You Got a New Camera, Now What? 5 Easy Steps to Mastering Your New Camera

Have you recent­ly pur­chased a new cam­era? Or are you look­ing into buy­ing a new cam­era? If so, you are going to want to read this arti­cle. Chances are once you get your new piece of equip­ment, get it all charged up, and are ready to take pho­tos, you may get stuck try­ing to fig­ure out what to do next! 

All of the but­tons, set­tings and modes are con­fus­ing. If you want to get an amaz­ing pho­to, turn­ing the cam­era on and just snap­ping isn’t going to result in the best pho­tos and you may get frustrated. 

That’s okay, I’ve put togeth­er some steps to pre­vent your frus­tra­tion and help you know what you need to do now that you have your brand new camera! 

Step 1: First things first, charge that battery. 

It may seem like a no-brain­er, but make sure the bat­tery is ful­ly charged before putting it into your new cam­era.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told the stu­dents of my Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials Class to make sure the bat­tery is charged before head­ing out to prac­tice their pho­tos. I would even sug­gest car­ry­ing an addi­tion­al charged bat­tery so that you are nev­er left with­out one!

Step 2: Snag some extra SD cards. 

I have quite a few SD cards. I usu­al­ly have 5 with me. I shoot a lot of ses­sions and don’t always upload the pho­tos to my com­put­er right away, so hav­ing a lot of cards is essen­tial. There’s noth­ing worse than run­ning out of space on your card, so either buy a large one or a few to have handy. I keep mine in this little case for convenience.

Step 3: Pick up an equipment bag.

You need to have a good bag to keep your new cam­era and all of your good­ies in, and you need to make sure that the bag will keep it all safe. Cam­era bags aren’t just for con­ve­nience, they are built espe­cial­ly to keep your equip­ment safe from the elements. 

I have the Think Tank Lily Deanne Mez­zo bag, and I love it! It’s sleek, full of pock­ets, and big enough for all of my equip­ment. There are plen­ty of cam­era bags out there to choose from. Back­packs, bags, you name it, you can find it.

Step 4: Brush up on-camera vocabulary and techniques.

ISO, aper­ture, shut­ter speed, focus, bokeh, aspect ratio, depth of field… it’s like learn­ing a whole new language!

You’re try­ing to learn how to use your new cam­era on your own, but it’s daunt­ing, between search­ing YouTube for infor­ma­tion and read­ing lengthy arti­cles on how to use your camera…The TRUTH is, when you’re new to pho­tog­ra­phy, you don’t know what you don’t know – so all that time you’re spend­ing search­ing Google and YouTube could be the very thing that’s keep­ing you STUCK and run­ning in cir­cles. You want to learn the secret to tak­ing con­trol of your cam­era today. 

If you want to start out on the right foot, check out my Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials Class. I break learn­ing pho­tog­ra­phy down in a sim­ple, easy-to-fol­low, action­able way that will have you tak­ing bet­ter pic­tures in just the first week…I guar­an­tee it! 

Step 5: Practice, Practice, Practice! 

I teach my stu­dent that hav­ing their cam­eras in their hands every day will help improve their pho­tog­ra­phy skills! These skills are like a mus­cle, and you have to work those mus­cles, or they become weak. A pho­tog­ra­phy project helps you flex those mus­cles and inspires you…who does­n’t need to be inspired! 

Learn how to use your cam­era, prac­tice and have fun! And If you want to learn more about using your new cam­era and under­stand ISO, SS, and Aper­ture, then come join the thou­sands of stu­dents I’ve taught in my step-by-step, self-paced class Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials Class.