30 tips for perfect pics - part one
Put an end to disappointing snaps and learn how to get the most of your camera's features with our top 30 tips on avoiding photo blunders
In years gone by, photo labs would put quality-control stickers on sloppy pictures with helpful tips on how to avoid making the same mistake in the future. These days, digital cameras and photo printers create the potential for a whole new generation of errors, and there's no photo lab to help out. Back in the days of film, autofocus was a comparatively young technology, white balance hadn't been invented and ISO was simply the speed rating on the film carton. However, the digital revolution brings with it a whole new raft of new things to think about. And it doesn't mean the old issues have disappeared either; you still get fingers over lenses, slanted horizons and telegraph poles growing out of people's heads.
The good news is that you don't need those white-coated photo lab boffins and their stickers. Not when you're armed with our top tips for avoiding 30 common photo problems.
1. Camera shakeIn poor light, the camera has to expose the image sensor to light for longer. And when you use a shutter speed (the length of time the sensor is exposed for) greater than 1/30th of a second, you're entering camera shake territory. There are three things you can do here. First, you can increase the ISO (sensitivity), which will shorten the shutter speed. Try bracing the camera against a wall or a door frame. Better still, use a tripod (although that's not always practical, of course). You can put your camera on a flat surface and then use the self-timer to fire the shutter rather than pressing it with your button and risk jogging the camera. It's advisable to switch off your camera's flash when shooting at shows or exhibitions, but you may need to increase the ISO to avoid camera shake.
2. Automatic flashYour camera's built-in flash is designed to provide additional light when there isn't enough of the natural sort. However, this may not always be ideal. Flash is best reserved for emergencies, and you should do without it when you can. It doesn't just spoil the natural lighting, it can leave you red-faced at public ceremonies or sporting events. Your camera is probably set up to fire the flash automatically. You need to cycle through the flash modes until you get to 'off' - most cameras will retain this setting even when you turn them off.
3. Slanting horizonsThe human eye is very sensitive to slight changes in angles which it expects to be dead level, like horizons in landscapes or, even worse, a seascape - after all, water's not supposed to be on a slope. You're more likely to get the horizon level if you use the LCD screen on the rear rather than the viewfinder - although this doesn't apply to digital SLRs. Better still, see if your camera has an option to display gridlines on the display. It's also easy to tilt the camera inadvertently when pressing the shutter so even though the shot was level on the LCD, it's slanted in the saved image. Even slight tilts in the horizon can stick out like a sore thumb so, take your time when composing shots and make sure they're straight on the LCD.
4. Rampant red-eyeRed-eye ruins shots of people and pets alike. It is caused by a combination of flash intensity and the fact that the flash tube is on almost the same axis as the camera lens. Some cameras have anti-red-eye modes which fire off a series of 'pre-flashes' to make the subject's irises close, but that means your subject has to keep still. It's better to switch this off and fix red-eye on your computer - Photoshop Elements 4, for example, can automatically detect and fix red-eye as you import your pictures. Some new cameras from HP and Nikon can detect and remove red-eye in-camera, as the image is processed and saved.
5. Grey snow syndromeSnow is meant to be a brilliant white. But cameras don't know this, and judge brightness by rendering what's in front of the camera as a standard grey tone. If you are photographing a bright subject - one that is bright-toned, not just well-illuminated - you need to use your camera's Exposure Value (EV) compensation option to increase the exposure, typically by 0.7-1EV. If your camera has this function, its manual should explain how to do this. Changing the EV like this forces the camera to overexpose the scene, and reproduce snow and other light subjects as bright as they are in real life.
6. Indoor lightingArtificial indoor light has a strong yellow/orange colour compared with ordinary daylight, and while your camera's auto white balance will, in theory, attempt to compensate for this, in practice it never goes far enough. Instead, choose the tungsten or incandescent white balance preset for domestic lighting, or fluorescent for offices. You'll be amazed at the difference it makes to your pictures. If this still doesn't produce satisfactorily neutral-looking colours, your camera will probably have a manual white balance option. To use this, you simply take a calibration shot of a white (or grey) card under the same lighting.
