Photography course.
droidy001
Posts: 282
in The Commons
Online tutorials are great but are no substitute for hands on learning.
Has anyone without any previous photography experience, except for put on auto point and shoot, taken a basic course?
Did it improve your understanding of lighting and settings in daz?
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Comments
I have a background in photography, and I would most certainly advise anyone serious about their daz craft to learn about it. There are a lot of settings in Daz / Iray that come directly from photography. There is also the myriad skills like finding a motive, framing, compositing, setting up lights, blocking lights, posing your subject, etc, etc, etc.
Try a basic course, and you should have quite a gain in experience to directly transfer that experience to Daz (and back! You can setup a few scenes to try out before photographing)
The one thing is that a photography course, like most educational opportunities, is only as good as the teacher and the resources that it gives you. I've had occasions where I've stepped into a class and within a few minutes realized that I wasn't going to learn anything new, but I stayed in the class becasue it gave me access to other things that I wanted, like a better darkroom back in the day, more advanced equipment, professional models, etc., for less than the cost of hiring/buying them for myself. Definitely find out what the course is going to cover before you spend any cash, and if at all possible, check out the teacher's qualifications and portfolio.
But, all that said, yes, understanding photography, how light works to create an image, and basic elements of composition all help when it comes to working with 3D.
I have a background in photography, not professional, but I'd say above average amateur if that means anything? Auto settings is never a thing and I see my world in the rule of thirds, lol. I've never taken a course, but I have read many books...and that's what got me started and on my way. Then it turned into experience. I think it really depends on the type of learner you are...I don't learn by being talked at.
But yes, understanding photography I would say put me miles ahead in trying to "art" with 3D. I have folks who have been using Daz for years and years asking me for advice on stuff and I've only been doing it for about 18 months, so that's saying something. The other thing that put me ahead was coming into the game already understanding texture formatting and how it works. That came from modding video games like Skyrim and Fallout.
The only 'useful' information I recall from a photography course was why nobody wanted to stay for long in the cafeteria to eat lunch, the lights were intentionally orange. While everything looked 'normal' the mind apparently would see things such as white potatoes as orange potatoes and of course, nobody wants to eat orange potatoes. There was a lot of food wasted in that cafeteria.
Hands on experience actually taking photographs, adjusting settings and seeing what happens, that was helpful to a point. The one panel wherein some camera knowledge comes in handy I show here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5046876/#Comment_5046876
You might want to get Digital Lighting and Rendering by Jeremy Birn. It's a great resource, and is considered by many to be the definitive book on the subject. While learning more about photography will help with lighting, this book should help you to understand the interdependent role that lighting and surface materials/shaders play in rendering.
No because I wasn't taking courses for lighting and had not heard of Daz back in 2004. My husband and I had (have) professional grade equiupment and years of experience shooting sports photography. As sanctioned photographers (media credentials and published in hundreds of issues), despite having a background in photography, we did take multiple Nikon courses in person at the onset of our venture. Oftentimes the instructors had a varied background from Portrait to Nat Geo. We did land a contract with Lucas Oil and were their sanctioned photographer for their Need for Speed Show for years. I believe if you are pursuing a career, the in person classes are the better than books (we own a ton) or youtube videos. Instead of taking a basic course, if you have professional gear, read the manual on shutter speeds Fstops and White Balance and once you identify an area of weakness, take a course on that.
I took a Nikon digital photography course some years back that was extremely helpful. It was a day long course divided in 2 parts. The morning was the technical half and discussed the prupose and detail of each major setting / parameter. While menu / button locations were Nikon specific, the general information about the interplay between aperture, shutter speed, focal length and focal distance were useful for anyone. The afternoon was the artistic side and talked about composition, lighting, and printing.
Well worth the time and money.
Studio settings for Iray such as aperture and shutter speed as well as lighting lumen values don't directly translate from reality, but the effects are the same. Iray realistically simulates lighting characteristics. If you don't understand how light behaves and interacts with surfaces, you will always struggle with rendering.
About 25 years ago, I went on a vacation to Norway. Since I love rough mountains and stuff like that, I asked my dad *very* politely if I could take his baby, an old Pentax with a couple of lense sets with me.
To my utter surprise, he agreed, and gave me a crash course on how to use it, about lighting and apperture and the ISO number on filmrolls, and everything. So, armed with that camera and ten ISO 200 filmrolls (24 shots a piece), I went on vacation, and merrily made a few hundred pictures. After that vacation, I didn't get to take that camera with me very often, but when I did, I definitely enjoyed using it.
A few years ago, when I learned about Daz Studio, a lot of things related to Camera Settings and Render Settings were very recognizable, which I'm sure gave me a nice headstart in figuring out how these things work. It didn't explain everything in Daz, but at least it gave me a grasp how to work with it.
