10 Useful Digital Photography Tutorials for Beginners

Are you a beginner looking for good digital photography tutorials? The great news for you is there’s plenty of free online tutorials and guides to help you get started with digital photography. In this article, I’ve put together 10 of the best beginner-level photography tutorials I could find. I also listed additional websites at the end where you can find even more beginner-level tutorials, guides, and blog posts on digital photography.

1. Beginner Photography Course

This free online course on PhotographyCourse.net is divided into 8 information-packed lessons interspersed with useful illustrations to help you grasp the topics being discussed. The site’s original author is Skip Heine, an award-winning photographer who’s been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize on two occasions.

2. An Introduction to Photography

Pro photographer Alexandre Buisse ran a free online course on the social news site Reddit, which can be found in a Subreddit called photoclass. The online class is divided into 6 parts covering gear, exposure, post-processing and so forth. Check out the Subreddit to see the comments (which is valuable towards learning too) left by redditors participating in the class.

3. Back to Basics by Learning DSLR

This series of 9 video tutorials on YouTube covers the fundamentals of DSLR photography. Each episode in this series goes over subjects such as exposure, RAW vs. JPG, color management, and more.

4. morgueFile Classroom

morgueFile, one of the oldest and most popular sites for finding user-submitted free stock photos, has an online class aimed at beginners that want to learn about photography. The class, written by award-winning photographer Jodie Coston, contains 10 lessons. The lessons discuss fundamental photography concepts like composition, aperture and shutter speed, and much more.

5. Bernie’s Better Beginner’s Guide to Photography

This extensive guide, written from a beginner’s standpoint, contains information about digital photography that the author learned while he was still also just starting out. The guide covers a huge quantity of topics like focal length, metering, filters, etc. The guide contains plenty of images and illustrations that will help you understand the material. 

6. CS 178 Digital Photography Course Notes (Stanford University)

This is the course syllabus and notes of professor Marc Levoy for his introduction to digital photography class at Standford University. If you want to learn the inner workings of your camera, and learn digital photography from a highly technical level, this is a great learning resource.

7. Photography Basics

This short tutorial will introduce you to terms and concepts that you’ll encounter as you learn more about digital photography.

8. Digital Photography Tutorials

This series of beginner-level tutorials on the site Cambridge in Colour, an online learning community for photographers, contains illustrated guides and tutorials focusing in on basics of digital photography. The series of tutorials is categorized into 5 major parts, starting with tutorials on concepts and terminology and ending with specific digital photography techniques and styles.

9. Curtin’s Guide to Digital Cameras

If you’re thinking about becoming a photographer — whether as a hobby or as a profession — the first thing you’ll need is a camera. Also, you’ll eventually have to learn how your camera works in order to get the most out of your tool. This beginner-level guide on digital cameras will give you a ton of information on the inner workings and features of digital cameras.

10. The "Understanding" Series (The Luminous Landscape)

The owner of this website, Michael Reichmann, has been a professional photographer for over 40 years, and has put together a series of tutorials covering photography fundamentals where he discusses specific components of photography such as exposure, resolution of images, image sharpness and much more. 

Continue Reading