Hello and welcome to the start of PixelPush Blog's Basix series of articles for photography beginners. With this first part we are going to explore basic workflow and making sure your camera is properly setup. The second part will look at your first edits in Lightroom or Photoshop and Camera Raw.

In the beginning

Photoshop, Camera RAW and Lightroom, the big three for virtually every photographer who takes photography seriously. If you are looking to get into photography, or you have just started, these software suites will be the first software names you will become aware of. Like most specialist applications it is not designed to be used straight out of the box. Fortunately with the release of Adobe Lightroom using Photoshop as your primary editing tool has been somewhat reduced but by no means removed.

Photoshop, Camera Raw and Lightroom form part of a creative workflow, the process you use to create photographs. The most basic workflow we all use is:

TAKE PHOTOGRAPH > EDIT PHOTOGRAPH

From this point on your workflow will expand around these two stages.

This brings us to the start of your creative workflow - taking the photograph and getting to know your camera.

Photography is as personal as the tools you use. There is no right or wrong camera as each model has its pro's and con's and these are distributed between the features you want and the price you are willing to pay to have them. I use Nikon because when I bought my first camera the D70 was the best value for the money I had, since then I have stuck with Nikon. Nowadays there isn't a great difference between the models of all the major brands in any given price bracket. Your choice will come down to what your friends use, what the magazines and blogs say and what you can afford.

But, whilst you may think the camera is the most important part of the photographic system, it actually sits a close second behind the lens. The quality of the glass you use will affect the sharpness, contrast and colour quality of the photograph you take. Most beginner kits fulfil all the basic requirements and there is no need to splash out thousands of pounds on gear you will not need or understand how to use and why you are using it.

Before you take your first set of photographs it is important to have your camera setup correctly. This will help make creating photographs and editing them an easier process, allowing you to focus more time on creative editing, and less time on corrective/reconstructive editing.

Before we go any further attach your lens, remove the lens cap, insert a memory card and put the battery in (I know, I know this is obvious).

The following check-list will help you out with making sure your camera is correctly setup:

Set file type to RAW.

Check ISO and set to lowest setting.

Check white balance and set to Auto.

Set Colour Space to sRGB.

Set all in camera image optimisation settings to zero or neutral.

Turn off all in camera noise reduction.

Choose and use the correct exposure mode

Setting the correct shutter speed and aperture.

SET YOUR FILE TYPE TO RAW

Try to always shoot in your cameras native RAW file format. This file type will give you greater detail and more options when editing (like opening a file as a smart object) when compared to JPEG files. The pros and cons I will cover at a later date.

A LITTLE SOMETHING TO REMEMBER ABOUT RAW FILES

when you see RAW images in Lightroom or Camera RAW.

The preview image you see on your camera's LCD is an interpretation of the photograph you have just taken based on the options selected in your camera image optimisation settings. If you are shooting jpeg then you will see the camera preview when you open your photograph on your PC, but if you are using RAW files the photograph WILL appear completely different from what you saw on the back of your camera when loaded into Camera RAW or Lightroom. Do not panic or get frustrated all editing software has a default setting for RAW files it uses when they are imported into the software. There are ways to get around this using import presets but I will show you how to do this at a later date.

CHECK ISO AND SET TO LOWEST SETTING

ISO (International Organization of Standards) is a term given to the sensitivity of your camera's imaging sensor. ISO was originally used to describe the sensitivity of photographic film and has been passed over to the digital world as an equivalent measurement system. A low number (iso 50 -200) equals low sensitivity, low levels of noise in your image, smooth gradients and fine details. A high number (iso 1200 - 6400) will result in a high sensitivity, visible levels of noise, rough gradients and a loss in fine detail. But a higher iso allows you to shoot in conditions with low levels of light. For now, set your camera to its lowest ISO setting.

CHECK WHITE BALANCE AND SET TO AUTO

A camera has a white balance so it can render colours correctly in a given colour light environment and is used to renders neutral tones correctly. So white is white and not light orange or green (which is known as a colour cast). The majority of all in camera colour problems in a photograph will be down to the white balance assigned to the photograph. If you shoot RAW this will not be a problem as it can be altered afterwards, but if you shoot in jpegs you will be tasked with a more difficult correction. Most of the time when I shoot in RAW I leave the white balance set to auto as it allows me to spend less time checking an images colour and more time concentrating on the job at hand. There are jobs when taking a manual white balance reading or shooting a grey card are required for colour accuracy. But, to be honest, altering the colour of a photograph to suit a time of day or a specific mood will be part of your creative process so do not worry about it at this stage and set your cameras white balance to auto.

