Hi, I’m Ben Turner, and welcome to Practical Photographies, getting started in landscapes. There’s a great new multimedia feature that’s on the shelves right now. We want to make it really easy for you to get a grip for shooting landscapes. So in your October issue, you not only find in depth feature all about it, but there’s also a complimentary video CD on the cover to. Now this CD contains live action video, just like the one you’re watching now and also some informative and inspirational slideshow. It’s a fantastic easy way to learn and it won't cost you anymore than the usual cover price of the magazine. In this free video, we’re gonna start right at the beginning, and I’m gonna show you the camera setting you need to use to capture a traditional wide angles landscapes. It will help you get consistently good results. So let’s carry on walking down here and take a closer look. Now if you normally shoot your camera on a fully automatic mode, and you might be tempted to switch over to the landscape scene mode, now that’s the little picture of the mountains on the top there. Now, while this mode might be the easiest option to use, it won't give you the most control over your camera. A much better option is to look for the aperture priority mode, that’s the A, or the Av setting. Now this allows you to determine the depth to field on your shots. For most landscape shots, you want the maximum depth to field. This is why the images shot from the foreground right to the far distance. So once you select your aperture priority mode, you can use input dial to select the small aperture such as F16. Now stopping down a bit, will normally increase the quality of your images to a little bit sharper. On the subject equality, when it comes to traditional landscapes, sharpness is absolutely the key. So I recommend that you shoot in the raw file format rather than jpeg. Now you need to install a compatible raw converter in your PC first, but the advantages are worth the hassle. In short, you can fine tune the images easily and there’s no lost in quality. Now learn more about raw in the October issue. Just select raw on your camera, you’ll usually find it in the menu, under file format or quality. So I’m gonna hit menu here, and then scroll to quality right at the top and now I’m just gonna choose the raw option, right in the end there. I don’t want to save a raw with the jpeg, so I’m gonna choose that one, and it’s done. The next you need to make sure, that the ISO is set to the lowest number available. Now this will ensure that you get the lowest amount of noise and also the best saturation and sharpness. So I’m gonna hit ISO, and just bring that one down to 100. Now on some cameras this is either 50 or 200, just make sure you got the lowest number set. Okay, well that’s that, let’s go and find a shot. Okay, let’s get set up. Well, with the low ISO and small aperture, you’re shots will be quite long even in relatively bright conditions, so make sure you use a sturdy tripod like this one here, just to avoid camera shake and blur. Alright, let’s just set up here, get a composition. That would be alright, okay. Now once you make sure you got your camera set up for best quality, now I need to take a look at some of the settings that will allow to take even better landscape shots. Right, first I have white balance, now this controls how warm or cool your shots gonna look. And normally this is set on auto, but we’ll gonna set it manually, just to ensure color accuracy. Now, 9 times out of 10, set this to sunny mode, that’s what we’re doing here, and that’s just a little sun icon. But you can also use the cloudy mode, which is like a little cloudy icon, and that would extra warmth to this shot, to make it a bit more yellow. Now, with the basic exposure set, it’s worth taking a second to make sure you know where the exposure compensation is located in your camera. Now this will allow to auto expose your to compensate for very bright or dark subjects. Your camera can always get the exposure right first time. Now to start with, make sure it’s set to zero, and look for the expose button in the viewfinder, on the top of the LCD screen here on the back in some cameras to. Just make sure it’s set to zero. Okay, so when you take your shot, just get in the habit of looking on the back of the camera in the LCD screen, just to see if the exposure needs an adjustment. If it’s too bright, take the exposure compensation to negative values, or if it’s too dark, just move it into the positive values. Then take another shot, just to check it back again to see if it needs any further adjustment. Well that’s all there is to it, now you’re ready to go out and take some cracking landscapes. So, to learn more about choosing camera kit, using ND graph, shooting HGR and much more, make sure you get a hold of your October issue of Practical Photography and the free cover CD, it’s out now, but hurry, it’s only in the shop till the 7th of October. So make sure you don’t miss out.
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