Photography Blog

When you hear people talk about digital photography most of us think about high priced or expensive, top of the range cameras. But it is possible to take great pictures when using the more affordable digital cameras. If you are just beginning photography tips on buying a good camera that’s within your budget can be very important. Lots of affordable digital cameras can be purchased from a variety of camera stores. Prices can range anything from up to 0-0.

There are many different makes of camera, and it’s not just the lesser known ones that are affordable. There are many well known makes such as Nikon, Minolta, Fuji, and Kodak that make more affordable digital cameras. While these will not have all the features and gadgets of the higher priced ones, you can still take great photographs with them.

One way of finding out just what you will be getting for your money is to check out the consumer price reviews on the internet. This will give you a good idea of what each type of camera is capable of, and a guideline of the price. This is very helpful, as you will already have a clear idea before you go looking in the stores.

Another way to find a good affordable digital camera is to look at camera buyers guides, or in photography magazines. These will give you a run-down of the cameras available on the market, as well as listing their features and good and bad points, and of course their price.

By studying these different guides it will also give you some idea of the camera that is best suited for your purpose. Obviously if you are only going to be using your camera for quick snapshots while on vacation, or taking pictures of your pets etc, then you probably will not need a camera with lots of confusing modes, functions, and settings.

So you see it is important to know just what you want from a camera. Also don’t forget that the more competent you get at photography, the more you are likely to want to use it for more difficult and professional pictures. So by having a clear idea of what you want before you purchase, it will help you get great, but affordable digital cameras.

Pets are the second most popular subjects for photography after children. Utilizing these tips can lead you to clicking the perfect shots of your pets. A long range lens of 80 to 200mm size offers ease of use and is hence better suited to click pets.

A comfortable distance to click good pictures of the pet without scaring him away is achievable only by using a telephoto lens. If a pet is aware of what you are up to, it will not stay natural for photography. If the photographer clicks the pet from his level, he would get a great picture. Since most of the pets are smaller than us we would have to get down on our hands and knees to get a good picture. The results would be worth the effort in particular if the pet is looking straight in the lens.

Being quick and ready is important if you are to click your pet. The pet must be pre focused and the exposure pre-set to be ready for the shot. Refocusing or resetting the metering shouldn’t be done.

Pet photography can get easy exposure settings. A light meter should be used or else the auto mode for such an effect. Bracketing is important for anyone who owns a very dark or a white animal.

To click a white pet, after taking the meter reading open up one or two f stops. A lower f stop by one or two stops would capture better darker shades while clicking a darker pet.

The answer to where the focus needs to be is very easy. To get a good picture, focus on the eye and no one would notice the focusing on the rest of the pet. When we keep the eye in focus we ensure an appealing picture.

Dark fur or feathers surrounding a dark eye make it important to click the pet’s eye with a highlight in it. This is possible by either turning on a light in the room or turning the pet’s face to the sun. Your pet’s photo can turn from awesome to bad because of the background. Try positioning your pet in front of a plain background. Getting a picture with the pet standing out needs a less cluttered background.

Finally, it is a good idea to have a friend nearby when you plan to click your pet. Good pictures of your pet would be possible when your friend has it distracted. If your pet is the curious kinds that trails you wondering what you are doing then this is a great help. Using these tips coupled with patience your pet pictures would be perfect!

My first tip for taking digital photography for anyone whether they are beginning, or have some degree of experience is “don’t be frightened of your camera”. Get used to handling your camera so that you feel comfortable with it. Make sure you know where all the controls are, and familiarise yourself with their functions. This is one of the basic beginning photography tips that often gets overlooked as it is such an obvious one.

Once you are comfortable handling your digital camera and have learnt how to use all the controls and functions, my next tip for taking digital photography is to take lots and lots of pictures. The beauty of digital photography is that you do not need to keep every picture that you take. You are not paying for a long processing sequence like you would be if you were using a camera that uses rolls of film, so you can be a lot more extravagant when it comes to taking pictures. Plus you may just take a prize winning photo purely by chance, and any photos you don’t want you can simply delete.

Another of the basic beginning photography tips that people often forget is to hold the camera steady. Again this may sound pretty obvious but it’s surprising just how many of us forget this simple little tip when we rush to get a good photo. It is important to actually practice holding the camera so that you automatically steady it for every picture that you take. How often have you seen the chance of a great picture only to rush it and ruin the shot? It’s far better to get one or two great pictures than dozens of blurred or poor quality ones.

My next tip is to always make sure that you have enough memory capacity on your digital camera. There is nothing worse than coming across something that would make a great picture only to find that you have no more room on your camera. Get into the habit of going through the photos stored on your camera on a regular basis, and deleting the ones you don’t want, and downloading and storing the ones you do want onto your computer, or have them printed off. Also buy a second card for your camera so that you always have a spare one with you just in case you need it.

Once you have got this far you should have loads of photos that you have taken, now is the time to study these and see if there is room for improvement. Maybe some of them are still coming out slightly blurred, so you will need to pay attention to your focusing. Remember that a digital camera has a tendency to take a little longer to focus when compared to a camera that uses roll film.

