10 Digital Photography Techniques

Digital photography has revolutionized picture taking, no more old school film and driving to the drug store and waiting for film to develop. Digital cameras allow the photographer the luxury of concentrating on taking pictures and simply delete away those that are not up to standards.

Prior to looking at effective digital photography techniques, it is important to understand the difference between the old school film cameras and the new digital technology. Same as the old school film SLR (single reflex lens) cameras, digital SLR or DSLR (digital single reflex lens) camera use lenses and mirror. But instead of a film that records the image, a DSLR camera uses light sensor chips and digital memory. In other words, a DSLR camera is the computerized version of the traditional SLR camera.

Using these simple and effective digital photography techniques can aid those taking photographs with a DSLR cameras in capturing the best images using the new art of digital photography.

10 Digital Photography Techniques

1. Probably the greatest feature of digital cameras is the fabulous LCD screen that allows for real time preview of pictures as you take them. One of the best and most practical digital photography techniques is to make sure to utilize the LCD to its fullest potential by previewing each each picture and making sure it is perfect, if it's not just click delete it and re shoot.

2. Try to get a digital camera with image stabilization. If you don't have that feature then here is a digital photography technique to get clearer pictures without any blur. Hold your hand steady when taking pictures to prevent it from shaking and moving. Also, it is better to hold your eye up to the optical viewfinder when taking pictures, rather than the electronic viewfinder. This helps you to see exactly what your capturing and also helps to keep the camera steady when taking pictures.

3. Flash seems to be a challenge for most beginner photographers. Most flash technology can only light up a up a subject within an average of 10 to 15 feet. Make sure to move in closer, or add more light to the subject area.

4. Because digital cameras can take slightly longer to focus than film cameras, a good digital photography tip to avoid blurry and out-of-focus shots 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.

5. The law of optics remains the same whether using new digital photography technology or an old camera. For instance, if the sun is behind an image, the picture will be silhouette. If light is in front of the image, the picture will appear squint.

6. Another digital photography technique is when using a polarizer, be sure that the source of light is perpendicular to the object. If you do not have polarizing filter capability then a good digital photography technique is to use a quality pair of sunglasses. Place the sunglasses as close to the camera lens as possible, then check their position in the LCD viewfinder to make sure you don't have the the sunglasses rims in the picture.

7. Instead of film, digital photography uses memory cards to save shots. A good digital photography technique that can prevent lots of regret is to always have back up memory with you. There is nothing worse than missing that great shot because there is no more storage available in your camera.

8. A good digital photography technique for shooting bright landscapes and outdoor portraits is to change your white balance setting from auto to cloudy, this will yield brighter and clearer shots. This will give a warming filter on your camera and increases the reds and yellows resulting in richer and brighter pictures.

9. Zoom in to emphasize a certain asset or characteristic of the subject being captured. Avoid getting too large of a focus shot, evaluate what you want to capture and focus in on that image, avoiding backgrounds like buildings and landscape, this will give you clearer and better pictures of the object you want.

10. Practice is probably the best tip. The best digital photography technique is to practice using your camera. Get to know it and all the controls and what they do. Take lots of pictures and analyze what works best with your camera and soon you will be an expert with your own list of digital photography techniques.

Digital cameras have really simplified photography and made picture taking so much more mobile and convenient. And employing some of these digital photography techniques will deliver the best pictures of life's memories.

