A few months ago, I was able to grab a great deal from Groupon.com. A website called Chimpsy offers photography classes for DSLR cameras as well as point and shoots all over the country. I registered for a class this past Saturday, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from it.
We met in Center City at a crowded coffee shop, a very crowded shop actually. It was kind of loud, and I think there was definitely better places to meet. The first hour was spent in the coffee shop going over the different features of a DSLR camera. How to adjust for light, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, etc. Things that I had no idea about, until yesterday.
After going over how to use the camera’s features, it was time to practice some new skills. We took a walk over to City Hall, but the walk took FOREVER. The 9 students in the class stopped to take a ton of pictures along the way. Some of the things we learned on the walk were really cool, but some were a little redundant.
We learned how to shoot “sun stars” which is done by shooting directly into the glare of the sun on a window or reflective surface.
Once we finally got to City Hall, we were told to take the same picture on three different settings that varied the amount of light that was let into the camera.
normal
less light
more light
We then all went off on our own for 15 minutes to take some interesting shots…here are a few I came up with.
Then we learned a neat trick about capturing moving objects. If you change the settings on your camera to continous focusing and continuous shooting, then you can follow a moving object. In the photos it will appear clear, but everything else will be blurry. I tried it out for a few shots, below I was following the white Lexus.
I did learn a lot from the class, but I still would just rate it a 7/10. I’m glad I know a bit more about what my camera is capable of doing, but I don’t think I got as much out of it as I thought I would. Chimpsy also offers a intermediate DSLR class to anyone interested, which focuses more on the hidden features that the cameras have to offer and everything is done entirely on manual mode. I don’t think I’ll be taking the intermediate class, but I’m glad I got the groupon and took this one. Not sure if it would be worth the full class price of $125.
If you're looking for a different company for DSLR classes, I got a Living Social coupon for
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dslrworkshops.com/ DSLR Workshops by Okello Dunkley Photography. We met at the Crowne Plaza in one of their conference rooms and went over the camera in great detail. I will say, we did not go out into the wild to photograph, but I learned a lot about my camera and it was very professionally done. When I get the money, I'm thinking of paying (full-price!) for the next level of classes.