Taking Photos

Proper handling of the camera itself can reduce the number of retakes, helping to make your day easier by decreasing the number of times you need to repeat the dreaded "hold on, I need to take one more". Taking better quality pictures means taking fewer pictures overall since you’re taking fewer bad shots due to bad mechanics.

                                                                   holding the camera

Hold the camera solidly in your hand to prevent the camera from shuddering or shifting too much when pressing on the shutter button, and watch your spare fingers so that they don’t interfere with the lens. One trick is to wrap the camera strap around your fingers so that you will be more conscious of where they are. Another tip, especially with smaller cameras, is to hold your eye up to the optical viewfinder to capture the image, rather than the electronic viewfinder – this will not only help you see exactly what your capturing, but will also help to stabilize the shot between your hands and your face for less 'camera shake'.

                                                                          focusing

As digital cameras have a tendency to take slightly longer to focus than film camera, an important tip is to half-depress the shutter button until the camera has had time to lock the focus, and then completely press the button to take the actual shot - this can often make the difference between blurry, out-of-focus shots, and clear pictures. Also, with normal picture-taking, shutter speeds are fast enough that a small amount of shake won’t affect the resulting image much, however, there are times when you’d want to use a tripod to compensate: when taking pictures in low light, where the shutter speed will slow down enough to potentially make drag lines, and when using a long zoom, where distant objects are susceptible to blur. In each case, the tripod will settle the image and let you forget about shaking the image and focus on capturing what’s in your mind’s eye.

                                                                           preview

One of the main advantages of a digital camera is being able to preview the pictures after you’ve taken them. If you are trying to capture a specific scene, you can review the shot and see if it looks the way you wanted – if it doesn’t, you can delete the shot and retake it to get it right. Why keep a picture if it’s blurry, or someone’s eyes are closed, or a person is obstructing part of the view?
                                                                        archiving


Taking that one step further, there is no worse feeling than seeing the perfect kiss, smile or sunset, reaching for your camera and clicking the button, only to realize that your storage is full and you’ve missed your chance. It’s happened to everyone, but still, you can prevent it by clearing off your old pictures monthly (or more frequently if you are a shutterbug). Bring a second memory card/stick with you when you go on a trip, even if your primary card/stick is large, just in case you need the extra space. There are also portable storage products available that allow you to offload and archive your photos to keep your main storage free, ranging from iPod adapters to portable drives/CD burners.

Accessories

A problem many people have is that you never know what you’ll run into – when vacationing in southern Europe, it is likely already too late to remember that you needed an extra memory card/stick, a spare battery, or can’t take a picture that doesn't shake like Jello. This is where accessories come in – they can help to complete a picture-taking experience by giving the one thing you didn't know you needed so you can get the perfect shot or the job done.

                                                                      carrying case

Perhaps the accessory that gets the least respect by amateur photographers is a carrying case or bag. Ironically, this is the easiest way to not only protect your investment, which can easily cost up to or over $1000, but to also bring along all the spare parts you may or may not need on that particular day. With extra pockets, slots and a good solid strap, you can make sure you haven’t left anything behind and can still keep your hands free when trekking around on a mountain. Of course, it’s also the easiest way to identify a tourist in a foreign land, but everything has trade-offs.


                                                                           tripod


Tripods are commonly used to minimize tremor associated with night shots, long zooms or professional portraits where as much time is spent organizing the audience rather than simply capturing a scene. For the budget- or space-conscious, buy a fist-sized beanbag or hacky sack and bring it with you – it makes a very flexible mini-tripod. Even some professionals will use them in awkward situations, like positioning the camera on a rock, ledge or other precarious positions. The moldable shape and portability make it the perfect must-have accessory


                                                                  additional lenses


Lenses are often overlooked by all but professionals and serious hobbyists, but they do have applications with the lucky owner whose camera allows for those upgrades. Wide-angle lenses and telephoto lenses can be used well in nature scenes, conjuring up visions of the Grand Canyon or safaris along the Serengeti. Filters are inserted in front of the lens itself and distort or affect the light coming through to the camera’s light sensor. A polarizing filter, or polarizer, for example, filters light as it angles further away from straight ahead, and as a result gives truer tones to objects in its field of vision - which really helps to take the glare off of sunny days. In many cases, these effects can be reproduced with software programs that crop an image, tweak the colour spectrum, and otherwise alter the image, however, generally speaking, the less editing you have to do of your pictures after the fact, the easier photography will be for you.


                                                                 other accessories


When traveling or just heading away from home for an afternoon, plan on having a travel pack of accessories: additional batteries or a charger in case your camera battery dies on you, an external flash, and an extra memory card/stick or two in case you run out of room (many photographers find a good mix with large, medium, and small sizes a good fit – the large card/stick is the main storage used 95% of the time, the medium serving as backup with enough space to hold a day’s worth of pictures, and the small card/stick big enough for half a dozen shots in an emergency).

Choosing a Camera

Certainly, the most obvious question that users have is what kind of camera they should choose. Camera users normally fall into one of three main categories: amateurs, hobbyists and professionals, and knowing where you fit can help you identify what features might be important, and what type of camera would make sense for your needs. Are you looking to just take a few pictures of family and friends, capture memories from vacations, or produce shots of nature and landscapes to build a portfolio? Also think about how much quality you are willing to trade away for portability, as cameras can range from large and bulky professional quality SLR cameras (Single Lens Reflex) to small ultra-portable cameras, some of which may not even have a flash.

