Digital Photography Wk 3 – Lenses
Wow. We typically schedule our online classes for roughly an hour of instruction, and up to an hour of Q&A. Today John blew us away with an amazing 2-hour presentation packed with information about camera lenses. I think he was suprised by how much there was to cover too. His presentation included at least a dozen of his signature illustrations and animations that make a complex technical subject easy to understand.
We’re not going to be able to post John’s entire class for free here. We’re working first on getting the complete 2.5 hours of class and Q&A up for everyone who has purchased the full course downloads. That should be up by sometime tomorrow (Thursday Sep 17th).
Based on a poll from today’s live webinar audience, we’re most likely going to be posting John’s extended discussion on Apertures & Depth of Field as our free video from this week’s class. That free video should be up by Friday at the latest.
While we’re getting all that ready, here is a general outline of today’s talk.
Outline of Digital Photography Week 3: Lenses
- Lense Basics
- Focal Length
- Lens Speed
- Angle of View
- Apertures & Depth of Field
- Focusing systems
- Bonus: John’s Oddball Lenses
47 Responses to “Digital Photography Wk 3 – Lenses”
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ALthough it was great John’s class was amazing there is a clear disadvantage for some of us who could not sign in as the class was full and we have signed up for the course way in advance. I think you should have the entire class on free
Jayanthy, Actually, this class did not fill up. We had room for about 125 more people to join the live class.
I have to agree with the first poster, I tried logging in to this class and was told it was full, so to read here that the full class wont be online is extremely disappointing, after attending or watching the first 2 classes, I feel like I’m being baited and switched now that the 3rd class is only being put online in part for free for a week, and if I want the entire class, I have to pay.
I may really need to reconsider my support of your campaign if you don’t keep up your promise of posting the classes online for free the week after the class, or at least offering a free stream for a week to those users who are bounced out of the live webinar due to overcrowding.
The protected streams in flash you put up are in no harm of being downloaded during the week, so I’m unsure of how you posting these for free for the week could be hurting, perhaps you should only send the link for the week to those who actually registered for the class, instead of sending it to everyone who’s ever taken a class or is enrolled in another class.
Thoughts?
Bryan, I’m sorry if it feels like a bait and switch. Our business model for this training was always free for the live events, and paid for the downloads.
In the first week of the Photography and Photoshop series we had many more people wanting to attend than our current 1,000 person limit could provide for. I truely want these classes to reach as many people as possible, and it was that weekend we/I decided to try posting the videos free for a week.
You said, “The protected streams in flash you put up are in no harm of being downloaded during the week, so I’m unsure of how you posting these for free for the week could be hurting.” — That was my thinking too. And I was wrong. Our paid downloads immediately dropped to an unsustainable level. After two weeks we realized the free-videos-for-a-week model wasn’t going to work.
I’m not happy about it, but based on results, if we continued with the free videos for a week format, there wasn’t enough income to run the classroom.
We’re looking at other ways to provide for a larger live audience. We’re probably going to experiment with a live video stream from Ustream or Livestream to augment our GoToWebinar connection. Neither video streaming service has an upper-limit on the number of people who can view. The downside is that the video streams will probably have a maximum resolution of 640×360 for our material.
Believe me, I wish posting the full class videos had been sustainable. The live classes remain free. And we’re working on making that available to more than our current 1,000 person limit.
Folks, I need to let everyone know, we’ve have to rethink what we are offering for the free video posts after each class. I’ll quote from our own FAQ page:
Since we started posting free access to the full class videos after each class, the purchase of downloads dropped to a level that isn’t sufficient for us to maintain our online classroom.
So going forward, we’ll be posting “portions” of each live event for free, but the only way to get the entire class is either to attend the webinar live (which remains free), or to purchase the downloads for that course (purchase links are at the right).
1 – to watch the webinar in FULL, live.
2 – to watch the webinar recorded video in FULL, for a week (even for 2 days, 3 days)
i don’t get it, what’s the difference?
this is really bad news for me. i live in Africa, i work on wednesday nights, so i won’t make it to the live seminar. and i really can’t afford to pay for the downloads. really disappointed.
Mo, we do want to make the live versions of these classes available to as wide an audience as we can reach. What city do you live in?
I know our 11am Seattle classes would run from 7-8pm in many parts of Africa. It’s never going to be perfect for everyone, but we are going to start experimenting with other start times as we go. Mentioning where you are from does help me, thanks!
Can we negotiate? I’ll buy the class for $30.
Rick, single classes are only $15 each. A full 10-week course is normally $75. And it is available for only $50 during the first 5-weeks of each course.
To charge $50.00 (less then the cost of going out to dinner for two in a mediocre restaurant) for what is being offered is not much to ask!
What sold me was viewing the first two weeks for free, and once I realized this was not a gna-gna-gna presentation and with the price reduced from $75.00 to $50.00 I felt it was a good deal for what was offered.
