Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

7 Camera Settings for Capturing Better Photos

Whether you are using a Point and Shoot or a DSLR camera here are seven camera settings that will help you capture better photos:

Tip 1 – Adjust for light

Most digital cameras, in particular SLRs, let you select ISO film equivalencies. Choose 100 – 200 sensitivity for photographing in bright light conditions and use 400 – 800 when there is less light.  In very poor light you can capture at 3200 – 6400 or higher but you will find that, as a result, there will be more film grain visible in the final image a a result.

To capture an image like this at night you should have an ISO setting of at least 800 -1600 or higher and a tripod to steady the camera.

Tip 2 – Choose your mode

Most cameras, in particular point and shoot cameras have settings for portrait, landscape, night shooting, sports, etc. Choose the correct mode for the type of conditions and the camera will automatically configure the ideal settings to ensure the best shots in the available light conditions.

For an image like this choose Landscape mode so it is all in focus.

Tip 3 – Depth of field

Use your camera’s Aperture Priority setting and set the aperture to a small f stop such as 2.8 to capture photographs with an interesting depth of field. Focus the camera on the object to appear in focus and, when you do, objects in front and behind this object will appear pleasingly out of focus.

Here I focused on the girl in front with a very small f stop and she is in focus – the girl facing us is not.

Tip 4 – Axe the digital zoom

Of the two types of digital camera zoom, which you will find in both point and shoot cameras and camera phones only Optical Zoom is a true zoom . If your camera offers digital zoom it is best to disable it or avoid using it. Digital zoom merely increases the size of the image captured and crops away the area not required. Optical zoom actually zooms into the scene to capture it at full size.

 

Tip 5 – Adjust exposure

Avoid over or under exposed photos using your camera’s exposure compensation settings. These can usually be adjusted to somewhere between -2 to +2EV. To lighten a shot use + values and to darken one, use – values.

Here is the same Boston building captured at -2, 0 and +2 exposure – the one on the right is the better exposed shot.

Tip 6 – Set the correct White balance

Different light sources throw different color casts onto your photos. For instance, inside lighting such as florescent and tungsten globes will throw blue/green or orange tints onto your image. When shooting indoors without a flash, set the white balance mode to match the light source, to remove any undesirable color cast.

This camera is set to an ISO of 80 (suitable for a very bright day) and AWB – Auto White Balance – this  means the camera will adjust the white balance – not good for indoor shooting but should be fine out of doors in full sun.

 

The image on the left was shot in tungsten light with no white balance adjustment. The one on the right was shot in the same position but with white balance set to tungsten light – the color is much improved.

 

 

Tip 7 – Set the Flash

Use your flash when capturing portraits on a very bright day. While it may seem counter productive, the flash will light your subject’s face and avoid the deep shadows that the overhead sun will cast on their face.

On the left the little girl is captured with no flash and over head sun. On the right I fired the flash and her face and clothes are more evenly lit.

 

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 10:37 amNo Comments links to this post

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

Shoot right at night – Tip #4 – Capture silhouettes

At night, if you’re using what light there is, you need capitalize on it. One option is to look for silhouettes where you capture a subject in front of a light source.

In this image shot in New York after dark on a wet night I used the lights of the oncoming traffic to backlight this woman as she walked down the road trying to hail a cab.

Because she was moving fast I was walking behind her at a similar pace so there was no chance to stop or use a slow speed so this image had the ISO set high to capture what light I had.

Helen Bradley

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Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

Shoot right at night – Tip #3 – Set a high ISO

While a flash is handy for taking snapshots of friends, it’s useless when the subject is more than about 10-15 feet away as this is the range of a typical flash. It also makes it impossible to shoot candid images.

So, the best solution to shooting at night is to turn the flash off – before you head out, make sure you know how to disable the camera’s flash so it doesn’t fire.

If your camera lets you do so, set the ISO equivalent to use for capturing the shot, increase this at night to 1600 or more. In the shot above the ISO was 6400, the image is grainy but a flash would have disturbed the couple and that would have spoiled the candid moment.

The shots will be more grainy – like film, shots taken at higher ISO levels are more grainy even when shot digitally. However, grain is not a ‘bad thing’ and night time images can look particularly interesting when the film grain is obvious.

Helen Bradley

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Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

Understand your camera’s settings – Part 3 – ISO

Image: ISO3200, f5.6, 1/80s – the high ISO gives good sensitivity to light allowing this image to be captured quite fast in a relatively dark NY subway station.

