Shoot Dem Pix

Shoot Dem Pix Gathered thoughts on use and techniques in Photography (a progressive booklet in the making) Offered by Doug Blair, Kitchener, 2022

I have always enjoyed taking pictures. First camera was a gift from my grandfather Roy Blair. A Kodak Brown Box Black and White. In the nineteen sixties. Used it at summer camp in Georgian Bay. Much later came an Olympus that I really took outdoors on many occasions. On a trip to Great Britain in 1979 I was going along with great results until the shutter mechanism jammed up around Loch Ness.

Bought a little Kodak for use for the latter part of the trip. (I think that the Olympus failed because the camera had had too long a period without use, without clicking.)

Next came my 50th birthday and my daughter gifted me a nice film camera, A Pentax ESPIO 70s. Much enjoyment followed.

On the internet in 2013 I commenced a friendly engagement with Anthony Gomez and his partner Jody Squallace. He was a brilliant poet.

She was a photographer and IT whiz. A tremendous friendship developed although all of it for years was online (They lived in South

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Carolina. I visited them in 2016.) They had sent me an Olympus 15x Optical Zoom WIDE. Thus began the digital joys.

And now in 2022 at age 70, beginning my retirement I have received from a number of my family members a wonderful unit as shown in the above image, a CANON EOS Rebel SL3. Let the Games begin in earnest!

To help me, I secured an online mentorship with a professional named David Molnar out of California. Somehow Facebook showed me particulars on his training program together with a free first Seminar hour. The teaching was excellent and refreshing. So here goes the journey.

David’s first big comment was as follows: “Automatic Mode is The Devil”. Its little brain averages so many factors of speed, light sensitivity, depth of field, colour filtering, that the end result is “nyuhh”. It does not imagine to the delightful extent all the things desired by the camera user.

The Rebel Canon has semi-manual features emphasizing Time (shutter) in one instance, and Aperture (depth of field and focus) in another. Have to dive deeply into all of this. Another control deals with light sensitivity in a digital sense, resembling the film speed number of earlier days. Two hundred was a good balanced place to be, and four hundred got you to freeze the Indy Car Race. Other Manual options are still to be explored.

David Molnar and his friends will lead the way.

Very succinctly his lecture spelled out the three key considerations. I thought of an appropriate title…SAS. S…the light sensitivity of the unit A…the aperture settings S…the speed factor/shutter…Here goes Friends.

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