7. Pictures too small What should you do if you run out of space on your memory card? There are two ways to produce smaller files and it's essential to choose the right one. It's best not to choose a smaller image size, which reduces the number of pixels in the saved image, as you won't then be able to print full-size enlargements without the images appearing pixellated. It's better to stick to the maximum image size but choose a lower quality setting. This does produce some image degradation, but you'll only see it under heavy magnification and it's better than shooting smaller images.
8. Bleached highlightsDigital cameras produce clearer, sharper and punchier shots than most traditional film cameras, but they do have a weakness. The can only record a limited brightness or dynamic range. You may sometimes find the skies in landscapes bleach out to a featureless white, or that brightly-lit 'hotspots' in a portrait shot lose all colour and tone. The solution is to be more careful about the exposure, or switch your camera's metering system from the standard multi-pattern mode which measures exposure at lots of different places on the picture, and may overexpose brighter parts, to the cruder centre-weighted option to preserve bright tones. In this mode, the camera is influenced more by very bright areas and will reduce the exposure accordingly. Slight underexposure is better than overexposure with digital cameras. It's not difficult to brighten images up, but it's impossible to restore overexposed areas.
9. Picture panicWhat do you do if you find your memory card still has some shots on it when you take your camera out? It's not clear whether they have been transferred to your PC or not. Can you delete them and start shooting again, or are they the only copies? Develop a routine to ensure that your camera's memory is kept clear. First, save images on the camera until you've got a decent batch, then transfer them all to a computer, check they've copied safely and then delete them from the memory card.
10. Focus failureDigital cameras are clever but they're not psychic. You may know what you want to focus on, but the camera has to guess. For example, you may have a shot of two people side by side but the camera will focus on the background between them. In the LCD display, you will see the focus point highlighted by a square or other indicator when you partially depress the shutter button. If the camera is focusing incorrectly, move it slightly so that a main subject is centred, half-press the button again to lock the focus and then, with the button still half-pressed, move the camera back and shoot. 11. Slow reactions?Sports, animals and children all pose problems for digital cameras. It's hard for you to keep up with the action and harder still for the camera, and all too often you end up with a blurry shot where your subject's already halfway out of the frame. It's because all digital cameras have shutter lag. The best way round this is to get yourself in position, frame the shot and then half-press the shutter button to lock the focus. Now wait for the perfect moment, then press the shutter button the rest of the way. The picture will be taken instantly, with no lag.
12. Feeble flashWatch a floodlit football match or an indoor sports event and you'll see thousands of tiny little flashes popping off in the stands. It's what your camera will do automatically in dim lighting if you don't stop it. What your camera (or its flash) doesn't know is that the action is much too far away for the flash to reach it, so all you're left with is a near-black photo and maybe some distant pinpricks of light. The solution is simple: Just turn the flash off. The camera will now have to take the photo using the available light, and this will produce much more attractive pictures.
13. Background clutterWe've all got shots with telegraph poles growing out of our relatives' heads. The annoying thing is you mostly only notice this when seeing the print - or when some smart-alec points it out. The first, and obvious, fix is to pay as much attention to the background in your shots as you do the thing you're photographing. Try to move subjects so that what's behind them is neutral in tone or at least not too busy, or shift position to try to find a less cluttered backdrop. You can try zooming in, too. This is more likely to throw the background out of focus.
14. Unflattering portraitsYour portrait subjects aren't likely to thank you for giving them a big nose and a receding chin, yet that's exactly what you do to them when you push the camera up against their faces. The nose is closest to the camera lens so it comes out the biggest. You'll get much more flattering results by stepping back and then using the zoom to fill the frame. Watch the perspective when you're shooting children, too. Get down on one knee so you'll be photographing them at eye level rather than looking down on them, and you won't get the vertical foreshortening effect usually seen in snapshots of children.
15. Finger over the lensThe days are long gone when you could get a whole roll of blank shots simply because you left the lens cap on. Digital cameras won't take a shot if they can't focus, and that's what happens when there's a lens cap in the way. But it's still possible to make that other classic mistake: putting your finger over the lens. If you compose shots using your camera's LCD, you'll spot it straight away, but you won't if you use the external viewfinder. Some super-slim compacts have lenses in the top-front corner of the body and these are the ones which are all too easily obscured.
Written by Rod Lawton for Computeractive magazine
To read more picture tips see page two
This article was created: 3 January 2007.
This article was last edited: 19 February 2007.
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