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Photography Triangle

We've come to a term "Painting with light" which can really summarize what we are doing with photography. We are making an image that the light itself that doing all the work. We just capturing what's available for us given by the sun (and other light source). Later on, we will find out that the term of "capturing" what's available for us isn't going to be enough to explain what's all about photography, but for the sake of simplicity, right now, I'm just going to use "capturing light", as a term to explain about photography. Are you agree with me on this? Well, you don't have a choice anyway hehehehe. In order to capture light, we need the right tools. We need light sensitive materials, that going to change its properties when light being exposed onto it, AND most importantly, keeping that properties even being exposed to more lights when we are going to enjoy what we've been photographed. We also need means to control the amount of lights that we are going to pass through and exposing a light-sensitive materials. In photography, means to control lights that we can use is shutter speed and aperture. Now that we already got three most important tools in photography, we can put these three tools in one Photography Triangle as you can see at figure below. To complete our triangle, we need another tool, a light meter, that we're going to use to help us calculate what combination of film - shutter speed - aperture to make a "well balanced light photograph" (phew for the complex term hahaha). This tool is going to "connect" the other three tools that i've been talking about. Light meter is a tool that we could use to calculate the right amount of light needed to exposed the light-sensitive material. So, a complete diagram of Photography Triangle can be seen below. Photography Triangle can be considered as the basic concept of photography All these three tools are connected and depend on each other. Changing the setting of one of the corner of the triangle, will change the setting in other corner. Provided with a scene, light meter will calculate the right combination of film, shutter speed, and aperture needed to capture the scene correctly. If we didn't follow what light meter recommend us to use, then our photo will look either brighter or darker. Our photograph will looked brighter because of too much light that being captured, or darker because of too little light that being captured. I did not say that brighter or darker photo is a bad photo. In fact, there are photos that are better being captured as brighter or darker. But in general, a well balanced light in a photo is what we usually considered as good photograph. Bright Photo Dark Photo Unfortunately for those who hates numbers, in photography, we depend the quality of our photo in numbers. With film, we have ASA or ISO to use as a guide of sesitivity to light of film that we use. Shutter speed are counted in "1/x second". So a number of "125" in shutter speed means that the shutter will open and pass the light for "1/125" second. Last but not least, in aperture we have " f/ ". Technically, there's a better definition about this aperture thingy. Unfortunately for you, even I don't remember it hahahaha!! I could look for it in my books, so that you could see me as know everything kind a guy. Or you could do it yourself with google or wikipedia. But I want to make things simple for you to read, so I just going to say that aperture is the diameter of the 'hole' that passing through the light. As for the numbers, you just have to accept it that there are few numbers that eventually you will remember. For you girls, please don't be mad or confuse to your partner or boyfriend if they can't remember dates and numbers as good as you are, but could remember numbers for horse power, lens focal length or last night soccer result. We boys are just not created to remember numbers except if we're going to use those numbers in our conversation with our friends. Obviously, we boys aren't talking about our anniversary dates with our mates. So please don't be mad to us if we just bad in numbers and dates (and also names, for me hehehe). Back to our Photography Triangle. The elements in this triangle is all connected. As i said before, changing the setting in one element of the triangle, to get the same result, we have to change the setting in other element of the triangle. For example, to photograph a landscape scenery our light meter say that we get the combination of ASA 400 - speed 1/125 s - f/ 5.6. Then, we change the aperture from f/ 5.6 into f/8. By doing that, we need to change either the speed (into 1/60 s), OR changing the film ASA (into 800). Below is a table of other combination that would make the same well balanced light in our photo. Film (ASA/ISO) Shutter Speed (second) Aperture (f/) 400 1/125 5.6 400 1/60 8 400 1/30 11 800 1/125 8 1600 1/125 11 200 1/60 5.6 100 1/30 5.6 Table of Film-Speed-Aperture combination that produce the same well balanced light Photography triangle is a process that we use in every photo that we took. In my mind, it is the most basic and important concept of photography. That's why i'm still teaching it. I admid, that with the help of camera technology, this process is becoming more simple and faster. Some people even say that this teaching is becoming outdated and we dont need to know this to make our photo. I'm fully aware of this. Heck, I even trust my camera calculation by using "aperture priority mode" in most of my photos that i took. I rarely use "manual mode" anymore. But, eventhough I depend most of the time to my camera for doing this Photography Triangle calculation, I'm doing it because I understand most of the basic of Photography Triangle. I know why I'm using 1/125 second shutter speed, or f/2.8 aperture, or ASA 1600 for my film. Using these settings comes from a conscious decisions. I'm just using my camera as a tool to make everything a bit faster. Thank you very much! Madia www.mk-photography.biz

Introduction to Photography

Now that you've try to shoot some pictures with your camera set on automatic mode, you might notice that you didn't get what you want.

