When Legal and General asked me what my most valued possession was, a lot of things came to mind but as a blogger, it has to be my camera. It’s my best friend at blogger events and I don’t think I could ever go back to capturing what I love about blogging with my Iphone. A few months ago I toddled off to spend the day with a bunch of people who also owned posh cameras and had no idea how to use them. I invested in a ‘proper’ camera in 2014 and I can’t believe the difference it has made to my blog photos. If you look back at my first posts *cringe* you will see all kinds of photography sins including photos of all sizes, photos from god knows where on the web and blurry, grainy Iphone snaps. However, it turns out a posh camera doesn’t guarantee great photos as I soon found out. Luckily, my Fiance presented me with a photography course on Christmas morning and now I’ve finally said goodbye to the manual setting. If like me, your camera is your most valued blogging possession, here is a handy tip to help you step up your photography skills. Strategically placed macaroons optional.
Camera: Canon 600D
One of the main reasons I think it’s so hard to get to grips with a new camera is the amount of jargon we are faced with when we buy one. I bought mine from Ebay and was greeted with a Japanese version of the camera I wanted and all of the settings on the camera were in Japanese. By the time I had figured out how to turn the settings to English and got to grips with the international charging equipment I was not in the best of moods to read the instruction manual. For this reason I turned up at my photography course six months after purchasing the camera with no idea what any of the buttons did. Luckily for me no-one else did either. If you have a DSLR camera, you will be faced with lots of different buttons but a lot of them do the same thing and just represent a different path to the same function. The first part of the course was very helpful as it explained the buttons that could help you create certain effects like a blurry background, a very useful function if you take a lot of close up shots of beauty products like I do.
If I wrote down everything I learned on that course this post would be epic so I’m going to choose a few of the things I learnt and break them up in to a three part series. This post is going to focus on selecting an Autofocus point which will leave the product or person you want in focus and the rest of the shot blurry. I’d seen this technique used on some of my favourite blogs and was really excited to learn how to create this with my own photos.
So, the idea here is to manually choose your autofocus so that one of the items is in focus and the others aren’t. My camera is a Canon 600 D and it has 9 focus points. To access these focus points you will need to take your camera off auto and use one of the more creative settings. I use AV to create shots with a blurry background. To bring the focus points up on your screen press the smaller button out of the two right hand buttons located on the top right of the camera and you will see the focus points appear on the screen.
You will see the 9 focus points appear and you can manually select the places you wish to focus that will then light up in a different colour to confirm the focus points you wish to choose. If you are taking a photo of a person or an animal always focus on the eye as this will provide a sharper image. The distance from the object in focus and the other items will determine how blurry the out of focus area is. An easy way to increase the blurred effect is to zoom in and create greater distance between the object in focus and the others.
I tried this out as soon as I got home and this is the result I got from placing the focus point on the mascara wand in AV mode. Not bad for a newbie.
What is your most valued possession as a blogger? Is it fully insured? Since I’ve started blogging, I’ve collected a number of valuable pieces of equipment, my camera being one of the most expensive of all. I’ve recently updated my contents insurance to ensure that my most valuable items are protected. Sounds complicated? Legal and General have created an easy to use contents insurance calculator that enables you to list your most valuable possessions room by room.
*I collaborated with Legal and General on this post but as always the opinions stated are my own.
