Lesson 1 DP Class Chapter 1

Introduction Digital photography is fascinating and mystifying, bringing a vibrant change to an age-old art in a world brimming with high-tech phones, tablets, social media, and more!

If you're a little unsure of how it all works, what equipment you need, or where to go for straightforward advice, we're glad you're herethis class is a great place for you to gather the information you'll need to make good decisions. Today, you're going to start a plain-English exploration into the world of digital photography, where we'll investigate all the parts and pieces that make up this wonderful opportunity for photographers, artists, and the average camera bug who just wants to get some good pictures. We'll discuss camera equipment, digital editing, phone photography, using a tablet, printing, backing up digital images, and more. But this isn't a class on how to use your camera for things like setting manual exposure or doing formal portrait photography. I teach another online class called Secrets of Better Photography, which many students take after this class. That class focuses (no pun intended) on how to get better pictures, regardless of the type of camera you have. Once you feel comfortable with the material in this course, you may want to join us in the Secrets class, where we discuss helpful information on exposure, lighting, and strategies for using your camera to take high-quality photos in all types of situations. But in this class, we direct our attention to digital photography and its equipment in a more general way. Our intention is to help you choose and understand the best digital equipment for you, and learn how to use your digital images in today's world. If you'd like to review the expanded syllabi for these two classes (or others I teach) to be sure you're in the right place, please visit the Supplementary Material section at the end of this lesson. You'll find a link to more detailed course information there. And since we're doing introductions, let me take a moment to tell you a little about myself. My name is Beverly Schulz, and I'm your instructor for this course. Teaching online came as a welcome addition to my teaching career in the mid-1990s. I'd been in the more traditional classroom for more than 15 years, teaching college-level courses and adult education.

With the advent of the Internet, I was able to pioneer teaching a number of my courses onlineand many years later, it still fits my lifestyle perfectly. I hope you'll enjoy the flexibility and convenience of online classes as well! I'm a teacher by trade and a freelance photographer. I've spent my fair share of hours in the classroom as a student as well, and I hold several academic degrees. The most enjoyable studying I did was with the New York Institute of Photography in its Professional Photographer's course, which I highly recommend if you're interested in pursuing a career in photography. Okay, ready to get started? Meet me in Chapter 2, and we'll look at how digital photography works, as well as some terms that we'll be using in class.

Chapter 2
How Digital Photography Works We'll discuss how digital photography works in this chapter, but first I'd like to introduce you to our Digital Dictionary. With each lesson, as we study new topics, I'll add terms and phrases to the Digital Dictionary. And at the end of the course, you can download a file with all of these terms. Let's look at a few terms that you'll want to be familiar with before we get started: Digital Dictionary Pixel: A computer term derived from the words picture element, meaning a tiny square or dot of color. Digital images are made up of thousands, often millions, of pixelsas is your computer's screen. If you blow up an image enough, you'll be able to see these tiny squares. We measure digital images in pixels.
Digital image enlarged to see pixels

Megapixel (MP): One million pixels. Digital camera descriptions often include a reference to how many megapixels the camera captures. Digital image: An image made up of pixels. You can view, edit, and store a digital image on a computer. Digital images can come

from digital cameras, cellphones, digital camcorders, film prints, and even scanned negatives or slides (we sometimes call scanning digitizing). Digital photography: Digital photography allows us to capture images, change them in various ways, and display them both electronically and in printed form. In other words, you can take pictures, fix them up, and put them on the Internet or print them without the need for a traditional darkroom. With those terms in mind, let's take a quick look at how digital photography works. How Does Digital Photography Work? In very simple terms, a digital camera captures an image digitally in pixels, and then stores it electronically. From there, you can display, change, enhance, or manipulate the image. The digital image is then available for outputto a website, an email, a printer, or another digital gadget. Capturing the image digitally can happen several different ways. You can use one of the many digital cameras on the market. They range in price from a few dollars to well into the thousands. Most phones and tablets include digital cameras. But they all do one basic thing: capture an image by storing pixels. Even though the technology may vary greatly, all these gadgets are still just machinesand a good photographer is someone who knows how to use those machines. Expensive camera equipment isn't the key to automatically getting better pictures! You can also create a digital image by scanning something printed, like a traditional photograph, slide, or negative. The scanner digitizes or converts the picture to a digital format by capturing the image using pixels. You can then use the image as if a digital camera took it. This is the primary way to convert old film images to digital onesa great tool for scrapbookers. The actual process of taking a picture, in both digital and traditional photography, uses light. Once light enters a digital camera, a light-sensitive computer chip, a sensor, receives it. The sensor responds to the amount of light and color in different places in the image. A processor in the camera analyzes the various responses and creates the pixels that make up the image. The camera stores the image, and you can then use it in a variety of ways.