The advantage of downloading the class other than reviewing at a later time, is that there is so much more information given that is not included in the free viewing.
Thank you John G. for putting this class together it has been long overdo in the Digital Photography field. It is worth every penny!
Well I will have to buy week 3 as I was in the hospital emergency and didnt get to watch it, will I still be able to buy the individual show?
Thanks
Sandy, I’m preparing the videos from John’s Week 3 talk right now. As soon as we have the paid download video posted, we’ll add an option to purchase this class as a stand-alone option.
I see, I see. I think I will purchase the full class. Thanks for the info.
Do you accept a school purchase order?
Dear Sir,
I’m Vincent from Malaysia. Is it possible paying in 2 installment due my currency conversion are very high for me. For a $50.00 course its around
Malaysian Dollar RM180.00. For a working take home income RM500.00 per month
quite high for me. I think other country currency conversion are even higher.
I hope you can consider my suggestion. Thank you.
Vincent from Malaysia.
I have signed up for 3 of the classes, ended up working when they are being shown . …. daytime of course . .. .. would still purchase the whole thimg as there is so much information given, one brain cannot possible retain it all. It is always a good idea to be able to go back and view portions of the classes, and each time you do, it sticks a little better, and something causes that AHAAH moment
Is this lesson up yet for people who have purchased the course? Thanks.
I couldn’t sign in either. For this class and for the Photoshop class. I thought it was because it was full, but apparently not. I guess Im having issues. :0(
I can’t wait to download week three! I’m excited, I’ve learned so much already and bought the entire course. Any chance it will be available today?
Alan, I JUST posted the paid versions of Week 3. You can start downloading now! Enjoy!
I live in Canberra Australia, really really hard for me to get to the class at 4 am in the morning =(
I understand you are here to make a buck. But how about airing it a couple of times then?
Kaja, we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how we can better serve our participants in different time zones. In fact, Steve Laskevitch, our Lightroom teacher forwarded me your comment with some ideas on how we might do that.
Logistically, we have not found an automated way to run recordings of webinars at specific times.
We are hoping to start offering some live courses in the evening here in Seattle, which will work out to about 11am your time. So even if we don’t find a technical repeat solution, there is still hope.
I should mention we do have a number of participants in Australia who joined at 4am a couple times and then eventualy bought the downloads so they could start sleeping in.
I wish you could have it up for at least 2 days, because sometimes I have to tend to my kids in the middle and it is A LOT to take in all at once. But I do understand and appreciate everything you guy’s do!! So thank you and one more question is the 3rd class going to be up or have you stopped already?
You guys still Rock!!!
Carol
Carol, we’re going to post a portion of the video from John’s third week class. Probably a longer segment from John’s dicussion of “Apertures & Depth of Field.”
I’m hoping to have that up this weekend. Make sure you are following CreativeTechs on Twitter. We make announcements about new videos posting on Twitter, and you’ll be among the first to know.
I bought the course but how do I view the videos? I only received an email that is now expired.
paypal doesn’t offer its services in Egypt..any other way to pay for the course?
disappointed that half a week has gone by for the video clip which is available for only a week after the class and it’s still not posted.
i have viewed the first and second classes online post webinar…and this seems just waaaay too short.it came a a dead end to me….was making notes..and it just finished.there.
I do understand your economic model. Will try for live webinars for more info.
But generally… on the whole, the level of information in these classes is super in-depth. not which u can find easily and the instructor has very crisp & clear instructions (slow and steady) with technically correct graphics that makes it so much easy.
very impressive.
Thank you manraj.
We appreciate your understanding of our economic model. I know John puts a tremendous amount of work into creating visual illustrations of some pretty technical topics, and I’m glad it shows.
Hi,
I’ve been waiting for the class to be uploaded as I was unable to log in also. It may not have been full at your end but that was the message that was received at this end.
As a business person myself I can fully appreciate that you are a profit making organisation. However, it would seem to me that you are more creative minded that business minded. It would seem to me that a drop off in sales is only to be expected whilst the free version is available online but, after the free version has been removed your sales will increase. I also notice that there are no “tasters” for past lessons to encourage potential purchasers to buy what they may have missed.
I would suggest that you make the lessons available for a period of 48hrs via an email link to subscribers that enrolled before the start date rather than post a full version on the website. This should ensure that anyone that misses a lesson for whatever reason can catch up and should protect them from being bumped out by new enrollees. This should also protect you from any drop off in sales.
Unhappy customers are never going to be your best sales people. Happy customers spread the word and will increase your sales massively.
Brad,
I hear you. I expected we’d get a lot of criticism for this decision. In this case our change wasn’t driven by profit as much as survival. When we started posting the free-for-a-week videos, the income from purchases dropped by 90%. It was pretty immediate and pretty drastic. That was enough to threaten our ability to cover basic classroom operating costs, much less pay our instructors.
