Photography will ultimately become a hobby if you own a digital camera. Any one who is new to the camera is sure to turn himself to a professional soon, because every feature in the camera is user-friendly. An advanced model digital camera is built with features that make the photos appear vibrant and natural. The pictures appear unexplainably sharp and clear.
It is not enough if you just own a digital camera and follow a point and shoot methodology. Basic knowledge about the features of a digital camera is essential if you are looking for a picture with a professional touch. The following pin points to the techniques of taking a good photo.
Image Quality and Storage
First and foremost, go through the camera settings and resolution settings to get a professional photo. Some camera models allow you to increase the compression or to reduce the resolution so that you can store more. By doing so, you will lose the quality of the photographs. The pictures can be shrunk using a software so that you can mail it or use it on the websites.
You can adjust the resolution of the camera depending upon the detail you need in the photo. Pictures with photographic quality can be printed on the inkjet printers with 200ppi. Cameras with at least 3 megapixels or 5 megapixels will produce good quality pictures.
Memory
Latest model digital cameras come with higher memory capacity and hence the issue regarding the storage of the photos would be less. The storage capacity directly depends upon the number of photos you would store and the resolution of the picture.
You can easily calculate the number of photos you can store in the memory by calculating the space that is required to store a photo. Say 1MB or 2MB for each digital photo that is recorded with high resolution and in JPEG settings. It is better to get a bigger memory card to store more photos.
Some of the different types of memory card formats are Smart Media, XD, Compact Flash, MMC, SD and MS. More and more photos can be stored on to the memory if you copy the photos from the camera to a computer or to a laptop or may be to a CD or any other storage medium.
Battery Power
The life span of the digital camera depends on the usage and model of the camera. In standard, you can use the camera for a few hundred photos. Turning off the digital camera in between while taking photos will also save the power of the battery.
There are a few tips to save the battery.
- LCD view finder may not be used.
- Flash must be switched off.
- High drain rechargeable batteries like Ni-MH 2300 mAh may be used as the disposable alkaline AA cells does not have long life.
- Purchase a spare battery and a battery grip attachment if you have a SLR camera.
- Card reader can be used to move the pictures to a PC instead of connecting the camera to the computer as it uses the battery.
Zooming
Most of the digital cameras come with both digital zoom and optical zoom. It is better to disable the digital zoom as it crops the center of the image and enlarges it. By doing so, the quality of the image is lost. Whereas, the optical zoom gets closer to the subject with the help of the lens and thus the quality of the image is not lost. Instead of zooming in and zooming out, try to move closer or away from the subject to get a better picture rather than standing in the same place to take a photograph.
Exposure
The exposure compensation setting that is available in most of the basic cameras can be used to get a brighter or darker result. You can over or under expose the image and is expressed as -2EV to +2EV. The exposure can be made doubly brighter with the -1EV setting. Colourful sunset can be picturised if an image is underexposed. Overexposing is useful when the subject is dark. After you have taken a photo, remember to put back the exposure compensation to zero back again.
Depth of field
Depth of field refers to how much of the image or the picture is in focus. A shallow depth of field has only the subject in focus, while the large depth of field has not only the subject but also a lot of other things in the focus. Large depth of field will be helpful when you need a sharp picture of both the close and far away items. While the shallow depth of field is useful when you need to take portraits with blurred background. The lens aperture controls the depth of field and is denoted as f-number. Smaller f-numbers have shallow depth of field and larger f-numbers have larger depths of field. You can select the number using the aperture priority mode. Some cameras come with the facility of setting to either of the depth of fields automatically by selecting the landscape or portrait scene preset mode.
Focus
Digital cameras come with auto focus mode. But this usually does not work with the auto exposure method. Cameras focus on the subject in the middle of the frame. Hence, the subject must be focused first in the middle and then the focus must be locked by pressing the shutter button to half. Next, keep the button pressed half way and press the button to take the shot.
Digital cameras also come with focus-locking feature. Manual focus can be set when the auto focus does not work properly. For close-up shots, you can go for the macro mode that is indicated by a flower icon.
LCD View finder
With the digital camera the possibility to view the picture immediately after a shot is taken is indeed a great advantage. With this you can also check the exposure levels, composition levels and other details clearly. You can play back and check if all the shots have been taken properly. The LCD viewfinder is very useful at different occasions.
Flash
Built-in flashes are effective only when used within shorter distances. It is not effective for longer distances. The flash can be switched off if the subject is closer by. Flash can also be switched off when you are shooting through the window to avoid reflection.
You can also use flashes when the surrounding is dark. Flashes work well during dawn, dusk, bright days or in dim conditions that brighten up the foreground subject. You can also take a picture of a subject in a long exposure night scenes. This method is called as the fill-in flash.
Printing
Photos look real and natural only if the photos have darker blacks and brighter whites. Cropping photos also help to improve the quality of the photos. It is always better to work on the copies of the photos than working on the original one. Also, photographing purely depends on the taste of the photographer. Hence there are no hard and fast rules regarding photography.
There are no limitations as far as photography is concerned. Any person with a camera finally holds the freedom to take photographs in the way he requires. Whatever may be the technique he adopts, a good photograph taken must be the ultimate result.
Guest post by: Read expert reviews on latest digital cameras and know more about digital camera trouble shooting at Digital Camera Reviews website.
low end digicams has this great feature for optical stabilization . Newbies should consider buying those . ….
Not all of them do, but if your camera has a big zoom on it, I’d certainly recommend getting one with optical image stabilization.
thanks for sharing great tips very useful information how to get digital photography in effective way. 🙂
What are your thoughts on cameras on phones for photography? Do you think these can be used as quality fill ins? Droid is now even using 5 or 8 megapixel cameras as well as flash options. It’s hard to argue with a 8 megapixel camera.
Hi Brian. As Chase Jarvis says, the best camera is the one that’s with you – and that’s the power of cellphone cameras. If you have a newer cell phone with a good camera, it’s likely to be really good. The iPhone 4 camera is good, but the problem with cell phone cameras is the lack of zoom and usually a terrible flash (or just a LED light).
I am also using my phone camera for my photo.
I wish some website can give a review on the best phone camera for blogging or do you seen any site like that?
Sorry, zezebel, I don’t know of any such sites because I haven’t been too interested in cell phones since I got my first iPhone in 2007 – before then, I’d upgrade cell phone few times a year in order to always try out the latest stuff 🙂
My gear is EOS 450d with 50-250 mm lens. I like this camera and I have got many great photos with this camera. But for battery power as you said, it’s LCD consume many. So, every time I took a picture, I always turned of it’s LCD.
I love photography and thanks for sharing the views about it ………………
For those who are newcomers to photography I would recommend “The Betterphoto Guide to Digital Photography”. It does a good job of discussing the basics (like exposure, depth of field … etc.) in understandable English. If possible, borrow it from a library, as it is not a huge book and can probably be digested in a few weeks.
Thanks for the tip, Keith. Let’s hope some photography newcomers will take you up on it and go borrow that book!
Your post is really useful . I like your tips on how to save the battery. I never thought of that.