How digital images are captured

A similar process took place in a traditional camera using film. A lightsensitive chemical covered the film, and that chemical changed based on

the amount of light it received. The process of developing that film happened outside the camera, whereas in a digital camera, the processing happens right away in the camera. No film is necessary, and the storage devices are reusablewhich makes it fast and inexpensive. Once you have your pictures, computers make it very easy to store lots of image. Let's talk about computers in the next chapter!

Chapter 3
Digital Photography and Computers Technically, it's true that you don't need a computer for digital photography. You can connect many cameras directly to a printer, and many printers can print directly from the camera's storage device. Cellphones and tablets can capture and send images to other phones or the Internet. And you can share images immediately through wireless connections, text messaging, and email. Some devices, particularly tablets, can make use of basic editing softwarebut for many applications, you'll want to put your images on a computer and work with them from there. Decisions, decisions . . . . If you're looking for a way to start an animated discussion, ask a group of people what type of computer is best. Because there's no right answer, you'll get all kinds of answers. Just remember this: What's best for you is best for you! You don't need a traditional computer to use digital photos, but most of us will use one for editing, sharing images, and making the most of digital opportunities. There are two basic types of computers based on their operating systems: PC and Mac. PCs use the Microsoft Windows software Bill Gates engineered, and Macs use an Apple operating system (OS) made famous by Steve Jobs. Microsoft has recently branched out with a new touchscreen-based version of Windows (currently Windows 8), and that's almost a new category in itself. But what's best and why? All of these computers will handle a digital photographer's needs magnificentlythey all store, share, edit, and display images with high-end professionalism. So what's all the fuss about? They're very different. You could almost think of it as dividing a group of people into left-handers and right-handers and asking them to do a physical task with equipment built for right-handers. For those who have a dominant right hand, it's going to feel good, intuitive, and the best. For

those who have a dominant left hand, everything's going to feel odd. It won't be intuitive, it won't be easy, and it certainly won't feel best. The two main operating systems (Windows and Mac) are based on a different definition of "normal." If you think like a Mac, the Macs are much easier. If you think like a PC, the PCs are much easier. So the decision you'll need to make is which is best for you. No one else can tell you what's best for younot when it comes to a computer, camera, phone, or tablet. (Can you see that we might be having this discussion several times in the next few weeks as we explore the different types of equipment?) Microsoft has the overwhelming majority of the marketthere's no question about that. Estimates vary, but around 90% of the computers sold are PCs. Macs have captured about 5-7% of that same market, and the rest is spread out here and there.
Desktop Operating System Market Share

Surprised? Apple has made a huge impact on the marketplace with iPads, iPhones, Mac computers, and other devices, and you hear a lot about those from Mac users. They have a solid presence in the electronics market, but PC users still far outnumber them when it comes to computers. Because there are significantly more PCs in the marketplace, software designers, computer manufacturers, and other supporting industries build products for the biggest market. Many companies manufacture PCs, such as Hewlett Packard (HP), Toshiba, IBM, and Dell, while Apple is the only company that manufactures Macs. Often, you'll see software that runs on both PC and Mac, but you may see the PC version come out first, or there may not be a Mac version. Apple may have a comparable product that runs on Macs and that works. Although the offerings aren't the same for both operating systems, there are plenty of great software programs for both. The story isn't over yet, but one thing we can count on is that the cycle of invention, competition, and rivalry will continueand we, the consumers, have lots to choose from!