I think the technical benefit of knowing your way around cameras wears off after a few weeks of messing around in Daz. There are many online guides explaining all these settings, so even people without camera experience can pick up on these basic Daz settings pretty fast.
But, learning how to use a camera isn't everything you're being taught on a photography course. Something many people underestimate, is image composition. What do you want within the shot? What do you leave outside the shot? From what angle do I take a picture of my subject? Do I tilt the camera or do I try to keep the horizon, well, horizontal? At what height within the image do I place that horizon thing anyway?
And that is something that I can definitely advice people to investigate. These things are fairly commonly talked about in photography courses, and well, it's a good thing to have some general idea about composition if you want to make your images aesthetically pleasing. A lot of the aesthetic rules, you'll be doing subconciously already. But it helps to be aware of these things, when you're in a bind and can't figure out how to get that image you want. Then you have these aesthetic rules to point you in a direction that does work. Sometimes the solution to improving your shot is just a matter of lowering your camera some 30 centimeters (about a foot) and taking aim again, lowering the horizon from 5% below the top of your image to some 30% below the top of your image. It's right in front of you, but if you aren't aware of such little composition hints, then they're easily overlooked.
At a couple times in my life I was a semi-professional photographer, but it was back in the day when automatic cameras were out of my budget so I learned the old-fashioned way with 10 or 20 year old totally manual cameras from a pawn shop, and hand held light meters. I never took a course but did read a lot books and magazines. Learned things like shutter speeds, aperture f-stops, ASA film ratings, color filter effects, enlarging techniques, and b/w & color chemistry developing. Filled my head with technology. Trying to explain it all to the curious was an exercise in watching for the point when their eyes glazed over. After 20 years of film photography I had some acquired some nice equipment. But there came the day when the digital revolution was banging on the door and I sold my entire darkroom setup. I still have a couple of old professional level manual cameras but they are curiosities packed away in a box somewhere. But all that information about how light behaves, color theory, composition styles is still valid at some level in my DAZ work whether it be Iray or 3Delight. Although 3Delight has some magic that it does to "light" in a scene. (sometimes it's fun to tinker with "negative light" in a 3Delight setup.) Cool!
Taking a course or reading a good book on the basics of manual photography can't hurt.
Note: Curious though that these days totally automatic cameras are everywhere and quite inexpensive (although you can easily go over budget if you're a photo-gearhead), but finding a modern camera with all the manual controls is difficult and you have to move up into the "Pro" line to find them. So, it's back to the pawn shop to find a 20 or 30 year old camera to go primitive again!
I have't bought a camera in a few years, but I have the consumer level Canon DSLR and it has auto and manual controls. I can't remember the exact model...isn't that awful? LOL. It's 16mp and is definitely of the "Rebel" line, so I think it was bought maybe like five or six years ago. My other cameras are a 2005 Canon 20D that still works perfectly (and has manual controls) and a infrared-converted Canon 10D that looks brand new. I know Canon goes XXX-digits = consumer, XX-digits = "prosumer", and X-digits = pro and I haven't seen one of them that don't offer manual controls.
I'm not a professional or amatuer photographer for that matter although a photo development business once bought some pictures I took from me. That was with a Nikon 35mm film camera from 1994 so really good pictures by the general public were much harder to come by as we simply didn't spend the sort of money it'd take to take & develop enough film to get good pictures by chance.
Now that it's digital it's much easier to find quite a few really great pictures by many people. So what I did was buy a good digital camera that was good enough and fast enough for me to take massive amounts of bad pictures and then sort though the bad ones for the really good ones that were far fewer in between. At first it wasn't so common and people were like "Wow! Those are gorgeous!" Now it's like everyone takes pictures that good. That said, I must have gigabytes and 10s of 1000s of great pictures from old friends and complete strangers via tourism groups that I found pretty that I've saved on FB.
As far as I understand it that's how every photographer that isn't a studio photographer does it and even the really good studio photographers will take massive amounts of pictures of their subject to be able to pick through them for those two or three really good ones.
Now, those photographers that show up at your school or at the driver's license bureau, well let's say, I hope you get lucky and get a flattering picture because they'll do absolutely everything in the way they do those pictures to see that you get a bad photo with one shot. You're going to have to have your eyes closed or be blantanly looking elsewhere with your head turned to get that photo retaken.
Which reminds me, to fly national now in US I have to update my driver's license for my state as the grace period has expired. Seems really weird to have to do that now.
@nonesuch00 "Which reminds me, to fly national now in US I have to update my driver's license for my state as the grace period has expired"
Doesn't go into effect until October 1.
Oh, thanks for the heads up.
Leaving the mechanics of Daz Studio and 3DG rendering and everything else aside, even basic level photography courses deal with composition and lighting. When you break everything else down, they are the building blocks of how people percieve visual art, be it painting, photography, or 3D rendering.
The basics apply accross the board and you simply can't go wrong with learing the basics of how people visualize the real world or even fantasy art.