How to get into photography?

I prefer reading. The best single book on photography is "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson.

This book explains the fundamental principles of exposure—aperture, shutter speed, and ISO—which are crucial to understand if you want to get off auto mode.

It also will open your eyes to how the camera sees the world, as opposed to how we see the world. Lighting and composition are fundamental to taking great photos. My photos on a plain iPhone will be superior to your A6000 photos until you intuitively understand these two fundamentals. You can try to fix this in post, or you can learn how to get it right in camera.

It's worth noting that composition is the easiest thing to improve. Simple ideas like the rule of thirds, avoiding a cluttered background, and using the magic hours are all you really need to get started. So you can simply improve composition by finding cool photos of places near by you, and trying to replicate them. It is not as easy as it sounds.

On your camera, until you know it better, I would suggest sticking the Aperture to F8 or F11, setting ISO to auto, and then playing around with shutter speed to create freeze frame or motion blur. If you want to start playing around with aperture, you will struggle with the lens you have. It will do f3.5 at 16mm, but only the dead center will be crispy sharp, everything else will be blurry, so throw the rule of thirds out the window. To truly learn about aperture, you would want to buy a Sony E 35mm f/1.8 OSS, used is probably fine.

Edit: 35mm on APSC is equivalent to the nifty fifty, it's like the seven iron when learning golf.

Some good advice in this thread.

Just wanted to chime in and say that I went through a similar learning process a few years back and one thing I found worked really well for me is just to think about photographing with a purpose. A bit weird to explain but let me try:

I still take photos on my phone all the time, because those times I just need to record the moment, and a phone is the easiest thing to have on you all the time in this day and age. Taking photos with your phone is quick, easy, you don't need to worry too much about fiddling with the settings, and the photographs are more than acceptable for recording the moment.

But I'll take my mirrorless camera out when I'm going to unusual places or events that I don't go to every day. And then I'll set myself a goal, or purpose, or reason for bringing that camera along. Maybe I'm at the zoo and want to take some cool animal shots. Maybe I'm at the beach and want to try taking some good landscape shots. Maybe I'm out at night and want to try taking some good night-time shots. Maybe I'm at a botanical garden and want to try taking some macro shots of bugs and flowers. Maybe I'm at a family event and want to try taking some good portraits or candid shots.

I find that giving myself a goal or purpose does three things:

1. It makes it less stressful since I don't have to worry about missing a shot or moment or memory.

2. It makes it easier to focus on the type of shot I want to get and not have to constantly change lenses or settings (since I know what I'm looking for).

3. It helps me narrow down the type of photography that I enjoy the most, which in my case happens to be taking photos of animals (specifically birds!).

Anyways, hope that helps and good luck!

In addition to the great answers already provided, I would reiterate this advice: get out there and shoot! Automatic, manual, whatever. Use your camera, use your phone, use whatever you have at the moment. You won't improve technically without making (and fixing) mistakes. You won't find a style if you don't try out different things. Make photography a habit, and that practice will help you immensely regardless of what other resources you're looking at to learn.

Shoot in RAW and get a raw editing software, I would recommend ART, it's a bit easier than RawTherapee I think :

https://bitbucket.org/agriggio/art/wiki/Home

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIbyw4D5CdY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wD8ENzJiio

Learning the basic is good but don't focus too much on technicalities (full auto will get you far, specially in raw), composition and light are very important for the final look. There's a lot of good videos on youtube but for beginner I would focus on :

1. Have a clear subject in your shots (beginners often take "snaps" of nothing in particular)
2. Mind your edges (having random stuff at the edge of the frame)
3. Move around when taking a picture (don't rely too much on zoom)
4. Try to simplify your image by including not too many elements
5. Watch some youtubes.

If you're into that kind of stuff consider getting a fast (large aperture, e.g. f2) manual lens, personally it was what really got me into photography (it's fun). My Flickr for reference : https://flickr.com/photos/191516757@N03/

So, I'd say there's three aspects to photography

1. Technical shooting - this mainly the exposure triangle. It's all about getting that's in the frame to the sensor in the way you want

2. Composition - this is not just about where you put things in the frame, but also what you're shooting, and when you're shooting.

3. Post processing - taking raws and making them into finished images in a raw processor

For 1), I'd recommend http://www.r-photoclass.com/. It's a little outdated, and DSLR focused, but it gets the job done. Some things don't really change, and the exposure triangle is one of them.

For 2), honestly the best way to get an eye for things is twofold: one, just take a lot of pictures. Examine the ones you like, and why you like them. Two, look at the work of other photographers, and again examine why exactly their images are pleasing.

For 3), this might be the trickiest one. I can't really give any more recommendations than to just keep at it. IME no one really has a good post processing tutorial - a lot of is just moving sliders and seeing how you vibe with it.

Take advantage of the benefit of a digital camera; shots are basically free, especially with the relatively low MP of an a6000. Some things you only get better at with experience.

Yes, don't shoot at automatic. Now, that being said, many if not most photographers end up shooting "semi-automatic", usually on aperture priority with a min shutter speed. But if you're learning, just keep it on manual.

