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| Photo by fongsaunder at Photomalaysia.com |
When you purchase your first DSLR, the usual lens it will come with is a Kit Lens. They can be considered a beginner’s lens. Nikon has the Nikon AF-S DX 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6G VR, Canon’s is Canon EF-S 18-5mm F/3.5-5.6 IS and Sony has Sony DT 18-70mm F/3.5-5.6 for a Kit lens. The Sony kit lens is a bit of an upgrade with the longest rage at 70mm. After you tinker with your camera, you realize you need better shots so you plan on buying wide-angle lens or Zoom lenses, perhaps? But before you do, I’d like to pose a question: have you fully exhausted the full potential of your kit lens? Have you even explored it? If you never did anything experimental with it, and you never had a shot that got you totally excited that you feel like a pro afterwards, I assume the answer is a resounding “no.” I suggest therefore, that before you bet your hard earned money on a lens that isn’t exactly as flexible as you’d like it to be, you read the four this you can do with your kits lens.
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| Photo by Declan |
1. Bokeh - It is an adaptation from a Japanese word meaning “blur”. It is basically the character of the blur in the photo. That’s right, it’s the aesthetic blur. In photoshop, it’s the Gaussian blur. Given the right light conditions and camera manual setting, you should be able to produce a magical photo that would make you proud of yourself. Naturally, prime lenses are best for it but then again, ingenuity and good taste is king. Longer and wider kit lens gives you less depth of field; hence you can consider your kit lens second best to prime lenses. An aperture of f5.6 at 55mm with your kit lens should give you a good bokeh: blurred background and focused subject. Make sure you shoot as close as possible to your subject.
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| http://yowayowacamera.com/ |
2. Levitation – Please refrain from doing “planking” shots if you are serious about photography because it’s a total insult to your creativity. Levitation shots however, are pretty neat and clever. It doesn’t come with a couple or a dozen of shots though. If you’re unlucky, it might take up an entire 2Gb memory space for one elevation shot alone. To do this, you need three things: DSLR with a kit lens, a sturdy tripod, and a creative mind. As far as I know, levitation shots originated in Japan too by a blogger and photographer named Natsumi. Shutter speed is 1/500 seconds or faster and 1/320 seconds during darker conditions. Set the timer at 10 seconds and be in the farthest position in less than 10 seconds.
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| Light Graffiti |
3. Slow Shutter Speed - Do you ever wonder how some photos of running rivers or water falls seem like they shot it at an enchanted place? Flowing body of water is reduced to a smoke-like ground. There is what you call HDR, of course, but it can also be achieved by just lowering the shutter speed of your DSLR with a kit lens. What’s best is you can play with during daytime and night time. During night time, you can paint with lights. Or say, write your name in the night sky with a flashlight for a pen. You can also shoot moving cars on the street from a bird’s eye view. If you are near a bay with boats or if a between you and the rest of the city, you can reflect the city’s night lights through the water and create a photo with an authentic feel of the night in the city. What do you need, you ask? Your trust DSLR with your kit lens and a tripod, of course. Camera shake is the least type of blur you would like to see in your photos. The blur of the moving objects are okay. During day time, 20 to 30 second exposure time is okay. If you want to achieve the traffic in the highway in whatever view you decide on doing, you can go with 8 second shutter speed or less. During a day time, if you want to capture the enchanted flowing body of water, you can play between 1.6 seconds to 25 seconds shutter speed, depending on the light condition. For more samples photos, please visit this link.
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| http://www.graphicdesignblog.org/panning-photography-shots/ |
4. Panning – I actually learned this trick from someone who doesn’t own a camera at all. I was invited to a motor-racing event by a friend. My D40 was fairly new then, back in 2007. Panning is merely getting a moving object in focus. Under normal circumstances, moving objects are either badly blurred or it looks still in the photo, even though it's in motion. With panning, you get to focus your subject, which is moving fast, while you blur out the rest of the spaces on the photo in a motion depending on your shooting direction. This time, you don’t need a tripod. You have to hand carry your camera to follow you subject. What happens is, as your subject moves, e.g. running dog, you follow it with you camera while pressing it half-way. You make sure when you do this, the red blinking focus points are on to your subject. Then you fire. The effect should be a sharp subject and a motion blurred background.
Photography is a fantastic and fun hobby, if you enjoy learning and creating new things. With the rise of low cost Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras these days, I presume every 20 person in the country owns one. There is nothing wrong in choosing a DSLR over a regular digital camera, especially if your budget permits it. However for you to have fun with it, and see the difference between a digital camera shot over a DSLR shot, you need to keep on learning new tricks, keep on shooting and most importantly, enjoy it.
Alternatively, if films are your thing, you can visit the 5 Basic Things You Need to Know About Lomography here.
Alternatively, if films are your thing, you can visit the 5 Basic Things You Need to Know About Lomography here.
