|
Ten Easy Steps to Taking Better Digital Pictures |
PDF
|
| Print |
|
E-mail
|
With its ability to generate nearly perfect images, a digital camera can
be fantastic and flexible tool. However, understanding a digital camera
can take time. Novice users will often limit themselves to the typical
"pose-and-click" brand of photography used by amateurs for decades. This
is, unfortunately, a great injustice to a camera that can be put to better
use. To avoid condemning such an elegant and versatile machine to a life
of drudgery a prospective photographer need but follow the ten shooting
tips given below:
1. Use the camera as often as possible. Practice,
practice, and then more practice is the key to improvement.
2.
Never depend on PhotoShop or any similar photo-editing tool to digitally
enhance the quality of a photograph or fix mistakes. This is the first vow
anyone who wants to be a good photographer must take and then follow.
While these editing tools are excellent ways to make little changes and
corrections, a good photographer seeks to take the picture that minimizes
or even eliminates the need for such alterations. The more an image is
changed, the less of the photographer's skill is left within it.
3.
The camera's focus must be on the subject, not on people or objects around
the subject. This reduces the "noise level" in the photograph as well as
improving clarity and sharpness in the image.
4. Learn to look at
and respect underexposure-warning lights. These lights are particularly
useful for beginners, allowing them to experiment with the exposure
settings until the blinking warning lights disappear. Once the
photographer gains experience they can start using their own insights in
tinkering with the exposure levels.
5. Avoid underexposure at all
costs. An underexposed image will lack color quality. It causes the
camera's sensors to fail to read the colors coming into the lens,
resulting in an image that lacks the naturalness and vibrancy that it
should have. Not only does this "deaden" the resultant picture, but also
it is among the more difficult to realistically correct problems for
digital editing tools.
6. Remember that each sensor is designed to
capture a specific range of tones. If the full light available is not
allowed to reach the sensor the camera will not receive the information it
requires to build a good image. Most of the pixels will be unable to
capture the tonal range in their full scope and vibrancy. This will result
in lower picture quality.
7. Where underexposure makes a picture
toneless and dark, overexposure makes colors too rich, bestowing an
artificial hue to the picture or even causing it to look "washed out".
Overexposures overpowers the interplay of light and dark effects and over
saturates the subtle tones that are essential for giving an image a
natural look.
8. When the human mind decides the parameters under
which a photograph is taken, the best potential for quality will result.
Automation helps guard against bad photographs, but will never manage to
take great pictures. A novice photographer should gradually move away from
automated functions and start taking over these tasks when it comes to
exposure, color, noise, and so on. A gradual, but unmistakable,
improvement in the quality of photographs is sure to follow.
9.
Always remember to compose a picture. The art of focusing on the subject
using frames, movement, lights, and other available tools, composition is
the art of photography that takes place outside the camera. Composition
techniques can be learned from either a senior photographer or from a
book. Once the lessons have been learned superficially in this way, they
must be practiced just as the art of photography itself is. An almost
automatic improvement in the quality of photographs will be seen.
10.
The final and most important step is for every photographer to learn to
critically examine each image that they shoot. Study it to discover the
weaknesses of the photograph. Re-shoot the photograph, endeavoring to
remove the weaknesses. Continue to hone the craft until fully satisfied
with the results.
|
