Digital Camera Tips And Tricks
How do I prevent getting the "red-eye" effect?
How many of you have gotten pictures with the "red-eye", the "devil-eye" look? The red eye is caused by the light bouncing off the back of the eyeball and you actually get to see inside the eye. How do you get "red-eye"? By having a small flash right close to the lens. So every compact camera whether it's film or digital or any camera with a built in flash gives great or enhanced "red-eye". The way you get rid of the "red-eye" is by turning on the anti "red-eye" mode on your camera which causes the camera to delay. So I press the button and some seconds later the picture actually happens after I've shined this bright obnoxious light into your eyes. The better way to get rid of the "red-eye" is to add a big flash to the top of your camera. So that's why all the "SLR" cameras today offer a big flash that you can add on and you'll eliminate eighty to ninety percent of the "red-eye" or add a big flash to any of your cameras. That's how you get rid of "red-eye".
How can I take red-eye out of my photos?
If you have pictures with red-eye, it's generally pretty simple to fix those post-production, or on the computer. All of your editing software has an anti-red-eye or red-eye fix mode, whether it's Photoshop from Adobe or Photoshop Elements or any of your other image processing programs, there's a red eye quick fix. Generally it's the eyeball icon. What you do is you draw a circle or a square around the eye on the picture and then hit the eyeball function on the software, and it takes the red-eye out. What it does is it makes the red part black. You get people with these big black saucers for eyes, but it certainly looks better than having the red dots there.
How do I make the background more out of focus when I take a picture?
If you have a compact digital camera, there's just a very few things you can to make the background more out of focus. So, you have to switch from the green auto mode to the portrait mode, and the portrait mode will try and make the background out of focus for you. One of the problems with the compact digitals is, the lenses are so small, that it's hard to get the background out of focus. If you want that real background out of focus, then you have to switch to the SLR type camera, where you actually get to set an f-stop. Setting an f-stop. I know that's kind of scary, but you can do it using the portrait mode to begin with, and then once you get more comfortable, you switch to "aperture priority" and pick a wide f-stop like 2 or 2.8. Then you space your subjects quite a ways from the background and it'll be nicely out of focus. Remember the rule of thumb and portrait photography is you want the subject at least as far from the background as the camera is to the subject. And that's how you get the background out of focus.
How do I make the background more in of focus when I take a picture?
On a compact digital camera you really don't have a lot of options except for choosing the 'landscape mode'. And in the landscape mode the camera is going to try to give you foreground and background focus. If you want more control over this you need to have an SLR-type camera. In the SLR-type camera you once again would switch from green/auto to the landscape mode, where the camera is going to try to give you foreground and background focus. But, if you're in an SLR camera you can go to 'aperture priority mode' where you can set a narrow lens opening - F/16, F/22 - where you would get foreground (the flowers), the middle ground (the river), the background (the mountains), all in focus by setting to a narrow aperture with wide depth of field.
How do I get the right exposure with my digital camera?
Exposure is the question I get asked the most about. It's hard to know how to get the right exposure unless you know something about photography. If you leave your camera in the green automatic mode, there's not a lot you can do to affect the exposure. If you want to get more into photography, you're going to choose the light meter mode. The light meter mode on our camera allows us to shoot in matrix, spot or average metering. You're going to flip between matrix and spot metering to light meter properly. It's hard in 3 seconds to tell you how to get the right exposure because I teach classes where we discuss exposure for two hours and that's not enough - we do six two-hour lessons, and that's not enough. The bottom line is: with your camera, shoot so the subject fills the frame, and more often than not you're going to be happy with the exposure.
How do I make my digital camera's batteries last longer?
It's hard to make the batteries in your digital camera last longer, because the battery you have in your camera lasts as long as it's going to last. You can turn the LCD off, you can use the flash less, you can zoom in and out less and you can review the pictures less on the back. My answer to that question is, though, always have an extra battery charged, so battery power is not an issue for your digital camera. I don't want to compromise my picture taking and my style of photography because I'm out of battery. Get an extra battery, get it charged up, and be ready to go, so you can take as many pictures as you want. If you're going to take hundreds and hundreds of pictures a day on your digital camera, it may take three or four batteries to get though the day. Batteries are cheap - forty or fifty bucks. You're going on this big vacation, so buy an extra battery for your digital camera and get it charged. You're going to be happier in the long run.
Can I use auto focus even if my subject isn't centered?
With the advent of auto focus in the mid 1980's, most people forgot about focus as a creative tool on their camera and it's extremely creative. What's in focus is the subject; what's out of focus is not a subject of the picture. Most of today's automatic focus cameras have what we call a multi-point focus. The centre dot is used for focus, yes, but many of our cameras have the ability to move the focusing dot or to select an auxiliary dot for focus. So, the easiest way to get off centre focus is to select the dot as not in the centre, but to the side. If your camera doesn't have multi-point focus it's very simple to get off centre focus. You use what's called focus lock and this is on SLRs or on compact cameras. When you press halfway down on the shutter release, that locks the focus and you'll see a light or a symbol come on in the camera that tells you that focus is engaged and is locked in. So, as long as you press down halfway on the shutter release, you can lock focus wherever you want. I put the centre dot on my subject, and press halfway down on the shutter release. Leaving the shutter pressed halfway down, I then bring the camera back, frame it as I wish, and take the picture. That way you've locked focus on an off-centre subject.
What can I do if the flash on my digital camera isn't bright enough?
