Dave showing great portrait orientation shooting form with his Nikon D5300 during our photography lesson in downtown St. Petersburg FloridaI met David in downtown St. Petersburg Florida for our 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson on a February Saturday morning with very changing weather. He received the photography lesson as a gift certificate present from his wife to help him get started in the DSLR world with his newly purchased Nikon D5300. This was my first time with this very new Nikon DSLR and I would have to say I was disappointed by its lack of dedicated buttons. Changing the ISO and the focus mode requires going into the menus. The build quality felt like typical Nikon quality though. Now that I think about it more, though, no 5xxx series Nikon ever had more buttons, but still I would like to see less menu reliance on a DSLR in that price range.
The lesson began as all first lessons do with me explaining to David in detail my 5-step process for getting a well exposed and sharp shot in any shooting conditions. After this rain started to fall, but the breezeway in the front of the Museum of Fine Arts was plenty big enough to still practice all we would have had it been sunny. In fact it allowed us to work on natural light portrait practice a little more than we would have otherwise. I was able to show Dave the big impact composition has on the overall look of a portrait even with the subject staying in the exact same spot.
I look forward to seeing David's photos and his progress with his DSLR.