In part 3 of this series on understanding your camera’s manual settings I’ll explain how to combine a choice of ISO settings when varying Aperture and Shutter speed.

In addition to Aperture and Shutter speed you can also configure your camera’s ISO setting. You would do this to adjust for the situation where there is not enough light for a shot or where there is too much light.

ISO is the camera’s sensitivity to light and small ISO values such as 80 and 100 indicate low sensitivity so the camera needs more light to take the photo. High values like 400 and 800 (and even up to 6400 and beyond) increase the camera’s sensitivity to light and can be used when you need more light, for example, where the shutter speed or aperture you want to use can’t give the light you want.

Take care when using very large ISO values as these are susceptible to noise so, using a value of 1600 or more might give you a good exposure but the image may have a lot of digital noise as a result.

Small values like 100 and 200 should show little noise at all.

Image: ISO100 f/4.5 1/500s – in bright summer sunlight, the ISO 100 value reduces sensitivity to light still allowing for a fast shot.

Of course, even excessive amounts of noise are preferable to getting a blurred image because you couldn’t hold the camera steady long enough to take it.

While the Auto setting on your camera will ensure that you get a good photograph most of the time, for creative purposes being able to configure your camera to adjust either the aperture or the shutter speed will give you more and varied options for getting even better images.

Image: ISO 1600, f/5.6, 1/15s – At dusk in a NY street, the high ISO gives good light sensitivity and the slow shutter speed allows the cars in the background to be blurred nicely.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 10:51 amNo Comments links to this post

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

Understand your cameras settings – Part 1 – Aperture

All digital SLRs and many point and shoots can operate in manual or semi-manual modes. If you capture most of your photos using Auto mode it’s time to look at some of the benefits you can get by switching to semi-manual operation.

With these modes you control the aperture or shutter speed and you get a chance to capture more creative photos. So how do you do this and what settings do you use? In this series, I’ll explain your camera’s Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority (Av and Tv) modes and also explain why your ISO setting  is important to understand too.

If your camera can operate in manual mode you’ll have settings such as M, Av, Tv and P on your camera’s dial. The two settings we’ll focus on are Av and Tv where you set the aperture or shutter speed yourself.

What is Aperture?

This begs the question, what is aperture and what is shutter speed? Aperture is, very simply, the size of the hole through which light enters your camera. The larger the hole, the more light gets in.

Aperture is described using an f number which is calculated using a complex formula. A rough rule of thumb is to think of aperture being a fraction so an f number (often called a f-stop) of f/2.8 is bigger than f/22 for example.

Understanding aperture

Aperture not only has a direct relationship to the amount of light let in to the camera, it also affects depth of field. When you use a large aperture such as f/2.8 you will get a small depth of field so only a small distance in front and behind the point of focus in the photograph will be in sharp focus and the remainder of the image will be out of focus.

Depth of field is a creative tool that many photographers use to their advantage. For example, when photographing a beautiful flower, you’ll want the focus to be on the flower and not the things behind it. Using a large aperture such as f/2.8 throws the background out of focus. The photograph at the top of this post is an example of a large aperture and a small depth of field.

On the other hand, using a small aperture such as f/8 or f/11 gives you a large depth of field so everything in the photograph will be in focus – useful when photographing landscapes for example.

The relationship between Aperture and Shutter speed

When you set the aperture using the Av setting on the camera, the camera sets the shutter speed to an appropriate value. This is because there is a direct correlation between aperture and shutter speed.

When you use a small aperture, only a small amount of light comes into the camera so you need to compensate for this by using a slow shutter speed to ensure you capture enough light.

On the flip side, when you use a large aperture such as f/2.8, you get lots of light so the camera will set a fast shutter speed.

When you use Av mode, you’re effectively saying, I’ll set the aperture I want and you – the camera – are to adjust the other settings to give me a good picture. When you are in Av mode, there will be a dial or other option you’ll use to set the desired aperture value.

Helen Bradley

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Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Is your camera manual a door stop or a useful reference?


In the first flush of excitement of owning a new digital camera you’re probably like the rest of us and you read the camera manual. Well, you don’t actually read it but you sift through it far enough to find the ‘important bits’ like how to turn it on and how to view your images. You might also learn how to use a few of its settings and then you put it away. As long as you’re taking pretty good photos, is there any reason the manual shouldn’t stay on the shelf? Yes, there are. Your camera manual is chock full of good reasons for getting it down off the shelf. Reading it will show you more about the features it has for improving the quality of your images and for shooting special effects.