SET THE COLOUR SPACE TO sRGB

Your digital camera uses a mathematical model known as a colour space to help the capture and interpretation of colour from what you see as colour (the visible spectrum) to the digital format via the camera's imaging sensor and on board computer. In your camera these are based on red, green and blue colour values.

Most camera's will allow you to choose the colour space you want to use in an image optimising menu buried somewhere deep in its menu system (have a look and find it). Usually you are given a choice of sRGB or Adobe RGB (usually found in an image optimisation menu). Adobe RGB is a specialist colour space that compresses colour values and requires specific software to uncompress them, and unless you know what you are doing do not use this colour space. sRGB is the world standard for digital images, printing and the Internet. Setting your camera to this will allow it to produce images that are compatible. So go ahead and select sRGB.

SET ALL IN CAMERA IMAGE OPTIMISATION SETTINGS TO ZERO

All dSLR's give you the option to optimise your photographs such as sharpness, contrast, brightness, saturation and hue. These adjustments exists in camera for people who do not have access to a computer to edit their images and are very useful if your printing direct from the camera. All of these settings are adjustments that can be done with greater accuracy and control in Photoshop, Camera Raw and Lightroom. So you should leave all settings as neutral as possible or at zero. It will make life easier for you when you begin editing your photographs.

TURN OFF ALL IN CAMERA NOISE REDUCTION

For all the reasons above, turn off your cameras noise reduction and never turn it on again. Lightroom, from version 3, has fantastic tools for reducing noise and there also a host of specialist software solutions that can reduce noise more efficiently than your camera can. All we want from the camera is a good raw image to work with in the computer.

CHOOSE AND USE THE CORRECT EXPOSURE MODE

All worthwhile camera's come with the standard four exposure modes:

Manual (M)

Aperture-Priority Auto (A)

Shutter-Priority Auto (S)

Programmed Auto (P)

Exposure modes control the relationship between the lenses aperture blades (these control the amount and angle of light travelling through the lens) and the shutter curtains (these hide and show the cameras imaging sensor).

The two modes I have only ever used are Manual and Aperture Priority. Manual will give you full control over how long the shutter remains open and the depth of field (the area of the photograph in focus ) and is good for studio work and conditions where light is either constant and you want freedom to control depth. Aperture priority will allow you to set the depth of field for any given focal length whilst the camera works out the correct shutter speed. This is useful for when you are working fast and want full control over you depth of field, like at a wedding or an outdoors portrait shoot, or if you are using exposure bracketing (a technique involving taking several photographs of a composition at different exposures). Shutter -Priority is best suited to situations where your subject is moving fast, like sports, where you want the shutter speed to remain constant. I have still yet to find a practical use of programmed-priority, I'm sure there is one but it does sit lonely and unused on my camera.

Experiment with these four settings, DO NOT get stuck using only one because you find it confusing. The exposure modes are the key to capturing a correctly exposed photograph and knowing when to use them will come with time and experimentation.

SETTING THE CORRECT SHUTTER SPEED AND APERTURE

So the final step to taking a correctly exposed photograph are setting the shutter speed and aperture. Most camera's have an electronic analogue exposure display (see photo above) which you can find either in the view finder, on the rear LCD or on the control panel (if your camera has one). What we are trying to do with this is to get the indicator mark to land on the zero in the middle of the scale (the optimal exposure). There are a many different combinations of shutter speed and aperture to get the optimal exposure, but what we are trying to do is take a creative image not a mathematically accurate one. The first thing we do is set the depth of field by altering the apertures f-number. A low f-number will give you a shallow area of focus resulting in a blurry background. This is good for creative portraiture and macro work. A high f-number gives us a deep area of focus and is good for capturing scenes that are expansive like landscapes. If you are using aperture-priority exposure mode then the shutter speed will be worked out for you. If you are using manual exposure mode then you will now need to adjust the shutter speed to get the optimal exposure.

The optimal exposure is worked out using the camera's light meter. This works 90% of the time for most situations but often suffers in situations called an unbalanced scenes in which you have extremes of shadows and highlights. Over time you will get to know your camera and its strengths and weaknesses. The best way of deciding if your exposure is accurate is to press the play button on the rear of camera and have a look yourself. Also flick through the preview options and have a look at the camera's histogram (histograms will be covered in the next article).

In the next article: Editing, the joys of bringing your photos to life.

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