Computers Whatever type of computer you decide on, it will have the same basic parts. The computer monitor or screen is the window to your work. The better you can see what you're working with, the easier it will be. A quality

monitor will accurately reproduce the colors in your images, which is important if you want to edit your photos well. This is one area where you don't want to skimp on price. And as convenient as laptops are, their screens aren't the best for detailed image editing. It's easy to alter the angle of the screen and see different colors and lighting. So . . . if you're headed down the path to serious photo editing, you may want to explore the option of a desktop computer and stationary monitor rather than rely on a laptop or tablet. A complete digital photography workshop might include a digital camera, a computer with imaging software, a photo printer if you choose to print images yourself, a scanner, and a CD or DVD burner that allows you to write your own disks for photo storage or sharing smaller number of photos. For backup, you'll need a larger hard drive, or perhaps access to a sky or cloud drive (accessed through the Internet). We'll talk more about those options coming up. Before we wrap up today's lesson, let's step back a bit and see how we've come to be in the middle of this digital revolution.

Chapter 4
Digital Photography's Place in Photographic History Since the early days of human existence, people have worked to record their history and life pictorially. Whether it was carving scenes into cave walls as petroglyphs or weaving a story into a basket pattern, visual communication has been a part of human culture. The actual science of photography has a long history of trial and error. Around 400 BC, Mozi in China and Aristotle in Greece worked with a camera obscura, or pinhole camera. With this type of camera, a scene passes through a pinhole, and then you can display it on a wall, using a whole room as the body of a camera. Classroom instructors occasionally still use these today to demonstrate the principles of photography and the need for compromise, because the smaller the pinhole, the sharper the imagebut the smaller pinhole also creates a darker image, so choosing the correct balance between sharpness and brightness is a challenge. By the 15th century, different people made a series of discoveries that

resulted in using lenses to focus an image (instead of just a smaller hole). And in the early 19th century, scientists discovered that silver nitrate permanently records an image when exposed to light (a much easier way to share pictures than having people come and look at your wall)and we had a working camera!

The world's first photograph, 1826

Soon after Joseph Niepce took the first photograph, a Frenchman named Louis Jacques Mand Daguerre, whose work dates to the mid-1800s, began work on some of the first modern-day prototypes of photography. For the most part, architects used Daguerre's process because of the long exposure times required. But people longed for portraiture and were willing to go to extraordinary lengths to have their pictures taken. "Hundreds of thousands of people sat before the daguerreotype camera despite the fact that from the beginning the experience was a true ordeal. At first a person had to sit for almost twenty minutes in the full sun in order to have a daguerreotype taken. The earliest daguerreotype subjects actually got sunburned while enduring the long exposure" (Martin Sandler, The Story of American Photography). As you can see, the ability to take digital photos, see them immediately, and transmit them across the globe in a matter of seconds, is a long stretch from the early days. The art and science of photography has made leaps and bounds in the last few centuries. Color film later rocked the industry, causing a wave of hysteria among purists. In 1979, Martin Sandler discussed the "intrusion" of color film into the photographic world in his book, The Story of American Photography. His comments could easily apply to our more recent transition to digital photography: To the photographer, color presents a whole new world. By deliberately distorting images, by using certain colors to express human emotions, the photographer working in color can achieve results that were impossible less than fifty years ago. . . . Still, it is obvious that color photography will not replace black and white. In fact, relatively few of the world's great professional photographers use color as their main means of expression. Yet, it is undeniably an important photographic formanother in a seemingly endless series of inventions and developments that make the art of photography always alive, always vibrant. Since then, we've seen panoramic cameras, OMNIMAX film, video