Maybe you are not happy with the lighting on some of your pictures, so try practising using the flash. The flash on a camera is not only designed to be used when taking photos indoors, it is also great for getting good sharp pictures outside as well, especially if the subject is in shade or if the natural light is low, like in the late evening.

I suppose that one of the most important beginning photography tips that I can give you is to “get out there and have some fun with your camera”. Take loads of photos and practice as you go. Use your camera as often and as much as you can. My last little tip would to be to get hold of a good book on digital photography, this way you will get all the tips for taking digital photography and learn all the usual mistakes to avoid right from the start.

Ever wonder why some photos have a yellow or blue color cast? Why did this happen? Well it has to do with how your camera sees colors in a scene. Correct white balance is one of those technical aspects of photography that is often overlooked or misunderstood. But it can have a great impact on your photos, so it is important to understand how color in photography works.
What is White Balance?
Color is measured in temperature, in units of Kelvin. Warm colors have a low degrees Kelvin, while cooler temperatures have a higher degrees Kelvin. For example, the flame of a candle has a Kelvin temperature of around 1,500, while a blue sky has a Kelvin temperature of around 9,000. The human eye is very good at adjusting for variation in color temperature. Unless the temperature of the light is very extreme a white wall will generally look white. But a camera doesn’t have a human brain behind it (yet, anyway!) and so isn’t able to make the same adjustments. The result of this is a color cast that either looks too “cold” or too “warm”.
Adjusting White Balance
The purpose of adjusting white balance is to tell your camera to either warm things up or cool things down, depending on the lighting situation. So how do we do this? Most Digital cameras have automatic and semi automatic settings. Most commonly these are:
Automatic: where your camera takes a guess at the correct white balance. In most conditions this is pretty accurate, however in tricky lighting situations it is easily fooled.
Tungsten: used for shooting under tungsten (artificial) lighting such as an indoor bulb. As this type of lighting is quite warm, the setting cools down the colors slightly.
Daylight: used for shooting outside. Colors under a sky can appear quite blue so this setting is used to warm up a scene.
Different makes of cameras also have more variations on these settings, such as for cloudy conditions and flash photography.
Manually Adjusting White Balance
In most cases, using the automatic or semi automatic settings on your camera will produce good results. But if it’s just not doing it for you, or like me you are a complete control freak, most digital cameras will allow you to manually set the white balance.
This can be done in two ways. Some cameras have a setting that will allow you to set the white balance in degrees Kelvin. To do this of course you will need to know the temperature of your light source. This is easy to find out with a few test shots. For example, if you are shooting indoors under a standard house globe, you know that the temperature of the light will be quite low. Adjust your setting to a low number and take a test shot. Then check and make adjustments as needed until the color in your images looks right.
The second method is the tried and true grey card. By holding a neutral color in front of your lens, you are essentially telling the camera what white looks like. It then adjusts all other colors accordingly. To do this you need to have your white balance setting on manual.
With all the automatic settings that digital cameras have to supposedly make our lives easier, it is easy to be lazy and let the camera do all the work. However putting in a little extra effort into learning why things work the way they do gives you the edge next time you are dealing with a tricky lighting situation and helps you improve your photography.

Shooting in low light can produce some stunning results. Colors are richer in the early and late hours of the day, and subjects such as buildings that are dull and uninteresting during daytime take on an entirely new persona lit up at night. This article looks at some techniques for making the most of low light situations.
ISO and Shutter Speed
It is tempting when shooting in low light to simply increase the ISO sensitivity on your camera (or use a faster film if you shoot with film). This may not always be the answer. Increasing ISO sensitivity decreases image quality. You will find that grain begins to appear. How visible this is of course depends on your camera or choice of film. An alternative is to set yourself to use slower shutter speeds. How much you are able to slow down your shutter speed without creating blurring due to camera shake depends on how steady your hand is. Try leaning against a wall or post, holding your breath and squeezing down slowly on the trigger. This is a method I use quite often and I have found that results improve significantly with a bit of practice.
Tripods
Using a tripod can have both technical and creative benefits. A tripod stabilizes your camera producing a sharp image when a long exposure is needed. It also enables you to reduce the ISO speed used to create a better quality image as discussed above. A tripod can also be used to create interesting effects should the scene contain moving objects. For example, a street scene with traffic passing by. Slow shutter speeds capture the motion of vehicles as they pass and the light trails from head and tail lights, adding life and energy to the scene. For many low light situations, a tripod is an essential piece of equipment and the only way of coming away with a decent image. An alternative could be to rest your camera on a flat surface if one is available.
Flash
Another method of low light photography is the use of flash. Using flash photography can produce quite different results. Like the tripod, and just about any other photography accessory, flash can be used to correct an exposure or enhance it. Set it to low power to fill in a dark area, or use maximum power for create highlights and high contrast effects. Using flash also enables you to hand hold your camera, giving you more freedom to move around your subject. Flash photography is not suited to all subjects though. If you are shooting say, a seascape just after sunset and pointing your camera out into the ocean, there is nothing out there for the light to bounce off and so it is lost.
Low light and night photography can be very rewarding. It does usually require a little additional equipment, but is well worth the expense. Taking pictures at different times of the day also puts you in the frame of mind to experiment, which is necessary if you want to improve your photography. Try things out. See for yourself what works and what doesn’t. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the results.