F-Stops and Shutter Speeds: How To Make This Relationship Work for YOU

Friday, March 30, 2012 | 10:00 am-12:30 pm

Going on a big trip with your new camera? You MUST do this Safari before you go!

You love your camera,  BUT – out of fear of doing the wrong thing – you always keep it on a nice, safe “Auto” or “P” and let the camera do the thinking. Or you put it on “M” because you see the pros doing that and STILL your pictures come out poorly exposed!  You are depressed! You are intimidated by the letters “A”, “S”, “M”, or “ASM”, or “Av” and “Tv”.  As a result you only use $100 worth of the features of your $700 camera! 

Does this sound familiar? You are not alone! Help is now on the way from a professional architectural photographer who has made every F-stop mistake in the book, E. David Luria, founder/director of the Washington Photo Safari who since 1999 has helped over 21,000 amateur photographers take better pictures by making full use of their cameras. 

How DO the pros get that kid’s face nice and sharp and the background blurred? How do they make all the moving cars and people on a street DISAPPEAR?  How do they get those waterfalls and streams to look like cloudy mist? This special photo Safari will concentrate on understanding WHY you would want to choose “Shutter Priority” or “Aperture Priority”  or even the “P” setting for your camera, whether it is an SLR or a simple point and shoot or “prosumer “  camera.  You will learn how YOU—not the camera—can control the final image. We will review White Balance and ISO settings, We will even teach you to take the “Mystery” out of the “M” setting. We will conduct a special therapeutic intervention to get you OFF of the Ugly Green Automatic Thing! In short, we will make YOU the boss of your camera, not the other way around!

Bring your camera and ALL your lenses for this very helpful primer on the proper use of your camera. If you have neutral density filters to slow down your shutter, bring those too! Got a camera that shoots 2, 3 4, or 5 frames a second?  Bring it, here is your chance to test it out! Got a really FAST lens like a 50mm F1.4 or a 70-200mm F2.8?  Bring it, for sure, to OBLITERATE the background. Got a nice expensive 12-20mm wide-angle? Bring it, to make EVERTHING sharp from foreground to background. No tripods on this safari.

Our venue for this Safari is Lafayette Park, the White House and the beautiful Renwick Gallery, a Smithsonian museum of American art and crafts, one block from the White House. Its Great Hall is one of the classic spaces in Washington, and its exhibit galleries provide excellent opportunities to practice depth of field on paintings and sculpture. We will also practice depth of field, , fast and shutter speeds on the traffic moving along adjacent 17th Street and make it disappear!