Basic tips and hints for digital photographers

First of all, none of the rules below are absolute, and they are aimed primarily at the "happy snapper" but just a few seconds checking the setup of your camera and composing the image properly can save a great deal of heartache later on when you get back home and find the pictures are not as good as you would expect. Especially check the setup as soon as you have taken the camera out of its box or changed the battery. The default set-up when you buy a camera is almost certainly NOT set up as follows.

In my opinion, by far the most important things to take time over are Resolution, Quality and Focus.

RESOLUTION (or megapixels)

I have often been sent an image that a client wants printed to a nice big canvas only to find that the camera is set at too a low resolution. One person even had over 200 photos of a recent holiday to China and all the photos were only web quality (640 x 480). She was heartbroken!

Always, always, always, take pictures with the highest resolution and highest quality your camera can deliver. Many cameras come preset at a mid resolution and quality. RESET IT straight away. Computer memory is not a problem and you can always back them up to CD.

If your camera allows for something called RAW it is by far the highest quality but you will need special editing software to work with these images so I would suggest you stick to High Res, High Quality. At the end of the day, if you have bought a camera that can deliver RAW images you almost certainly know what to do with them. Likewise, some cameras offer a TIFF setting. This is again much higher quality but will generate HUGE files. 

QUALITY

As mentioned above, Quality is something slightly different to Resolution but no less important. It relates to the amount of image compression that you are allowing the camera to use to save a picture. Basically, if you have an 8 megapixel camera and set it to medium quality you are downgrading the quality of the image. Again, High Resolution, Best Quality ALWAYS.

DATE STAMP

Unless you really want it, do not allow the camera to put the date stamp on the image, once it is there you will need editing software to get rid of it. This can easily be turned off in the menus. If you can't find it consult your manual.

Time stamp on	Time stamp off

TAKE YOUR TIME FOCUSING

It is impossible to re-focus an out of focus image!

If you don't understand this you will never take a good picture!

This is only relevant to close up subjects, for panoramic and landscape photos it is pretty much irrelevant.

Once resolution and quality are set you can pretty much forget them, but you need to be careful to allow your camera to focus properly on the correct subject of your image. We get a lot of pictures that are perfectly in focus, but, unfortunately not on the main subject.

Pretty much all cameras will offer a pre-focus option and show you which part of the image you are focusing on. When you partially push the shutter release button the camera normally focuses on the centre of the image without taking the image. If that is what you want, fine, but if you want the focused image to be off centre then pre-focus the frame with the subject in the centre then gently hold the button and move the camera to put the subject where you want then push the button all the way down to take the shot. Remember, lower and mid level digital cameras do not respond anywhere near as fast as conventional film cameras. You will need to slightly adjust your technique.

"AUTO" AGAINST "MANUAL"

Unless you understand the manual settings, leave your camera in Auto. If you do understand manual, even just a little, you can achieve some very special results even with the most basic digital camera.

It is really worth playing and looking at the results on your computer to properly understand exactly how things work and there are a great number of books on digital photography available if you want to learn things properly.

FLASH

Most compact digital cameras and especially mobile phones are not great in low light conditions, especially at night as the flashes are just not powerful enough. They are fine for close up pictures but forget it for anything more than a few yards away. Don't get caught by the sales drivel that "This camera has ISO 3600 so you can take pictures in very dark conditions", that is true to a point but high ISO images are very grainy. The higher the ISO the more grain you will introduce. BEWARE. High ISO is good but you need to understand why you get what you get.

MULTI FRAME PANORAMAS

Some cameras offer this function built in but in my experience they are not good and are best done on computer. 

The image of Lords cricket ground below was originally 5 images that I have stitched together by hand and there are a few rules that will make this process much easier.

1. Use a tripod wherever possible, if not, be careful to try to get the same vertical image area across the entire set of photos otherwise you will lose a lot of potential image when the "odd" bits are cropped off.
2. Do not to turn your body as you take the frames, this will be your natural instinct, fight it. Instead, turn the camera around as though it was on a tripod, that way the image will always be centred around the lens rather than the back of your head if you turn your body.
3. Be sure to get a decent overlap between the frames (at least 20%) as the edges of a frame are naturally distorted by the lens slightly so with a good overlap we can get rid of that.

HAVE FUN OUT THERE and send us your best pictures to produce some wall art for you.