Improve image quality
Not all cameras come configured for shooting in the highest quality mode or for saving images with the lowest loss of data. This is because the memory cards which come with most cameras are so small they don’t hold many high quality/low compression images. If you’ve replaced your camera’s card with a better one (and chances are that you have), you will want to take images at the best possible quality. So, check your manual so you understand what quality settings are available and how to configure your camera to use these. Also ensure you’re using the lowest compression mode so that more data is not lost than is absolutely necessary when your photos are saved to the memory card. This is particularly important if you’re using an older camera with a low number of mega pixels – you want to retain as much image data as possible.

Changing ISO
If your camera is capable of some manual operation one of these features might be the ability to alter its ISO equivalency. ISO is a method of rating film’s sensitivity to light. The lower the ISO number the less sensitive the film is and it’s said to be slower film because the shutter must be open longer to make up for this lack of light sensitivity.

At the other end, high numbers indicate a high sensitivity to light and the film is said to be faster. Typically the film (or camera ISO equivalency), you’re most likely to use is in the range 100-400. So why wouldn’t you use ISO 400 all the time? While 400 film is fast and while it can freeze action and is handy where the light is poor, the downside is that the images it produces are grainy. In fact, the higher the ISO number, the more grainy the images are and this is true of film and digital images.

If your camera supports different ISO values – use higher numbers (400), on cloudy days or indoors – you might even find you can do without a flash with this setting. On a bright day, use 100 or 200 to get better results in the bright light.

This photo can be captured with a low ISO as the background is very light. You can also step up the exposure to ensure the subject is well lit even though the sky will be blown out.

White balance
Most cameras have a white balance adjustment which lets you adjust the image for the kind of light you’re shooting in. Sunlight has a different colour to the colour of the light you use when shooting indoors. If you don’t adjust white balance you will find images which you take indoors will have a yellow or a blue cast depending on what type of light source (incandescent or fluorescent) is used. You can adjust for this colour cast by setting your camera’s white balance setting to match the type of light you’re using.

This is one object photographed with a range of white balance settings – choose the one which gives the most desired effect.

Exposure controls
When shooting objects on light backgrounds or people standing in front of very light or back lit backgrounds you may find the object or person is too dark. This is because the camera is taking into account the light background when it’s setting its exposure. Even if your camera has no manual exposure control, you can generally increase or decrease exposure by one or two stops using an Exposure Value adjustment. Increase exposure to lighten the subject (even at the expense of ‘blowing out’ the background) or decrease it to darken the subject if there’s too much light.

From left to right are the central image shot using -2, -1, +1 and +2 exposure value settings.

Other features
There are numerous other features your camera has available and which you may not have realised were there when you purchased it. Look for options such as shooting in black and white or in sepia. In many cases a simple snapshot can take on the look of a work of art when shot in black and white. Look out too for opportunities to shoot in black and white in the early morning (just after sunrise) or when shooting close ups of children or animals.

By selecting the macro setting on your camera you can capture items close up and they will still be crisply in focus with a sophisticated depth of field effect.

Your camera may also offer a slower than usual shutter speed setting. This will require you to use a tripod to ensure the camera is kept steady while you’re shooting. Using a slow shutter speed gives great results at night or in low light situations where a flash doesn’t have the required range. For example use a slow shutter speed for fireworks to get the benefit of the shower of lights coming after the firework has exploded or to capture tail lights from moving vehicles.

Your camera will have a setting for saturation which you can boost to get wonderfully saturated photos like this.

Information on all these options can be gleaned from reading your camera’s manual. At the same time, look out for other options such as the ability to use PAL output format so you can plug your camera into a TV to replay your images on the TV screen. You can also purchase a power adapter for most digital cameras which lets you use mains power to save batteries in some indoor situations.

So, when should you read your camera’s manual? I suggest you read it when you first buy your camera so you’re able to get started using it. A week or two later, revisit the manual – you’ll be ready to learn more about other features at this time. Then, look at it again in about six months, by then you’ll have taken some shots you’re not happy with for one reason or another. You’ll be ready to look at more advanced tools such as white balance or exposure control to see if these would help avoid repeated problems in future.

Helen Bradley

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