Technical Design

The camera that I used for my Photojournalism essay was a Canon 450d. Before I was able to take the Canon and begin my work I was trained to use the 450d.

 One of the main things that we were taught about the Canon 450d was the ISO (International Standard Organisation), what it meant and how it would be useful to us when taking the camera out.
If outside it light was very bright and sunny then you would set the ISO to 100/200. This is called the ‘Spanish Film.’ If outside was quite cloudy and not as bright, going into early evening, the ISO would be set to 400/800, this is considered to be called the UK Film. And finally ISO 1600 would only be used when the outside is completely dark.

As well as learning about the ISO it was also important to learn and have knowledge about AV. This is aperture, when you have a higher aperture, i.e. F32 then the image has a larger of dept of field. When the aperture is set smaller, i.e. F2.8 the image has a smaller dept of field. It works with the ISO to take the picture and controls the shutter speed of the camera.

As well as learning about the Canon 450d, we also gained access to the new Canon 550d. We were then taught to always set this camera in the 'm' (manual) mode. The Canon 550d recognises when their is a red eye and is able to fix it and that it has its own photoshop built into the camera so it can edit the files. The ISO now goes as far as 6400 and can be used as a filming camera, like the Blair Witch. We were also told never to film on ISO Auto. This was because the camera tries to recognise each different lighting sources and will change its ISO while filming hence becoing noticable through playback.

The video below explains how to use a Canon 450d and the Canon 550d which can useful into further unstanding how to master the camera.