Fix your biggest digital photography mistakes—before they happen.
Digital cameras are supposed to make photography easy, yet we churn out millions of bad photos every day. Some problems are unavoidable due to the limitations of the camera. Most, however, can be solved with just a little knowledge or experimentation.
Here are five common pitfalls that every photographer encounters, as well as simple ways to prevent them. With film-based cameras, you didn't know which photos were bad until long after they were taken, and you had to pay to process the bad ones along with the good. With digital cameras, you can learn from your mistakes immediately—at no additional cost.
Eliminate Blur
A tripod or monopod will help you steady your camera for less blur in low-light conditions.
Image blur has several possible causes. Think of a photo as a slice of time. If the camera's aperture is open for just 1/250th of a second, there's little time for the subject or camera to move enough to create a blurred photo. If the aperture is open for a quarter of a second, however, that's not the case. Photography is all about trade-offs. With less available light, the shutter speed must slow down to capture more light. In such cases, consider using a tripod or monopod, or simply brace the camera against something while shooting. Cameras or lenses with built-in image stabilization can help to eliminate blur by reducing camera movement, though that feature will have no effect on blur caused by subject movement, such as a running dog or a speeding bicycle.
To see firsthand the effect of camera movement on your photos, try an indoor shot in low light while holding the camera away from your body. Be sure to turn off the flash and image stabilization. Now take the same shot using a tripod or with the camera placed on a table. The second shot should be sharper or have less visual noise. Try both shots again, this time outside in bright light, and you'll see less of a difference in sharpness or noise between the two.
Reduce Noise
Make sure your camera's ISO speed matches your environment to reduce noise in photos.
Why do your low-light photos look like a distant TV station: more visual noise than recognizable image? One trade-off that cameras can make to achieve low-light photos is to allow higher levels of visual noise. By increasing the ISO speed, say from 100 to 800, you can capture well-illuminated low-light shots, but the noise levels may increase dramatically.
If your camera has a small sensor, characteristic of most inexpensive models, then noise can be a problem even at ISO 200. Don't confuse the number of megapixels with sensor size, however. A 5-megapixel digital single-lens-reflex (dSLR) model with a large sensor may run rings around a 10-megapixel point-and-shoot with a small sensor. Many point-and-shoot models discourage you from shooting in low light because the noise levels are much too high. Other cameras, especially ones with manual controls, let you decide whether the quality trade-off is worth it.
To see how well your camera juggles low-light performance with high levels of noise, check the photos you've already captured. Assuming you've copied the photos to your computer's hard drive, open Windows Explorer, right-click each photo file, and choose Properties from the menu. In Windows XP, select the Summary tab, and click the Advanced button; in Vista, select the Details tab. Among the listed items, you should see "ISO Speed." Look for photos that have an ISO of 200 or higher. You'll be able to see at which ISO speed the visual noise becomes objectionable. If your camera allows you to manually set the ISO speed, you'll have a better sense of how far to push the ISO setting for your low-light photos.
Stay In Range
Tilting your flash can soften the light when you're standing close to your subject.
A common mistake is to move up close to a subject and then wonder why the shot is out of focus. The image may have looked fine on your camera's LCD screen, but when you look at the shot full-size on your computer screen, you realize the focus was amiss. Check your camera's manual or online specifications to see how close your zoom can focus, then see if your camera has a macro mode for subjects that are even closer. If you keep in mind the distance where the normal focus ends and the macro focus begins, you can reduce the number of out-of-focus shots by switching the focus settings.
While you're looking over the manual or online specs, check out the range of your camera's built-in or accessory flash. If you're too close, the flash may bathe your subject in a blinding white light, washing it out. If your accessory flash can tilt, try aiming it at the ceiling to soften the light. Stand too far away, and the flash will have no effect. You might think that last point is obvious, but nighttime visitors to the Empire State Building routinely fire their flashes out over the city, somehow expecting New York's buildings and the New Jersey coastline to be illuminated by a tiny light bulb.
Balance the Light
If your camera's white-balance control isn't properly calibrated, you—and everyone who views your photos—may see red.
Do the table lamps in your photos emit a strange red-orange glow, while everything else maintains color integrity? Your camera isn't out of kilter—it's simply that the white-balance control can't adjust to two types of light sources. Sunlight and tungsten lights have different color temperatures—our eyes can't see the difference, but photos show the lights as having two distinct colors.
There's no way your camera can handle both simultaneously. If you set the white balance for sunlight, the tungsten lamp will look red, or too warm; if you set the white balance for the lamp, the light from the window will look blue, or too cool. Add a fluorescent light, and it may give off a ghastly green tint. A professional photographer might replace the tungsten bulb with a special daylight-temperature bulb or stick a tungsten-temperature plastic filter onto the window glass. You'll just have to be careful not to mix light sources with varying color temperatures.
Most cameras let you switch from automatic white balance to a manual setting for daylight, overcast sunlight, tungsten lighting, or fluorescent lighting. Experiment with the settings to see how they would affect your photos, and try them out in a few mixed-light environments. You'll be better prepared for those times when the automatic white balance misjudges the optimal color temperature.
Avoid Extremes
Set your camera's exposure for the person or thing you most want to capture. Photographing from another position also might help.
Cameras can't record the same broad range of light and dark that the human eye can see. If the contrast range is extreme, the camera will have to sacrifice something. That makes backlit photos, such as a performer onstage, difficult to expose correctly with the fully automatic setting. You want the camera to set the exposure for the performer—not the dark background. Similarly, a child playing in the snow is more important than the snow itself. If the camera tries to average the exposure, the child will appear too dark.
If possible, try to reposition the camera or subject to rein in the extremes of light. If your camera has manual controls, experiment with setting the exposure for a specific area, such as a face.
Check to see if your camera has preprogrammed styles or scenes that are optimized for stage, nighttime, beach, or snow. Test those modes to see how much they diverge from the automatic setting. By becoming familiar with the modes now, you'll be more comfortable switching to them later.