I promise you that we are looking at some other alternatives to both increase our online class capacity, as well as options to bringing people up to speed who’ve missed earlier classes.
As I’ve said before, I really hoped posting the videos for a week had worked. I’m a huge believer in making this training freely available to a huge worldwide audience. In order to make that happen, we need to carefully ballance how much we can give away for free without undermining the economic engine that keeps this online classroom running.
Sorry for the misstep along the way.
~Craig
Thanks for the latest video. I haven’t purchased the whole course yet because I wanted to see how the 10 wk course differed from the first 4 wk course that I purchased – it had nothing to do your free-videos-for-a-week model.
I had to miss the live Lense class, but this latest overview on it has convinced me to go ahead and buy the course.
I can’t rave enough about John’s very clear explanations and super illustrations. I’ve taken online and IRL photography classes a number of times and this is the clearest of them all (of course, remembering all I learn is another thing).
I also would like to add my displeasure in the course not being offered after the live session, if at least you could have warned us on twitter or something that would have at least been half decent, definitly appears to be a bait and switch.
Disappointed in Utah
Brian, I absolutely hear you.
What a shame, I have really enjoyed the 1st couple of weeks, unfortunately I don’t have the funds to sign up so will have to say goodbye to your course.
Disappointed in Suffolk UK
I can see how it would look like a bait and switch to some newcomers, I have been attending these courses for a few months now, since the 4 week course. At that time there the only alternative to attending the live course was to purchase it. Creativetechs wanted to try to benefit every one by offering the video for viewing free the following week, however it didnt work and it jepordized the class all together, You have to understand that these people are not trying to dupe you in any way. I had to purchace one of the single classes myself due to being in the hospital, and I happily paid for it, and will again I am seriously considering the all access pass. You can not get this kind of information anywhere else for this price, can you imagine attending a college course for photoshop? that will cost you big time. Anyway just my opinion, and KUDOS to the Awesome efforts to the great people at Creativetechs!!!!
That is probably the most enlightening video I have ever seen on lenses and how they work. Keep up the great work (and yes, the diagramming was worth it).
Well,I am disappointed that the full class will not be available to watch (I am on the East coast so Cannot watch the 11am broadcast. I do understand why you have to only show highlights. I am still very thankful for the class and the information. Thank you so much for the time spent preparing for the class. The quality is great and I am learning so much (even in the shorter re-broadcasts).
you guys are doing a great job. Thank you!
I missed the lecture on Lenses because I assumed that a free lecture would be available for viewing later. Since I am at office during lecture hours — I am based in CA — it is very difficult to take time off from work every Wednesday. I guess I have no other option than to attend the lectures live. I hope that you guys would work out a model which facilitates the participants. Nevertheless, I appreciate all your effort.
ok really off topic here, but some users have their image or picture show up next to their post, How do I get mine to show up?
Hi Sandy. I can help you with that! We have a tip written up for that on our weekly tips email:
http://creativetechs.com/tipsblog/add-a-branded-icon-next-to-blog-comments/
HA! thanks!
Gents,
appreciate what you’re doing with the free live events, kicking myself for figuring I could watch the free playback of John last week not realising I wouldn’t get the full session but you know I’m happy to pay the $15 (£10 for me) for the 1 I missed because having been on the live webinar for the first 2 I know it’s completely worth the spend. I’m hooked in to Lightroom and PShop too now and have to say if my measly $15 helps in some way then good news (yes I know $50 would help even more
)
Keep the good work up and thanks guys.
Regs
Trevor
Awesome teacher, awesome course. I feel fortunate to be able to have the choice to see it live for free at CT’s convenience or purchase it to watch at my convenience for a mere $50. A great deal, either way.
The way I look at it…if someone offers me a week’s worth of free pony rides then cuts it down to one ride every other Tuesday at 4 pm, I’m still getting something for nothing.
Grateful or maybe even disappointed makes sense; conspiracy bait and switch theories, not so much.
I was fine with only having the live sessions free. However, when you said that they would be available for free for a week after the fact, I didn’t feel the need to arrange my schedule around the live session. Now that I come back to catch up, I find that only a part of the session is free? I understand you’re trying to make money, but promising something and delivering less than that is not the way to earn my business.
Hi Guys,
I’m presently participating in two of your webinars. I was unable to attend the Digital Photography weninar on 9/23. When I came back to watch today, I found there is no longer a free version.
I own a small business too, so I understand about the fee … but I was really looking forward to watching John’s lecture on exposure especially considering it is Part 1 with Part 2 next week.
Thanks so much for all you guys do. The webinars are WONDERFUL!
Hi, I have purchased all 10 weeks of the photography course, but I can’t find where to download them……help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!Carrie