 1.8 lens. Here’s the breakdown:

Canon Rebel XT (current market value – $169)

Canon 50 1.8 (bought used for $79 a couple years ago)

That’s it… $249 worth of equipment. For a dSLR setup, that’s pretty inexpensive.

 

Settings:

ISO 200
Aperture 2.5
Shutter Speed 1/1000

Look at that nice blurry, dreamy background!  Achieving that is all about focal length, distance of the subject from the background and aperture. Having a low aperture really helps. That’s why I like the 50 1.8. The cheaper, “kit” lenses typically don’t have low apertures and in almost all cases, I advise new photographers to stay away from anything labeled “kit”.  Lenses that have variable apertures (for instance they would say something like:  18-200 f/3.5-5.6) are nearly impossible to learn on since the aperture changes as you zoom. If you see a hyphen after the “f/”, don’t buy it!

Eeek! This is one of my favorites… she is sharp & crisp and there’s all kinds of pretty light in the background. By the way, that blurry background is called “bokeh”. I dare you to use it in a sentence today.

I made this the header on my Facebook page today. Yep – my little ol’ camera produced something found worthy of header status.

Look at the detail here!  I love little piggies.

Oh hey, check out this bokeh on the picture below.

There you go… I used it in a sentence.

My “secrets”?

For this shoot I had to pull out the big guns. That is, I used what I’ve learned from PRACTICE. Practice with what kind of light I prefer, practice with the settings I love. Practice, practice and more practice. Oh – and reading everything about photography and light that I can get my hands on. Photography forums, magazines, Facebook pages… it’s all out there and very accessible. No matter your equipment, you can always practice these things.

I have a sink perpetually full of dishes, my clean laundry lives on my dining room table and my children are practically outdoor creatures. But I’ve never once not had time for photography. That’s my big secret, if you really want to know.