Introduction to Photography

Introduction 

“Photography”, or “Light Drawing”, is essentially a combination of technique and visual observation. Traditional silver halide photography has been replaced by digital photography in almost all the areas of photographic profession. The digital photography industry has seen unprecedented growth in the last few years. This has been primarily due to the availability of high quality electronic imaging devices and fast and affordable computing power and digital storage. 

Developing the ability to make successful photographs must include some basic technical theories and compositional tricks. Learning photography is like learning to write: first you have to shape the letters forming words, then spell, then string together sentences and paragraphs. But individuals who can do all this is no writer until he or she has ideas to express through words. In the same way technical theory to photographer is a means to a visual end, something which allows better control and self-confidence in achieving what you want to say (Langford, 2000).

Principles of Photography: Technical Routines and Creative Choices
First, there are set routines where consistency is all important for example focusing, exposure, processing and final printing.

• Focusing is the process of placing the film- plane or sensor (CCD/CMOS) -on the focal point.
• Exposure is the exact amount of light that should hit the film or sensor to expose it correctly.
• Processing and Printing is a responsible job and essentially a consistent, controlled routine as this gives you the final output.

Second, there are those stages at which creative decisions must be made. These include composition of your subject, lighting and camera handling, as well as editing before final output.

• Composition defines what should be the content of a frame that we see. It also defines what is implied beyond what we see.
• Lighting is a creative way of illuminating the subject to express the texture, form, depth, detail and mood.
• Editing encompasses the processes of altering images as per the requirement before final print out, whether they be digital photographs, traditional analog photographs, or illustrations.

Equipment and functions

Lenses:
The most vital optical element of a camera is lens. The main object of photographic lens design and manufacture is to produce lenses which minimize optical defects (known as aberrations) while increasing resolution and image brightness.

Focal Length:
The focal length of a lens is the distance from its centre to the focal point (where the film is).

Type of Lenses

Normal: a normal lens is a lens that reproduces perspective that generally looks "natural" to a human observer under normal viewing conditions, as compared with lenses with longer or shorter focal lengths than 50 mm.

Wide angle: A wide angle lens is a lens whose angle of view is wider than normal lens that is around 50 mm.

Telephoto: A telephoto lens is a lens whose angle of view is narrower than the normal lens.

Lens Focal Length*	Terminology	Typical Photography
Less than 21 mm	Extreme Wide Angle	Architecture
21-45 mm	Wide Angle	Landscape
45-55 mm	Normal	Street & Documentary
55-135 mm	Medium Telephoto	Portraiture
135-300+ mm	Telephoto	Sports, Bird & Wildlife

Zoom lenses: A lens with variable focal length altered by shifting glass element. It is built into most modern compact cameras which do not allow interchangeable lenses. Good quality zoom lens is optically complex.

Macro lenses: A lens specifically designed for close work and with a long barrel for close focusing, called a macro lens. Some manufacturers call it a micro, which might actually be scientifically more accurate, but can be confusing, since it goes against the established convention. A macro lens might be optimized to provide its best performance at a magnification of 1:1.

Fish Eye Lens: Fisheye lens is a wide-angle lens that takes in an extremely wide, hemispherical image. Originally developed for use in meteorology to study cloud formation and called "whole-sky lenses", fisheye lenses quickly became popular in general photography for their unique, distorted appearance. The picture angle produced by these lenses only measures 180 degrees when measured from corner to corner: these have a 180° diagonal angle of view, while the horizontal and vertical angles of view will be smaller around 147o and 94o respectively . 


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