Hi

Hi all, ive just stepped into the world of slr's as father christmas brought me a nice new K-R other than using compacts i have no idea about cameras! so im hoping that ive made the right choice on the camera?
i need to learn how to use it can any one recommend any books or courses/clubs in the west of dorset?

Hi Jason.

Have to say, Father Christmas, has a very good taste, in camera brand.

You will be able to get a lot of good advice from this site.

Take care.

First thing is read the manual at least 3 times, try out all the settings and keep the ones you like. Use Auto only to get an idea of where to start with the settings you will need for a particular shot, buy a cheap manual lens something like a 50mm f2. Mike-P has one for sale in Classified Adverts for about £30. A manual lens will teach you more about your camera than almost anything else.

And the most important thing is Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Shoot even if the weather outside is bad shoot stuff indoors, practice with depth of field with that manual 50mm on kitchen items, bottles of wine, kids toys anything really just shoot.
And above all enjoy.

Hi Jason, and welcome to a great site! Good choice of camera too!..

Personally, I think the best thing about digital slr's are that all the info relating to shutter speed, aperture, etc are all embedded into the photograph (exif data) - this allows you to later cast a critical eye over the overall image quality (lighting, shadows/highlights, etc) and make some sort of sense of how it all correlates to the exif data.

With film photography, you pretty much had to catalogue each roll of film, and hand-write the exif data into a wee notepad - that's before you finally developed the film! You then had to dodge and burn in-lab to achieve the result you wanted. Digital allows that to take place pretty much "in-camera", with the further ability to "post-process" with a program such as those offered by Adobe and the like.

What I tend to do (until I become intimate with the functions of my Kr) is to experiment with the other functions (Tv, Av, Night mode, etc) by taking photos that I know will have no real end purpose, other than allowing me to learn what each function has to offer, then when I want to take shots I'm likely to keep, I select auto-picture mode (unless I feel confident that a function I've successfully experimented with would be better).

You will know how best to learn how your camera functions - just go out and enjoy your new toy. I think you will be extremely pleasantly surprised with it!

Welcome
The K-r is a great camera.
Can't help with Dorset sorry, 12,000 miles away
Do a wee search for the basics of aperture, shutter speed and iso.
Those are the big three for controlling how much light gets in to make a picture.
I found the best teacher was taking lots of shots and reviewing how settings changed the image.
Get out of auto modes and try Av and M
Having a good image viewer on the computer is helpful too.
Try the free "Faststone Image Viewer" ...does quite good simple image adjustment too.

Pete

Love this Steve, my kind of humour

Hi and welcome to the forum. People seem to say a lot of good things about the KR on here so you are on the right track. I would certainly recommend joining A camera club. I learnt such a lot from looking a other peoples work and listening to critiques on it. Our Club belongs to the P.A.G.B. link and I think this is the Federation that covers your area link. Most places should let you visit as a guest so you can gauge if the club suits you

wow lots of advice thanks for that. Jason

He knows what he is doing old Mr Claus, great camera the Kr - enjoy!