Given I took film for 2 years in a career tech program at my high school, all of what I learned was pretty much a refresher on what I learned back as a junior and senior. I think getting a refresher was beneficial in getting me back into photography so I could take the pictures of my structures properly. While it has been long enough that my photos didn’t turn out great because I forgot to set the white balance a few times, they were still decent enough.
I think the most useful thing I learned was how to actually focus my camera properly! I was taught how to do in my film class, but it just slipped my mind after a year of not working with DSLR’s. This whole time outside of my career tech class I kept using the touch screen to go back and forth in the settings to try and focus the picture on the viewfinder. It’s absolutely hilarious to me that I could have just been lightly holding down the capture button to get the object to focus first. It’s much easier than my very convoluted and backwards way of doing it before.
The second most useful thing was remembering how to get to the ISO settings to change the shutter speed and reduce grain on the image. It wasn’t just where the settings were either, I just forgot ISO was a thing to use. I had my ISO on a lower setting previously so I was able to fix that at least on my camera at home.
I think the final most useful information was that the photo-lab existed! I had heard people talk about it but didn’t know where it was or if it was even in the art building. At least I know where it is now and what it looks like. Knowing that there was an isolated studio with proper lights was super helpful and, while I didn’t get use the photo-lab this time around, I’ll have to take advantage of it in the future.
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