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Digital Photography - Tiscali Technology
Understanding the technology
Understanding the technology
Most digital cameras - and now even camera phones - come with advanced creative features to improve your pictures. Getting to grips with them will make photography more fun and open up new possibilities. Here's a rundown of some of the most common features:
Flash unit
The flash on your camera is a mixed blessing. It makes shooting at night-time or indoors possible - but it can wash out the atmosphere and even create demonic red eyes in portraits. Natural light is always better than artificial light, so if you've got strong evening sunlight or a room full of candles, try shooting without the flash and see what results you get. If your images are blurred, the first thing to do is boost your camera's sensitivity (ISO number) or switch into Night mode - this makes the camera more sensitive to low light levels.
If you do need to use the flash, many digital cameras have a Night Portrait or Slow Synch mode that fires the flash but also exposes the background properly. Be warned that it can give strange results in very dim conditions. The flash can also be surprisingly useful in daylight, to banish harsh shadows on sunny days. Always remember that your flash won't illuminate anything more than about 3 or 4 metres away, even in pitch darkness, so turn it off for those stadium shots.
Exposure
You can adjust how bright or dark your images are using your camera's exposure compensation control. You might need to boost exposure (+1 EV), for example, if you're shooting a portrait against the light or taking pictures on snow or sand, which can confuse metering systems.
A more sophisticated option found on some cameras is choosing centre-weighted or spot metering. These use the centre of the scene to determine exposure and are useful for subjects that are either much brighter (like a spot-lit performer on stage) or darker (a person in shadow) than the surrounding area.
Burst mode
Also called continuous shooting. This lets you take several pictures, one straight after the other. Simply hold down the shutter and the camera will capture a series of images in just a couple of seconds. This is useful if you're waiting for a critical moment like someone blowing out candles on a cake - and is also great for grabbing candid portraits.
Aperture and shutter speed
In auto mode, you don't have to worry about aperture and shutter speed settings, but knowing how they work will help you take better snaps. A fast shutter speed freezes swift-moving action, and a slow shutter lets you shoot in dimmer conditions (but risks blurring). A wide aperture (low f number) also enables low light photography but means only the subject you focus on will be sharp. Choose a narrow aperture (high f number) for landscape images where you want everything from foreground to background to be in focus.
Self-timer
Virtually all digital cameras have a self-timer for taking pictures or video clips with you in them.
White balance
When you're shooting in artificial light, colours can look very different - just think how dull everything appears under orange street lights. Digital cameras can correct for these colour tints automatically, but the better models have white balance settings for common lighting situations - such as sunshine, fluorescent lights or normal indoor bulbs - to give perfect colour reproduction. Some even let you adjust the white balance manually for spot-on tones.
Read on to find out more about going digital:
