Sunday, December 24, 2006

New Christmas Cameras

I don't remember the statistics, but more and more people are taking digital photographs than ever took pictures before. This Christmas should increase that number significantly. Here are five of the most important tips for new digital photographers.

1) Many of the cheap film cameras had fixed focus lenses. That means the lens was designed to capture subjects from about 5 feet to infinity, depending on the lighting. As long as the conditions were just right, they could take great pictures. But the newer digital cameras are usually better quality and they focus the lens from close up to far away. For these cameras, there is normally a two position button. When you depress it 1/2 way down, it focuses on the subject and then when you press the rest of the way, it opens the shutter and takes the picture. With the old cameras, you just press the button and almost instantaneously, the picture is taken. If you do the same thing now and press the button all the way down there is a lag time between pressing the button and taking the picture. If you press the button without giving it a chance to focus, it is often taking the picture while you are moving the camera for the next shot. If you find yourself chopping off heads or getting blurred pictures, this is probably the problem. Steady the camera, press the button 1/2 down to focus (usually there is a red dot or a beep when the picture is in focus) then press the button the rest of the way and hold the camera still for a couple seconds to be certain the shutter is finished opening and closing.

2) If your camera has a view window for composing the picture rather than a viewfinder, try to hold the camera close in to limit camera movement. If you move the camera while it is taking the picture, it will blur. If you are zoomed in on something the potential for blurring is increased. If your camera has both a viewfinder and a screen, it is best to use the viewfinder because keeping the camera pressed against your face will held to keep it steady. Holding the camera at arms length, makes it difficult to keep the camera steady. The image stabilizers will help but can't control it completely especially if you are in dim light of zoomed in.

3)The flash memory supplied with most cameras is usually minimal. The low capacity often will force you to reduce the picture quality to be able to take more pictures. This hurts in two ways. The reduced capacity forces you to take fewer pictures and often pushes you to set the picture quality to lower settings either by reducing the number of pixel's in the picture and also in reducing the quality of the compression. I recommend setting the number of pixels to the highest number. Why get a 6 mega pixel camera and set it to record less than 2 mega pixels.

4) Digital zoom is worthless because it doesn't actually zoom in on a subject, it actually just cuts away some of the extra background. The quality is reduced. If you digitally zoom in on something to make it twice as big, you actually reduce the number of pixels to 1/4. This fact is not true of the optical zoom. If you zoom in to an object to make it twice as large, the original number of picture pixels is the same as without the zoom.

5) Digital cameras can't see contrast as well as your eyes can. If you look at someone in a shadow on a sunny day, you can see the bright portion of the sky and the shadow portion of the subject. The camera can't. If it sets itself to capture the bright sky, the shadows will all look too dark to see anything. If you set the camera to picture the parts in the shadow, the sky and rest of the picture will be so bright they will wash out. So, even on a sunny day, you might need a flash to show faces in the shadow. It is probably needed more outside to show faces than inside where there is less contrast.