How it usually goes is as follows: Aperture is the typically most opinionated of the triangle; you likely have a desired depth of field basic on the subject. Set that first. Next, pick a SS that matches the subject. You typically want to "freeze" the action, although sometimes it's the opposite. When freezing, you want the SS to be fast enough that you get a sharp image; if it's a landscape, you just need to overcome your hand's shake. If it's a person, you need to be faster than they move.

I don't have experience, but recently saw a video Photography basics in 10 Minutes which I found very interesting.

Start by understanding the relationship between aperture, iso and shutter speed. Knowing what and when to use each is immensely helpful. Take a photography course or join a local photography walk to discuss things with people. Then try and be purposeful, try and really think then shoot. Try not to chimp too much (taking a photo and looking at the screen to see what you got) so that you really reflect on what you're shooting and anticipate what you will get.

I've no idea what that camera is, but one thing to note is that a lot of modern mobile phones can shoot WAY better pictures than a lot of DSLR cameras. (I suspect that at least some of this is due to some AI-esque autocorrection, but also, mobile phone are mainstream, while DSLR is a niche product, so producers of mobile phones can really do groundbreaking development while keeping the cost down)

So, uh, there's no guaranteed that you "real" camera is even able to shoot as good pictures as your Iphone. That said, give it a go!

I'll recommend starting out with Manual, and playing around with how the different values affect each other.

Here's my current understanding, but this is really just on top of my head and there's WAY better sources out there.

Aparture: This is pretty much the same tech as the pupil in your eye. Try standing in front of a mirror, shining a light in your eye. Notice how the light makes your pupil goes super small. You should do the same with photography; lighter scenes = higher (smaller) aparture. Also, the smaller the aparture, the sharper the image is. (This is why old people with crap eye sight insist that yonger people should turn on the light when they read—the old people need more light (so they can use higher aparture) to see things clearly, and can't grasp that younger people simply have better sight and don't need that)

ISO: This is a leftover from the days of physical films, which could be bought in different ISO values according to how sensitive to light the film is. So you bought a ISO 100 if you were to shoot a scene in sunshine or proffesional lighting, or you bought an ISO 800 to shoot scenes in darker environment, or your got handed an ISO 400 if you just went and asked for film for this here camera and clearly didn't knew what you were after. I honestly have no idea how it works in the digital realm. Higher ISO values equal higher sensitivity (it sucks in more light) but the price of this is more image noise. So if your image is super dark, you can raise the ISO, at the cost of more noise.

Shutter: How long the shutter stays open, recording the photo. The longer it stays open, the more light gets in. But also, longer shutter speed intruduce more noise. Also, if you don't keep your camera still, and the shutter is something like 1/12s (1 second divided by 12 = 0.083 second) then the camera will change position during the time where the shutter is open, resulting in a blurred image.

Lenses: The primary thing those give you is a wider or smaller Field of View. (Do an image search for "field of view" if you don't know what it means) This is primary for whatever artistic vision you wanna go for, but there's some tech stuff to be aware of too. Shallower field of view (zoomed in) make your image more sensitive to you not holding the camera still, and also results in less light hitting the sensors.

Finally, a fun lense you can make yourself is a pinhole lense. simpy make a flat plate with a super tiny (pin-point) hole in the middle, and slap it on the camera where the lense should go. Fair warning if you go for this DIY approach ... don't get dust inside your camera. (this goes for changing normal lenses too. Approach changing lenses as a sort of open-heart surgery for your camera)

The conceptual aspects of photography will always be more important than the technical for the final image.

An image that is technically perfect but has no concept/narrative/meaning generally won’t be as interesting as one with a strong concept but less technically perfect.

That said, there are some basic things to know about the technical aspects of using a camera that will help you get some more creative freedom.

There is a ton of noise in the online photography communities. It can be really hard to cut through. But, in reality there really isn’t that much to know about camera settings. The three basic concepts to understand are shutter speed, aperture, and iso. Each of these change how bright the image will come out. Adjust any of these three until the meter in your camera shows a ‘good’ exposure.

How do you know which settings to adjust? Well, each one has a different effect on the image. This is where you can make technical choices to reinforce your creative goals.

Aperture controls the depth of field. When you focus a lens, then technically there will be a single 2D plane that is in focus. So, if I focus on a wall in front of me, the whole 2D plane of the wall should be in focus (assuming the film/sensor and the wall are parallel). Shallow depth of field means only the plane of focus will appear sharp. This is what happens at wide apertures (like f/2.8). At smaller apertures, things in front and behind the wall will also appear to be sharp even though they aren’t in the plane of focus. So you can use small apertures like f/16 when you want more depth of field (more stuff in front and in back of the plane of focus to appear sharp). Besides diffraction, that is basically all you need to know about aperture. Wide apertures have shallow depth of field and let in more light.

