You Have a New Camera - Now What?
Tips to Make the Most of Your New Digital Camera
Greg Scoblete
Digital Photography Tips
The gift-giving season is over. We've now entered the unofficial season of gift returning, where guilt-tinged recipients sneak into retail, gift receipt in hand, to get a better deal. So if you're still holding onto your shiny new digital camera, you must love it. And rightfully so. What's not to like?
But all this excitement can evaporate quickly if you don't know what you're doing. Make the most of your new camera with these digital camera tips.
Easy on the ISO: Chances are your new digital camera can push the boundaries of low light sensitivity, perhaps as high as ISO 3,200 or even ISO 6,400 and beyond. High ISO numbers dangle the promise of shooting in low light without a flash and emerging with a semi-decent photo. But be careful. While camera makers casually boast about their product's ISO sensitivity, even moderately discerning eyes can be quickly disappointed above ISO 1,600. That said, experiment! Your mileage may vary.
Easy on the Flash: Conversely, if you've been blessed with a new digital SLR or a camera with manual controls over shutter and aperture, you'll want to try living without your flash for a change. The flash is the bane of indoor and lowlight photography: it can bring otherwise obscure details to light, but at the price of improperly exposed skin tones that look bleached and washed out. If you're able to exercise some control over your camera's shutter speed, try increasing the shutter speed and raising the ISO (conservatively) and see if you can't find a better exposure naturally.
If you must use a flash (and often you must) be sure to stay far enough away from your subject to reduce the intensity, so that when the light from the flash reaches your subject, it's softer than it was when it was first blasted from your camera.
Activate What You Think Is Automatic: Camera makers often tout how their products can find faces or set scene modes automatically. And in many models, features like an intelligent auto mode or face detection are set "on" as the default. But sometimes they're not, and you'll have dig into the menu to turn them on. Don't assume an advertised feature is on at default.
Shoot A Lot: You'll have a greater chance of a knock out image if you keep taking swings. Whatever you're shooting - kid's game, a wedding - take a lot of pictures. All the photos that just look so-so can easily be deleted and you up the odds of catching a great moment if your hand is always on the shutter. Which leads to a subset of this advice: shoot candidly. Carrying a camera around is a solemn responsibility - you're the go-to-person for the memories. Posed photos are fine but they're also boring. Catching someone in the act (of something, keep it at least PG-rated for posterity's sake) usually evokes their personality far better.
Think: Boring: Backgrounds that is. Particularly when you're shooting people, they should be the focus of your photograph. If you're touring France you'll have to take the obligatory shot holding hands in front of the Eifel Tower but as a general rule of thumb - make the people shots about the people, and the landscapes about the landscapes. That means getting up close to your subjects and trying to keep the background behind them as non-descript as possible.
Read the Manual: No, I'm not kidding you. Like eating spinach, some advice is painful but necessary. It's the only true source of intimate knowledge on your camera. It may be a source of revelation too, as you discover features you didn't know existed.