I loooove taking photos. Many of my favourites from my Central Asia trip in 2010 are here.
But I’m not a professional. I took a little workshop offered to staff when I worked at SFU, and took notes. I’m now sharing some simple tricks (a refresher for me if nothing else!) that I learned and are useful for digital cameras (DSLRs, or more advanced point and shoots). These are tips for taking pictures…using photo editors on a computer are a whole other game meant for professionals or more patient types. None of my photos are processed.
Key terms
Depth of field: This is the amount of your picture that is in focus. Imagine you are taking a picture of a row of people lined up starting at you and going way into the distance. With a low depth of field, only a few people will be in focus. With a high depth of field, everyone will be in focus.
Av: Av is a camera mode, also called “aperture” or “f-stop”. This is directly related to depth of field. An Av number or f-stop might look like f/2.8 or f/22. In these cases, 2.8 is a small number. It means a smaller depth of field – only a portion of your photo is in focus – and also a larger amount of light that gets into your camera. 22 is a bigger number, so a larger depth of field – everything is in focus – and less light is let into your camera.
Tv: Tv is the camera mode that determines shutter speed. Shutter speed and aperture both impact how much light is let into your camera. If less light is let into your camera because you increased your shutter speed, your camera will try to balance that by letting more light in with a lower aperture number.
Your flash
Built in flashes only have range of something like 10 feet (which means they don’t work at all if you are zooming in on something more than 10 ft away, and why it’s useless to use flashes in situations like concerts or landscapes at night). External flashes can have more range.
If you’re taking a picture of someone/something and the background is really bright, your camera won’t think you need a flash, so you might need to force the flash (ie turn it to “on” instead of “auto” or “off”).
The above note is true for outdoors too. It’s OK, and often a good idea, to use a flash outdoors when taking a picture of something near you (especially if the background is bright).
Sometimes you might see photographers with some paper and an elastic band around their flashes, or with an external flash pointed updwards. This is used to avoid red eye by illuminate the room while not bouncing light directly off the eye. This also helps avoiding shadows behind people when shooting them against a background like a wall.
If using a flash at night with people in the foreground and something interesting in the background, use a tripod. The flash will go off to light faces, but the shutter will stay open a little bit longer the let in more light from the background (e.g. fireworks, a lit-up building).
ISO
AKA film speed, which doesn’t really make sense on digital cameras! The higher the number, the lower light you required. 100 is for sunny/bright days. My camera only goes up to 1600, but other go much higher and allow one to shoot in low lighting with faster shutter speeds. However, it can make your photos look grainy (ie black look like a black with lots of grey speckles) which isn’t great unless you want this effect.
Using zoom
Zooming is more than just getting things closer up. It also helps make long things in the distance seem short (eg. trails and roads) and things in the distance seem closer (not just your subject).
To get closer to an object, you can use both camera zoom and “human” zoom (ie walking to or away from your subject). If you are shooting the same subject twice (using the two types of zoom) and making them appear the same size in your picture, using human zoom makes things in the background look far away still (and often makes them in focus). It also can sometimes give a bit of a fishbowl effect. Using camera zoom shrinks the apparent distance between things in the background and your subject, and often makes the background out of focus. This is a superpowerful technique to use when shooting something with mountains in the background – it can make the mountains look much more ominous!
If you are in a low light situation, you don’t want to use zoom too much, because it will let less light into your camera and decrease the depth of field (the amount of the image from close to far away that is in focus). The only way to counteract this is to get a really powerful flash that reaches the distances you need, or to get a zoom lens with a lower f-stop number (expensive).
It becomes a trouble situation when you want to zoom in low light situations, AND have a high depth of field. This means you will use a higher f-stop, which lets in less light, meaning you need to increase the shutter speed. Which doesn’t work with low light situations!
Camera modes
Portrait
This tells the camera that the subject is important, but the background is not. It works best when you are closer to the subject and fill in about 2/3 of the frame. If you zoom in, the depth of field is smaller, and you can make the background out of focus.
Landscape
This tells the camera that everything is important – stuff up close and stuff far away. Everything is in focus (the depth of field is very large/infinite).
To do this outside of landscape mode, go to Av mode and increase Av to the highest number.
Action
This tells the camera to use a fast shutter speed in order to freeze the action. This really only matters if you are up close to the moving object. If you’re far away it doesn’t really matter (think about watching plane in the sky – they’re far away and look like they’re going slow when really they’re going really fast).
To do this outside of Action mode, you can go to Tv mode and select a faster shutter speed like 1/500 of a second. You can also choose something a bit slower like 1/250 and move your camera along with the moving subject when you take the picture so that the background looks a bit blurry, giving an interesting visual effect.
Fireworks
You need a tripod for this. It tells the camera to go to a slower shutter speed to be able to capture the explosion of the fireworks (or anything else lit up at night.)
To do this outside of Fireworks mode, go to Tv mode and select a longer shutter speed, like 1 second.
Flower mode
This is like portrait mode, but for smaller things like flowers. It uses a really small depth of field.
P
P is like auto, except you can change some basics like ISO. When I’m out an about and need my camera always at the ready, I use P mode.
Av
This one allows you to change the aperture, and the camera will automatically select shutter speed.
Tv
This one allows you to change the shutter speed, and the camera will automatically select aperture.
M
M (manual) is for people that want to change both shutter speed AND aperture. Here you really risk taking blurry/dark/white photos if you don’t know what you’re doing.
White balance
White balance (WB) can be used to correct colouring due to fluorescent lighting etc. For example, if you take a picture indoors without a flash things can sometimes look yellow (some people like this, it looks “warm”). You can change it from AWB to tungsten to add more blue and make it “true.” Both are OK – whatever is pleasing to you is correct. There are lots of white balance settings to play with.
Exposure
Cameras default to light grey, so sometimes when you take pictures of things that are white, they often don’t look white. This is why you’ll sometimes see photographers doing tests with white or grey pieces of paper before doing a photo shoot.
For the amateur, the most useful trick is the +/- range. Going + will overexpose your photo compared to what your camera thinks is right, and your photo will look brighter (and your white will look whiter!). The opposite is true if you move towards the – end. Sometimes things will never work out. For example, in the situation with a very dark foreground with a bright blue sky (think being inside a shady canyon on a sunny day) nothing will work. You’ll never make it look like how your eyes see it. You can light the subject using a flash (which won’t work if the foreground is far away like in my canyon example) or create a silouette with a bright background.
If you dig into your menu and see and select AEB and move right and left, you are left with 3 markers on the +/- range. This is useful when you’re not sure what exposure is best – your camera will take 3 photos for you – the first based on what your camera things is best, and then one overexposed and one underexposed. Once you get onto your computer you can select which one you think is best.
Composition
As a fun exercise, find something you want to take a picture of, and then pretend there’s a big hulahoop around it. Walk around to find a good shot that gives context, helps directs a viewers eye to what’s important, lights the right things, and avoids bad backlighting. Play with elevation – get down on your knees, on your belly, on a bench. Circle around your subject. Checkout what’s behind the subject – weird sticks or trees that look like they are poking out of your subject.