Digital Photography Tips and Tricks – Learn the Basics

Date Published: 17th September 2010
Author: darren13

I love my holidays with my partner, they are the most productive, exciting, eventful times that I have in my life. Always exciting, always new and always different but I did, used to, have one pet hate. I hated when he took the camera off me, he never realized he did it but he would always take the camera off me when there was a key shot or an amazing viewpoint. Now, I don’t like being patronized and I am quite competitive so I decided to figure out what those key digital photography tips and tricks were in order to take such good quality photos that he would never be afraid to leave the camera in my hands again!

1: Using Depth of Field. Once you grasp the basic principles of focusing, your photographs will take on an entirely new depth of field. Depth of field means the depth of the picture area that appears to be in focus, this is generally described as being either shallow or deep. To briefly explain, if you are aiming for a photograph with a Shallow Depth of Field try practicing on photographing a ship moving towards you whilst standing on a harbour, with Shallow Depth of Focus only the front of the ship will be in focus. If you are aiming for Deep Depth of Field both the ship, the harbour and maybe a few cars waiting to board the next ship may be in view.

To maximize your grasp of depth of field, it is important to understand how to use the aperture, the focal length of the lens and the ‘camera-to subject’ distance. Each point takes a lot of learning and studying, however, it is very satisfying once you understand and can put in to practice all three key learnings.

2: Need for Speed. One of the very few downsides to the modern digital camera is the delay between pressing the shutter button and when the camera actually takes the shot i.e. the camera’s responsiveness. It is a challenge for any modern photographer to capture that decisive moment. Learning and understanding how your camera works will better help you use your camera to it’s fullest and teach you how to overcome the challenges from lagging camera responsiveness. If you are buying a camera for action shots such as your children’s football games or wildlife shots, it is important to consider a camera’s frame rate. For action shots, a camera should be capable of 5 frames per second. Faster Shutter speeds can ‘freeze’ moments or alternatively slow shutter speeds can ‘blur’ movements. You can use your camera to convey a sense of movement by taking advantage of the adverse affect of both the freezing and blurring of movements.

3: Rule of Thirds. How many amateur and professional photographers have you had to listen to at camera clubs etc. that discuss the Rule of Thirds? Have you ever learnt or understood what it meant? Once you have familiarized yourself with your camera the next important step is to understand how to use the Rule of Thirds. One of the key points of photography is to plan your shot, most of us rarely do, we hope to catch that perfect shot mostly by luck as opposed to using a skillful eye. The Rule of Thirds means that, you the photographer, imagines that a photo is divided into 9 square frames, almost like you were drawing a ‘Tic Tac Toe’ Board. The points of interest should then coincide with any of the 4 intersection points. It is argued that by using this technique the photographer adds more energy, tension and composition to the chosen subject. When photographing people it is generally common to line up the body with one of the chosen vertical lines and line up the eyes with a horizontal line.

If you want to learn more digital photography tips then check out http://www.digital-photography-tips-and-tricks.com right now!
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