You might imagine something, a picture that you had seen somewhere. Then, you see a scene that you think could give you almost the same picture. You get excited! You shoot some picture. Then when you look at the LCD, somehow, it didn't come out like what you've imagine. Then you try to shoot some more, but you just didn't get it. You try again and again, yet the result that you get just didn't even close to what you want. And worse still, you started to get frustrated and begining to think that photography is just not your thing.

First, you need to relax. Photography can be frustrating sometimes. Heck, even I still get frustrated when i didn't get my shot. The key is not to get it into you, and still keep shoot some more picture. Although right now, you may want to learn a bit about photography technique. By knowing a litle bit about photography technique, you may one-day, produce a decent photograph that you've imagine.

First of all, the concept. Photography basically making an image with light. "Painting with light" is a term that always been associated with Photography. It is the light itself that produce the painting. While a painter would need a canvas, few tubes or buckets of paint, and a few brush types. In photography we use different tools to make our "painting", which is (1) light source as our paint, (2) means to record light as our canvas, and (3) means to control light as our brush.

In Photography, we make a painting from light,
means to capture light, and means to control light.

We will discuss more of each of those three elements in photography in next chapter. Right now, I just need to stress more that in order to get photography, we just need those three elements. Camera and film will be useless if there is no light. A used cardbox can be made into a simple pin-hole camera. A simple candle or flash-light can be used as a light source. The priciple is still the same, we just need a light source that could be controled thus can be recorded in light sensitive materials.

We have two tools to control the amount of light that being recorded, APERTURE and SHUTTER SPEED. We usually have these two tools in our camera. As I told you before, camera is our brush. No matter how modern and sophicated our camera is, it is still just our brush. We use aperture and shutter speed to control the amount of light that we capture so that we could create our image that we already envisioned. So, camera does not determine how good our photograph will be like. Technology sure does helps, but it is not what makes the photograph. It just a brush. We use our brush to control the amount of light that we're going to record.

Light that being passed through by our camera and lens, are captured by our means to record light. It usually in a form of FILM or DIGITAL SENSOR. Our film and digital sensor becomes our canvas. It will record any light that we expose onto it. As long as our light-sensitive materials in our film is sensitive enough to record that light, our film definately going to record it.

From this APERTURE, SHUTTER SPEED, and FILM relationship, we could get a Photography Triangle. A triangle that is so basic in photography, that you will meet this triangle in any process in making a photograph. If you already making a photo, then you already use it. Although you may not notice itu. You dont notice it especially when you are using your automatic mode in your camera, because you let the camera to think about this triangle for you.

Photography Triangle can be considered
as the basic concept of photography

I'll be discussing more about this Photography Triangle later in next chapter. For now, i just need to say that all aspect in that triangle is interconnected. Changing one aspect, will change the setting in other aspect in order to get the same result.

So, to conclude this introduction, I'm going to say that what photography need is only 3 (three) elements, that is (1) light, (2) means to record light, and (3) means to control light. As long as there is these three elements, we could say that there's photography. There is an activity of making image from light that we "captured".

Thank you very much!

Madia
www.mk-photography.biz

Digital Photography Tips - How to Take Winter Photos

Many people that have just started taking photographs have no knowledge that, when taking pictures of snow, the properties in their cameras are set to counterbalance the abundance in light that is reflected in the snow. Because of that, snow is captured as gray or blue instead of white. Fortunately, there are two solutions for this simple problem that frequently happen in the winter. You can change the setting to "beach" or "snow" mode and the camera will self-adapt to the bright light and fix the issue. The other solution is to manually manipulate the camera to recognize the snow as it should, while observing the effects through the LCD screen.

At the same time it is not easy photographing snow because of all the bright light, once you realize what you can do to overcome that problem, you are instantly blessed with breathtaking and exclusive images that you cannot obtain in any other season. There is usually such a striking difference in colors that make winter pictures unique and extremely attractive.

Whenever taking photos outside, photographers are usually confronted by some difficulties. One of them is when the picture ends up being too dark because the camera tries to compensate for the intensity of light. In this case, most people use the flash to help with the lighting. You can also choose the "action" mode to make sure that any moving subject is captured precisely.

There is such a wide variety of photographs that can be seen in winter photography. All the contrast and textures of nature are simply infinite.

Thank you very much!

Madia
www.mk-photography.biz