Short tutorial on Photo Basics / Mardi Gras Recap / Photo Plans

I probably should have done this before the flash tutorial but I'm so into flash photography I couldn't resist. In photography theres a whole heap of tools and settings that photographers keep an eye on or fiddle around with in taking photos. The most important settings to always keep in mind however are aperture, shutter speed and iso. These three settings determine how your photo will look. I won't go into great detail explaining what these do because that would be just so much to type, so heres a quick and very basic run through of each.  

aperture: how wide the iris of the lens opens. The wider the iris, the more light is able to reach the camera which enables faster shutter speeds.
shutter speed: determines how long the shutter remains open.
iso: determines how sensitive the sensor is to light. (the higher the iso, the more sensitive it is to light enabling faster shutter speeds at the expense of image quality where noise can become visible).

Thats as basic as it gets. For people that own a Nikon d3000 or a sony a230/a330/a380, iso, aperture and shutter speed are explained quite well through diagrams and brief explanations.

I usually shoot in aperture priority mode (user determines the aperture and camera automatically determines shutter speed) and set my own iso. Mainly because  it gives me the creative control of how my photos look (depth of field). Other times I shoot Manual mode as it enables me to use the BULB setting (shutter remains open for however long the user wants).

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Time to talk about the weekend. I ended up shooting at the Mardi Gras and I have to say it was quite fun with all the floats and hilarious people about. One thing I found pretty funny was the aliens from toy story with Buzz Lightyear that also made an appearance.

I spoke to a lot of photographers there and a lot of them came from all over the world like USA, New Zealand, Canada and Spain. I couldn't believe that they just came down here for this but pretty cool for our economy I guess. One of the people that I was speaking to were sporting the Canon EOS 7d. I must admit that its a pretty good camera and rated as one of the best apsc sized sensor cameras ever produced, at the moment =P (though 18megapixels is a bit too much for a cropped frame sensor IMO).

Back to the topic, shooting at the Mardi Gras was a great photographic experience and though I'm not particularly happy with my images (I never really am), I learned a lot from the people I spoke to and the photos I took from that night.
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I was hoping to have done a few mini shoots by now but due to my car accident and also because the weather isn't that great at the moment. But that doesn't mean I'm not doing anything with my photography. I'm still reading about ideas and tutorials on the net and at borders. There's quite a few ideas I want to try out. Also need a new notebook to write my notes in cause I lost mine. Hoping to have a shoot next week for JMCK and to have a few mini shoots too. And to have another time lapse video done soon. Lets see how this all pans out next week.

Thanks for reading and take care everyone! =.)