Shutter speed is how long the sensor/film is exposed for. This controls how motion is captured. Long shutter speeds will show motion in the scene or motion of the camera. Very short shutter speeds will freeze motion. If you are hand-holding a camera and want the image to be sharp, I’d start to get worried at shutter speeds less than 1/60 th. These days stabilization can do a lot, but that is where I would start to think about it. If you want to freeze the feathers of a flying bird, then I’d probably want a shutter speed of at least 1/500 th. If you want to take a photo of water flowing, and have it look silky smooth, then get a tripod and aim for shutter speeds of a few seconds. None of these are rules, I’m just trying to give you a bit of intuition. But that is basically it for shutter speed—it controls how motion is rendered.

ISO is the sensitivity/gain of the film/sensor. It doesn’t affect the image as much, but as you go to higher ISOs, then you will get more grain/noise in the image which eventually looks bad. Usually, photographers keep this as low as they can while achieving shutter speeds and apertures appropriate for their goals.

Now, I mentioned that you would adjust all of these parameters until the light meter in your camera says that the exposure is ‘good’. However, how does the camera know what is ‘good’?

Traditionally, a camera’s light meter will measure the amount of light coming in through the lens and try to make it come out 18% gray. So, if your camera is pointed at a white object, it is likely to underexpose the image because it will tell you to choose settings that will make white look like 18% gray. Similarly, if you are shooting a black object, the camera is likely to try and overexpose it. So, in these situations, you can either manually adjust your settings to what you think a more appropriate exposure is, or you can use “exposure compensation” if you are shooting in an automatic mode.

Here is a more advanced exposure technique, but it can be quite useful. Digital sensors tend to have noise in the dark areas. But, they are very unforgiving in the highlights. As soon as the sensor saturates to full brightness, the highlights are “clipped” and you can’t recover that data in post. So, if you want the most flexible file to edit on the computer, I would shoot RAW and “expose to the right” on my histogram. This means I would make the image as bright as possible without clipping any important highlights (your camera should have a highlight warning feature).

Lastly, I would recommend you look at photographers and artists you like for inspiration. Again, the creative aspect is much more important than the technical. It can be difficult to find photographers online who focus more on the creative aspect rather than the gear or technique examples. Personally, I gravitate towards people who are working on more substantial projects like books, shows, or commercial goals. This helps me weed out people who are photography influencers first and photographers second.

Here are some people I like:

Kyle McDougall. Landscape photographer who is currently working in the UK on a project related to WWII infrastructure. He has also published a great book with Subjectivity Objective.

https://youtube.com/@kylemcdougall?si=WM7b3Y3yXHU4aa-V

William Verbeeck

I don’t know him as well. He seems to work with film a lot, and from what I have watched, he is interested in the conceptual side of photography quite a bit.

https://youtube.com/@willemverb?si=bYvxyyvElpCYl2LC

Lewis Baltz

I would really like to own a copy of New Topographics at some point. Baltz is relevant to my own work, but I think this is a nice lecture to see how some people approach photography in the art world.

https://youtu.be/g3zImLqBIBM?si=Nt0I9q1icoNOb3Sf

If you like to read books, I think National Geographic Photo Basics was a great introduction.

I'm going to give you a counter-opinion to nacho's comment marked as exemplary because I think there are situations in which it's a good idea to actually go the opposite way, which is what I did.

I decided to spend the year of lockdowns learning landscape photography. I knew nothing about photography in general, but I always had an interest in the visual arts in general - though more often in the abstract, so it didn't translate directly, it just gave me a bit of a basic feel that had to be developed a lot.

I watched most of the course on digital photography by Marc Levoy, a Stanford professor who speaks a lot about the technical aspects and connects them to the artistic applications, about composition etc. It's free and includes photography assignments.

And then I went out 3-4 times a week, spent 2 hours taking pictures and later another 1-2 hours going through them and editing them in Lightroom (which was possible because of zero socializing etc., adjust the time as needed nowadays). I normally use semi-auto modes with me setting the aperture and ISO manually and the shutter speed being automatic, shooting RAWs. I always took a couple photos of a subject or scene, but not too many.

This is what goes against nacho's advice and the reasoning is that I think it's important to spend time going through all of your photos, picking the decent ones and trying to get the best out of them to develop your eye. Taking too many just makes it a chore to go through all of it and you probably won't spend enough time thinking about what makes each good or bad. If you try to edit the good ones, it makes you stop and concentrate, and for me it also makes the process much more rewarding, which was necessary for me to stick to it.

However this applies to landscape photography or maybe architecture photography and other similar styles, but not really to say street or event photography, where getting a ton of photos and spending as little time as possible editing might be a better idea. Landscape photography especially is really big on editing. I used Lightroom simply because that's what most pros seem to use, so it's easiest to get good workflow information. I also gradually found and watched youtubers whose style I liked, for tips on both composition and editing.

I did the above for about a year and a half and then had an exhibition which was appreciated by some of my friends who are lifelong artists, and I even sold a couple prints, though for a low price - this is purely a hobby, I never intended to make it profitable. So in my opinion it worked, and it was fun as well, though the time investment during that period was unusually high due to the circumstances.