recorders, and now the world of digital imaging. Some continue to fear this is the end of an era and an art form. The feeling is not new. Artist Paul Delaroche expressed similar feelings when he saw his first photograph in 1839: "From this moment forth, painting is dead." Why Digital Now? Since the Web and Internet have become household words, computers are a standard component in homes and offices. Grandparents are online with their grandchildren, email is easy, and jumping from website to website is a quick source for information both at work and at home. Pictures (digital ones, of course) play a more than significant role in the success of the Internet. But how did we get here? The Internet began in the 1960s as a joint effort between the U.S. government and various research groups at universities throughout the world. At the time, computers networked among different government facilities in something similar to a chain. And if one link in the chain broke, the entire network literally came crashing to the ground. The solution? Use ordinary telephone lines to link computers around the world . . . and the Internet was born. By the 1990s, thousands of governmental agencies, educational institutions, research groups, and corporations had joined this extremely simple, yet vast network of computers. And people quickly discovered the obvious: With the Internet, we have the ability to share or acquire information almost instantaneouslyfrom anywhere in the world. The foundation was there, but at the time, the Internet was solely a text exchange. Email was a part of this early Internet, but on a very small scale compared to its use today. It wasn't yet the colorful, animated, easy-access system we take for granted now. But technological developments soon allowed Internet users to view graphics and access information without inputting detailed commands. Hyperlinks, often referred to as links or URLs (like www.google.com), allow us to click on a word or phrase on the screen and then transport to another website. And this soon became part of the system.

This ever-growing collection of computer sites that Web browsers can

access via the Internet make up the World Wide Web, or the Web for short. No one owns or controls the Web. It's simply a collection of millions of independent sites accessible to the world. Technically, there may still be slight differences between the terms World Wide Web and Internet. But they're so integrated at this point, for our purposes we can use the terms interchangeably. When the Internet made graphical, visual, and photographic exchange easy, research and development went into high gear. The design and marketing of digital-imaging products (such as cameras, phones, and tablets) suddenly had a big market, which translates into a big money-making opportunity. And the rest is history . . . Digital Photography in Today's World With more than 200 million images uploaded to Facebook every day (yes, that's every day!), you can see our society has embraced digital imaging. Even if you're not a Facebook fan, you'll find lots of other uses for digital photography. You may be surprised to find how easy it is to mix black-and-white photography with color and even add a digital frame. The overwhelming catalyst for the huge array of new equipment and software in this area is the ability to use digital images for both personal and business reasons.

Digital portraiture

We've come a long way, but this is really just the beginning of the digital age. I'm glad you've decided to join us and be well informed as you make decisions on how to make the most of itboth personally and professionally!

Chapter 5

Summary Today, you learned how our online classroom works, and you found out about some of the basic components that make up the phenomena of digital photography. You also learned a little about the history of the Internet and its ability to support graphical images and digital photography. Digital photography is a constantly changing art that promises to be full of opportunities for photographers. In review, you should now feel comfortable with the following topics: The scope of this class (an overview of digital photography)

 What a pixel is and how digital cameras use pixels to create digital images The general process of creating photographs in digital cameras How digital photography emerged from recent events In our next lesson, we'll dive into digital camera equipment and start to decipher new terms, tools, and techniques. I hope you enjoy the course, and I look forward to working with you on this journey! Next Steps Okay, you've finished your first lesson. Now what do you do? You'll want to take the following steps, in any particular order you like: Take the quiz. Reinforce what you learned in the lesson by testing yourself with a short five-question quiz. You can access the quiz for each lesson by clicking the Quizzes link. Do the assignment. Want some hands-on practice applying what you've just learned? Then roll up your sleeves and dig into the assignment! Just click the Assignments link to get to each lesson's assignment. Check out the FAQs. Since learning something new usually raises questions, every lesson in this course comes with an FAQs section. To get to the FAQs, click the Resources link, and then click FAQs. Drop by the Discussion Area. Come talk with me and your fellow students in the Discussion Area! Ask questions about anything that came up in the lesson, and share your insights with everyone. This is where we'll create a learning community. View the index. If you want to find a topic but can't quite remember where it was, then the index is the place to go. You'll find it by clicking the Resources link, and then clicking Course Index. Browse resources for further learning. I've included a list of recommendations for books so you can continue learning more

about this topic long after our time together ends. You'll find these by clicking the Resources link.

