Hi,
I have very recently started to give tutorials on photography, aimed at complete beginners with their first DSLR. The sort of people who want to take better photos and are willing to work at it, but keep their DSLR set on Green "Idiot Mode" because they don't know an f-stop from an AF point. I'm working with one student right now, on a for-free basis; the deal is that I will teach her to make photographs, and she will teach me to teach, so I can do this on a commercial basis later on.
Anyway, we have covered the rudiments of shot-making (what focal length does to the appearance of an image, how to use Autofocus while remaining in control of the shot, how aperture is a creative as well as an exposure control, how to get control over shutter speeds, how to hold a camera, and how to expose properly). All very good stuff, and I'm pleased to see that by learning the fundamentals right, she is making much better photos than a month ago. So far so good then.
But now we are approaching the next hurdle: Digital Image Processing. In the spirit of getting all the fundamentals right from the outset, from now on I'm going to make her shoot everything in RAW and then process the images herself.
I'm a Lightroom devotee, but in order to save my student some money I had naively thought that I would get her to use Canon's DPP for a while (the disc came with the DSLR) and so I loaded a copy onto my PC last night so I could get myself prepared for the next tutorial. After 5 minutes trying to work on a few of my own images, I gave up; frankly the workflow and controls are rubbish, and I find the programme almost unusable. So if I can't use it, I'm certainly not going to attempt to teach it to someone else.
Which leaves us with Lightroom. What I plan to do now is to give her a copy of LR3 Beta, walk her through the basics of library management and the Develop Module, and then send her out into the wide world to take some shots and play with them in LR. But I have two questions:
Do folks here think that I am going off in the wrong direction by trying to teach a total novice (albeit an intelligent and enthusiastic one) how to use LR3? I have been using LR for a couple of years and making photos for much much longer than that, so I think it is simple, but is it simple enough for a novice? Does anyone here have any experience of this kind of situation?
Second, any idea when the beta will expire? (ie when will the commercial version be shipping?) My student will, I am sure, want to know when she is likely to have to pony up $300 in order to continue using her new-found skills.
Comments and advice please?
Ed