                                                               camera categories

Cameras are typically broken down into groups: ultra-compact, compact, prosumer or hobbyist, and digital SLR, and most manufacturers build units in several categories to capture more of the market. On each end of the range, the ultra-compacts are designed to be the most portable, often fitting into pockets easily and used as key chains, while the digital SLR cameras are professional quality tools that have the widest range of options, such as external flashes, lenses and tripods (but are also often the largest and most cumbersome to carry). Most units fall into the middle two categories, with compacts having a good range of quality, resolution, and options, and the prosumer range including higher quality and greater control over manual options and accessories.

                                                                          megapixels

Buying by only the megapixel rating will mean you will miss out on the other features of the camera – portability, accessories, a good quality flash, but it is one of the most important considerations. Less than 3 megapixel cameras are suitable for basic snapshots; the camera will be small and good enough to take basic 'I was there' shots, but the images won’t be as clear if you want anything larger than standard 4x6 prints. Between 3 and 5 megapixels, you will find a good range of everyday use and vacation cameras – you can fill your photo albums with shots from cameras in this range or use them as desktop images, as you will generally find the images are good enough that you don’t need any more and will be able to make good quality prints at a variety of sizes. From 5 to 10 megapixels, you will find more serious cameras for hobbyists that want to explore photography as an art or those that are looking to stay ahead of the curve – the images will take up more hard drive space but will be perfect for manipulation and printing out in larger sizes. A number of cameras are available across different categories with 10 megapixels or more, although this kind of resolution is generally overkill for casual everyday use. Choose a 10 megapixel or higher resolution camera if you are a professional and expect to be paid for the work you produce, if you need the highest resolution because you expect to make significant enlargements of your photos for mounting/framing, if you want more flexible cropping options, or if you simply want the ultimate in image quality.

                                                                                  zoom

Zooming is another important consideration with digital cameras - there are two kinds of zoom: optical zoom and digital zoom. An optical zoom factor is one that relies on the lens itself magnifying the light coming in, so that what is distant appears larger and closer in the resulting image. A digital zoom factor is one that takes the resulting image and magnifies it after the fact. Needless to say, an optical zoom factor is much more important than a digital zoom factor (and produces better quality results).

                                                                             storage media

The way the images themselves are stored can be a factor in your decision, as some camera makers have proprietary storage systems that are incompatible with the cameras of other makes. Some common formats are Compact Flash (a fairly common format across both compact and professional cameras), Secure Digital (SD) cards (which are fairly common in compact cameras due to their smaller size), and Sony Memory Stick (unique to Sony cameras, but also supported by Sony computers, televisions, and other devices). Storage sizes can range from smaller 8MB cards/sticks, which can hold about a dozen three megapixel images, to larger 32GB cards/sticks and higher, which can hold thousands of images, and are especially useful when storing photos in a 'raw' format (a direct unprocessed copy of the image data from the camera sensor, available more commonly with digital SLR cameras, and takes much more storage space per photo). Prices have come down on most of the memory cards/sticks making selection of the larger sizes more affordable and a smarter choice. Choose the largest size you are comfortable with, and ideally select a second smaller stick as a backup in case the first one becomes full – for example, a combination of a 512MB with a 4GB card/stick is good if you move all your images onto your computer on a regular basis.

Digital Vs. Film

The debate between digital cameras and film cameras is relatively new – digital photography itself has only in the past few years made it to the point where it could rival film, and most agree that it has finally met (if not surpassed) its rival in ease and flexibility. The range of camera choices above 3 megapixels (which is comparable to good quality point and shoot cameras, and will provide acceptable snapshots) is very wide, while 5-10 megapixel cameras or greater are available near the top of almost every camera line for excellent quality results. Professional quality digital SLR camera are available that will provide greater than 20 megapixel images, and are generally only necessary if you are looking for significant enlargements, or require the highest quality and detail for commercial photography.


                                                                    quality differences

The results are similar from both film and digital cameras, especially in the case of outdoor shots where the difference can be almost indistinguishable between the two. With low light levels indoors, photos taken with both types of cameras can be susceptible to granularity or artifacts, however most users don’t notice the effects - and many software applications exist that can reduce the artifacts, whether from a digital camera or from a film print that is scanned in. Ultimately, the camera industry has taken the tools to a point where even though the canvas has changed, the quality is similar - so the decision can be made by the artist whether they want film or digital, with many now choosing digital because of the inherent flexibility.

Film quality also relates primarily to the quality of the lens and the film, where digital camera quality is also impacted by the amount of resolution the camera is capable of, and the in-camera processing that is done when a shot is taken – prior to even taking a picture, you will know whether your digital camera is capable of taking pictures that can be displayed/printed in larger sizes (the higher the resolution, the larger prints that can be made at a similar quality). Many higher-end cameras also allow pictures to be taken in a 'raw' format, which bypasses the image processing done in the camera - this requires the photographer to do more work after the photo is taken, but it provides more control over the final image. In contrast, taking a photo with film permanently records it based on the conditions at the time (including choices between colour or black and white), although film images can always be scanned and manipulated later.

                                                              advantages of digital

Many professional photographers, as well as almost all new amateur camera users, are turning to digital cameras because the picture-taking process becomes faster and easier. You can take several shots of the same scene until you get the result you want, you can share images immediately with friends, and can choose to print only the best of your collection while still keeping all of your photo albums on your computer or on the Internet.