Supplementary Material
Online Photography Classes by Beverly Schulz
http://www.ed2go.com/landing-pages/pages/ed2go-courses-by-bevschulz.php.html This site provides a list of my current photography classes with links to each for more detailed information and expanded syllabi. I hope this will help you be sure you're in the right class, and perhaps you'll find others you'd like to take as well!

Microsoft Corporation
http://www.microsoft.com Microsoft's Windows operating system runs on more computers than any otherby far.

10 Differences Between Macs and PCs

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/macs/10-differences-between-macsand-pcs.htm This site provides a good discussion on several of the key differences between Macs and Windows computers.

History of Women in Photography

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/palmquist/index.htm This is a great site if you're interested in learning more about women's contributions in the field of photography.

The Museum of History of Photography Fratelli Alinari (Florence, Italy)

http://corporate.alinari.com/ Fratelli Alinari is the oldest firm in the world working in the field of photography. Their site is another wonderful collection of historical information and pictures.

History of the Internet

http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history/ Here you'll find a great timeline showing the various phases of the Internet's development!

Cameras vs. the Human Eye

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/cameras-vs-human-eye.htm Just in case you're wondering how the human eye relates to digital camera quality, this article provides some interesting data. The good news is that the eyes are still ahead.

The First Photograph

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/wfp/ It doesn't look like much to us today, but this is where it all began! The original is on display at the University of Texas in Austin, and at this site, you can read all about it.

World Internet Usage Statistics

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm This is a great site for statistics to overwhelm you on Internet usage.

FAQs
Q: It seems there are pictures on every website that I visit. Are they all taken with a digital camera? A: You're rightpictures are everywhere on the Web! Many of the images you see were taken with digital cameras, but certainly not all. Many people have scanned photos that they took with a traditional film camera. This is especially true with older images that people took years before digital photography was possible.

Q: Sometimes I see weird distortions or pictures that people have obviously put together from different photos. Does a digital camera take pictures this way? A: No, a digital camera takes a picture of what's actually there, just like a film camera. However, the software that's available to work with digital images allows a wide range of strange and fascinating modifications. With

the ability to change photos or combine them (adding someone to a group who wasn't there, or showing a penguin walking on the moon), you can create everything from humorous images to high-end art. In later lessons, we'll look at these options in detail.

Assignment
The assignments in this course are a way for you to put some of the material we've discussed to work and dig a little deeper into the subject matter. Again, we don't require the assignment for your completion of the courseand you may choose to do them even after class is over, if that suits your schedule. You don't need to turn them in, but if you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you in the Discussion Area. Museum Tour In this lesson, we discussed the history of photography and how and why digital photography has taken off. I'd like you to take a tour of the American Museum of Photography and explore these topics a little further. The American Museum of Photography http://www.photographymuseum.com At the website, you'll find not only a great amount of information on the history of photography, but also a collection of digitized images. Some came from digital cameras, while others were scanned in. Notice the excellent display quality of the digital images. Follow the links to the Guided Tour. From there you'll find some interesting information on digital displays from the link to Webmaster. Under Registrar's Office, you'll find a link to the Research Center (down in the dark box at the bottom of the page). Exploring this area will lead you to extensive photographic history and some links to excellent photographic sites. Here are some early photography examples I found particularly interesting: Abel J. Whalen: A One-Man Trio http://www.photographymuseum.com/phofictionsmontages.html An example of early trick photography. Briggs: A Fire-Dog http://www.photographymuseum.com/finearf1.html An example of early animal portraiture. Alexander Hesler: Portrait of Abraham Lincoln,

1860 http://www.photographymuseum.com/master1.html An example of early portraiture. Moving Pictures If you're interested in the history of moving pictures, Eadweard Muybridge did an interesting project in the 1800s to study motion. Until that time, everyone assumed that horses ran with their front legs stretched out in front and their back legs stretched out in back at the same time, as traditional paintings depicted them. Muybridge's research photos unearthed some shocking surprises. He later projected his pictures on a screen, using a device that showed them quickly enough to merge and give the illusion of movementmotion pictures were born! Check these sites for more information: http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/lm20.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge