Transcript

Episode 6: Sensor

Welcome to the 6th episode of The Richard J Nieves Photography Podcast! 

I’m Richard J Nieves, portrait and wedding photographer, and owner of Richard J Nieves Photography located in The Bronx in New York City. 

Underneath the hood of your camera is where all of the magic happens. Where the light that enters your camera goes and become to beginning of a photography.

You’ll see it when you take the lens off your DSLR or mirrorless camera: 

It’s called the sensor. 

The sensor is what takes all the information fed to it by you and the world around you and can produce, for us photographers, two very important products:

A negative or RAW file, and a photograph. 

35mm cameras had film that you’d load into them that would produce a negative after you took a picture. 

That little strip of film would then be processed in a special room called a dark room. 

The equivalent of that now is when you take your memory card, inject it into your computer and upload those digital negatives or RAW files into an image processor such as Lightroom, Capture 1, and many more.

You can’t give your client a RAW file and expect them to share it over social media or print it instantly. That file needs to be put into a one of the aforementioned photo editing software where it can be processed and exported as a proper digital photograph. 

That’s why learning how to manipulate light is so important for a photographer. Light reveals everything around us. 

The sensor reads all that light, sees how it bounces off objects, and shapes all that information into a negative or processed photo for your use.

If you’ve chosen to shoot JPEG, then it makes it easier to take a photo and get it out into the world. Your camera will use its own color science and formulas to post process your image in camera and give you a proper photograph file to share immediately. 

We’ll discuss the advances and disadvantages of shooting in different file formats in a future show. 

Please follow me on Instagram @rich_photog, that r-i-c-h-underscore-p-h-o-t-o-g

If you’d like to schedule your next portrait session or give us the honor of photographing your wedding, visit my website www.richardjnphoto.com or email katherine@richardjnphoto.com where my partner will guide you along your journey with us.

Don’t forget to keep creating, stay humble, and enjoy the journey. 

Catch you later.