[Robert A. F. Van de Voort]

Any questions, queries about assignments, course related knowledge, if you do not know how to complete the assignment – ask it here.

Contact the office for any matters relating to sending, frequency, receiving of your assignments.

This thread is purely for study related questions and photos please.

[Robert A. F. Van de Voort]

Maureen, your pentax camera came with an installation disk, that sould allow you to process your Raw files. If not there are many programs for free that do, like http://www.irfanview.com/ 

It is simple?! And hopefully allows you to process your raw files to be developed by you.

Check this out too:

http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/english/support/digital/ks2_s.html

Otherwise try this program  – a bit more professional and still free

https://www.darktable.org/install/

 

let me know how it works out for you. Thanks for asking me.

[Janice Mitchell]

Hi. I am a new student on the course, and have been trying to both get my head around a new camera, and the course. For someone not technically-minded, it is a bit of a challenge! I have had to visit numerous Youtube tutorials, my camera handbook, discussion boards etc to get an answer to the landscape bracketing problem I am having. I have put my camera on bracketing mode in the P setting. After some considerable confusion between various tutorials etc, I have taken 3 practice shots, and found that I ended up with 2 on the same exposure setting, but the 3rd has changed the shutter speed. Not helpful! I have a Canon EOS 200D – could you please tell me what I am doing wrong?

 

Many thanks

 

[Robert A. F. Van de Voort]

Good afternoon Janice, apologies for my late reply I was rather busy this morning with other work. The first section of this course is a little bit technical and practical so we can understand the workings of the camera.
Thank you for doing your research on the Internet and trying to get your head around the problem of bracketing. The best way to learn your camera, and to understand photography, is to put your camera on manual mode, the letter M. Also deselect auto ISO, auto focus, everything that could be automated should be off.
Now You are in control.
I realise this is almost a hopeless situation if you don’t realise what your camera is capable of and what everything does but the penny will drop fairly soon. In your book you can read what your shutter does, what your aperture does, and if you keep your ISO on 100 ISO you will be fine for almost every situation.
So therefore may I ask you first of all what is your understanding of bracketing? What is it? Please post that response and then I can fine tune my answer to you.

Putting your camera on P, and let the camera decide what bracketing is in its own humble camera opinion, is not the way to go as I do not know how the camera has been programmed to respond on the request to “bracket”.

May I therefore suggest that all the exercises you do, especially for your first assignments are all done on a manual setting. Totally frustrating and difficult but the best way to get your understanding of the workings of your camera.
If you are stuck on your understanding of how that camera operates or how to put it on manual I suggest you may like to visit the shop you purchased it from and ask the salesperson to give you a demonstration. Highly likely he or she will oblige. your manual could give an answer but sometimes those manuals are difficult to “read”.

First of all give me your definition of what bracketing is, try everything out on manual on your camera, and we’ll take it from there.

[Janice Mitchell]

Thanks for getting back to me. My concept of bracketing is that it can help if you aren’t sure of the correct exposure of a shot, and you can set the camera to bracketing where it will firstly take a shot at what it considers the “correct” exposure, then a shot that is supposedly underexposed, and the third shot overexposed. The degree of under- or over-exposure depends how you set up the bracketing – I set it for one stop either side of the “correct” exposure.

 

After sifting through loads of tutorials/manuals etc, I finally found one Youtube tutorial that pointed out the aspect of putting the camera on continuous shooting or one shot setting in bracketing, and then realised I would have to click the shutter 3 times!Basic, I know, but when you haven’t used that facility before, who knew?!

 

I put my camera on P, as that’s what the tutorial suggested. I can see how you would suggest the Manual setting, and then I know that nothing changes unless I programme it to – hopefully. As for the camera manual, it is helpful – but only to a point.

 

I tried the second task in the assignment – showing movement/speed – and that went far more easily, I think. I appreciate your confidence that I will get my head around things soon. I have felt my brain begin to “smoke” trying to cope with some of the technical aspects and trying to interpret very basic instructions that assume knowledge I don’t yet have, so encouragement is appreciated!

 

I will have another shot at the bracketing thing this weekend – I fear my first assignment will be a little delayed, though.

[Robert A. F. Van de Voort]

Will respond soon access was denied on my pc earlier

[Robert A. F. Van de Voort]

Good afternoon Janice, your understanding of bracketing is correct, now you have to find the correct exposure on your camera (you can choose any mode for this and if I use any modes other than manual I would use the aperture mode select A) and while the light is not changing in intensity, take three photographs each with a different exposure level of the same scene. In our example we have given you three different settings. Hopefully that gives you enough ideas to proceed with.
I do find the tutorial a little awkward in this case (I did not write it, I’m only working with it) but it should give you some ideas? Unfortunately the book does not offer you any explicit instructions on how to do it either.

Try to keep your camera on manual, a pity that in this digital age they have made cameras far more complicated that they should be, in essence you only need a few things, shutter speed selector, aperture settings, ISO settings and focusing, all on manual. The rest is luggage.

Try Cambridge in colour,
https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/
they have lots of instructional info. Thank you for your perseverance. I do not mind if you’re assignment is delayed, I prefer it is correct then hastily put together.
Do not forget to indicate exactly where your “problem areas”