With your digital camera if you're taking flash pictures and they're still too dark, generally it means you're too far away. The flash in your compact digital or on your SLR that's built in is good to eight or ten feet - no farther. In the instruction book it may tell you 12, 15, 18 feet, but it's never going to happen. Eight to ten feet. So the basic rule is: get closer or add an extra flash to the top of your camera, and then you can shoot farther than the eight or 1 feet. The hard part is your kids are in a play or a pageant or something where you have to be 15, 20, 30 feet away. The only way to get good flash pictures: add a flash to the top of the camera.
What are some tips for shooting waterfalls with my digital camera?
Waterfalls are a great subject to shoot. My first tip? Don't get too close - you'll get wet. You have to decide whether to do a wide angle lens to get the whole waterfall in, or take a telephoto and zoom in to just get a detail. One of the things you also need to do when shooting waterfalls is to vary the shutter speed. Whether you're going to do that in aperture parity or shutter parity mode doesn't matter, but you want to speed the shutter speed up to freeze the action, or you want to slow the shutter speed down to blur and get the waterfall all milky and artistic looking. That's what you do with waterfalls to make it look great in film.
Can I get good pictures if I shoot into the sun?
Shooting into the sun is one of my favorite types of light. It's called, "back light" because everything gets this beautiful halo around it. Now, the exposure can be kind of tricky. You can use the sun in slow mode or the back light mode in the camera. But, what I like to do is use the spot metering mode, and then light meter for the subject. And that way the subject is light metered properly and the background will generally be to light. We don't care about the background because it's all about the subject in our picture. Under back light another option is to use the flash. You can use fill-in flash when shooting into the sun. But, one other thing I don't like about doing that is that the fill-in flash ruins that beautiful back light look that you created. Now, it's a different type of picture. You may like the fill-in flash look; you may like the back light look. And, that's why photography is so great, because there is never one right answer to any problem. And, its all depends on what you see, what you like and what you want to create with your pictures.
How do I capture fireworks with my digital camera?
The first thing you need is a tripod. If I'm going to a 4th of July fireworks display, to the ball game or to a theme park that has fireworks, I'll scope out and find out where the fireworks are shot. If they're going to set right up over the trees, right by the light, you have to find a dark sky location. No street lights, no trees, no wires, no nothing in the way so you get a good unobstructed view. Generally it takes a medium telephoto lens in the 1-2mm range to get the fireworks to fill up the frame. So, I have the camera on a tripod, my medium telephoto lens in place. You have to set the camera to manual focus. Set the camera focus to infinity, because the camera won't be able to focus on the fireworks as they're moving in the dark. Next, you're going to select an ISO of 1-2. Either with film or with digital, it doesn't matter. On digital you're going to set white balance to, either cloudy or flash white, for fireworks. Then you're going to set the shutter speed on the camera to B for bulb, and bulb exposure means the camera is going to stay open as long as you press the button. Whether it's the button on the top of the camera or with a remote release, the camera stays open for as long as you want. What I do is wait for the fireworks to shoot. I see where they explode and the range of the fireworks. I'll then take the camera and point it until I get the same areas in the sky. When the fireworks shoot up, you press the button, they explode, they drop down for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 seconds. That's one burst, another burst, another burst and then I let the exposure go. So, you keep the exposure open for as many bursts as you want on the film.
How do I shoot small objects with my digital camera?
To shoot a small object with your digital camera, you get close to it with a wide angle lens. That's a classic movie trick you've always seen: they get right up into the scene with a wide angle lens, which makes the foreground look big and the background look small. That's just a simple Hollywood camera trick that we use with film cameras and digital cameras to make small things look big. Get really close to the small object with a wide angle lens.
How can I make my digital photos look more like film?
It takes some control in the camera. A lot of our cameras have color preference, or camera preference, or shooting preference modes deep in the menu where you can change the color field of the film, the contrast, the graininess - all those things can be set in the camera. Those also can be set post-processing in Adobe Photoshop or whatever editing software you're using. You can add the look and feel of film, you can add grain, you can add texture - you can add these things. You can never get the depth and the light in the life of film, but you can make the pictures look like they were shot using the old shool technology.
What are the most common issues amateur photographers have?
Working in the camera store everyday, I see two problems. First one; people don't get close enough to their subjects. I tell people every time, the first thing you do is get as physically close as you are able to with your subject, and then use your zoom lens to zoom in to fill the frame as much as you can. If I am shooting a sporting event a lot of my moms and dads will want to sit up in the top of the bleachers, because that's where they are comfortable. But you can't take a sporting event picture from their. I'm always on the sidelines, as close as I physically can to get the picture, and then I use my telephoto lens to get it. The second problem that I see each and every day is the wrong use of light. People come in complaining about their pictures because they're too light or too dark or too shadowy, or too this or too that, but they don't understand the basic concept of good light versus bad light. They don't understand front light, side light, top light, back light, and how that effects their pictures. Photography by definition is writing with light, and if you don't understand the light, you'll never be able to make great pictures.
How do I get the best quality print?
Working in the camera store every day, I see people that are dissatisfied with their pictures, with their prints. More often than not, they have a setting set improperly in the camera and they've had bad quality prints made. I recommend, on all your digital cameras, that you set to the highest megapixels. If you want to shoot JPEG, set to the highest quality JPEG, the fine JPEG or the super high quality mode. That'll give you the best picture possible. To get good prints, you have to print them properly. If you take your pictures in to your local camera store, you're gonna be much happier with your pictures because my job is to make your pictures into family memories. I care about your pictures. I want your pictures to look great and we here will do everything that we can, when you bring your pictures here, to make look absolutely amazing. If you take them to a local, to a drug store, to the market, they're just gonna run them out a mile a minute. They don't care. We care. Find your local camera store. Find somebody you can trust with your pictures and you'll be happier and more satisfied in the long run.