With the availability of new digital cameras many more people have become interested in photography due to the sheer ease of use. The hobby has become much cheaper over the last couple of years - you can pick up a relatively good camera for just over £100 (180 USD) now which, in my view, is a good price to pay for something that lasts years and can capture major events in your life. Of course, the major advantages of digital would be the lack of film, no hassle trooping over to your local printers to print out your shots, and no need to spend money on film (just the one off payment of a storage card, be it and SD, CF card etc). To take your photos with, which in some cases (probably mine), would cost over £30 (54 USD) a month. The new digital technology had totally eradicated the need to waste such extravagant amounts of money for this hobby.
So now the equipment is now fully available to many people, what are you to do with your camera to achieve top-quality photos every time? This is where I try and give a helping hand. Over the next couple of months I am going to be writing several steps to getting the perfect photo. This month I am covering step one - setting up your camera for the shot.
Taking great photos every time: Step 1, setting up your camera.Quick notes: This step is really made for cameras with manual set ups, so for those with only auto modes, this part isn’t of much use to you, sorryNowadays to get the most of your camera you can’t always rely on your auto modes, sure they can turn out good results, but are they really what you want? To get shots how
you want them,
you need to take control of the camera. Now then, how exactly you set up your camera is really due to personal preference. The best habit to get into is to use the
Aperture Priority Modes (Usually
A or
Av on most cameras with the function).
Once you have set your camera to this mode, you have to make a decision that can really affect your shot, do you want a shot with a big D.O.F (
Depth
Of
Field, to have a high D.O.F means you have a focus that is only crisp on a smaller area) or with a low D.O.F (To have a crisp focus on most of the photo, also known as focus infinity)?. As a rule of thumb, if you are taking a landscape photo, you generally want to go with a low D.O.F, this means you will need to use a low
F number. This number can be found in your camera’s display, when you change a number in
A mode, it’s going to be your
F number. Just to confuse you some more (trust me, I am confusing myself writing this) a low
F number is the highest value, so f30 is a lower number than f5.6.
So, when changing your
F number for a landscape, I would suggest an
F number of f5.6 to f11 (if is goes that far) on a compact camera. However, if you wanted to take a photo of a flower, I would use a much
higher aperture (don’t forget, that’s a lower value number). If you use a lower aperture, this means that you will actually have a slower exposure length; this means that you may have to use a tripod.
The next step of setting up your camera is setting your I.S.O levels (
I have to make you aware that this, like the aperture mode, may not be on your camera). Now then, for those of you how know a bit about film cameras, you might remember that you would have slow and fast film, fast film being for sports and such activities (usually an I.S.O of 800, but can get up to about 3200), while slow film is used for genres like landscapes (usually an ISO of 64-100). Well, now the digital age has come, it’s impossible to do such a thing, however there is one thing that some cameras can do that mimics the old film technique, the camera’s sensor (the bit that absorbs the light in the photo), becomes either more sensitive, or less sensitive. This however, causes one problem, computer sensors take in more light in the same time of exposure, but by doing this they suffer by adding more noise to the photo. This can be a problem if you plan to print to a big size, although it can be very useful. So you have to decide what I.S.O you want to use, if you are shooting anything moving at speeds I would use your
highest I.S.O; for anything else use one of the lowest settings.
The next challenge is to set up your exposure, now this takes a fairly well educated guess…or some test shots. Exposure is the amount of time your shutter opens for, if you open it for longer, the more light the camera lets in. If you have ever seen any photos with “moving light” in them you will see what I mean. This is why sometimes you will get blurry shots, because the camera’s auto mode is telling the camera that there isn’t enough light to create a well lit shot, this means that the camera then sets itself to longer exposure to allow more light in, however, seeing as some people are caught unaware by the fact the camera wants a longer exposure they find themselves wobbling while the shutter is still open.
Getting the right exposure is a guessing game, the best thing to do is take several test shots and see how they come out, it it’s too dark you need to decrease you exposure, if it is too light you need to increase the exposure. Depending on the effect you want you might want to use a different shutter speed. If you want a sharp, crisp image you will want to use the highest shutter possible without loosing light, if you are after a dreamy aura type shot, then you should use the lowest exposure possible without over exposing the shot.
That’s it for setting up your camera, now you’re ready to shoot…well…nearly. In next month’s article I shall tell you all about composure and how to draw in the eye.
