Taking Better Photos

More on composition

2009-07-27T21:14:00.001+08:00

Here is a great article on improving your photos. Just pay attention to the composition!

http://www.visualphotoguide.com/take-great-photos/

Lesson on Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO

2009-06-10T18:25:00.005+08:00

Your camera mainly uses two things to get the right amount of light in your picture: Aperture and Shutter Speed. I'm going to try to explain in the simplest way possible.

Every photo needs light to create it. Imagine that all of the light comes through a small hole and magically makes your picture. Aperture is the term for "how big the hole the light is coming through is", and Shutter Speed is the term for "how long that hole is open for." If the hole is bigger, then it can be open a shorter amount of time but still receive the same amount of light. Make sense? (When referring to aperture, the bigger the hole, the smaller the number. So, F2.8 is a larger hole that lets in more light, while F22 is a smaller hole that lets in less light. Aperture is also known as the F-Stop.)

ISO is how sensitive your camera is to the light. The lower the number, the better quality the picture will be. A low ISO is 80, 100 or 200. If you use a high ISO, like 800 or 1600 or even 3200, the quality of the photo will suffer. You will get noise (similar to grain on film.) The trade off for high ISO (better light sensitivity) is poorer quality of photos.

I took several photos in a bar to demonstrate this. Jon is playing a dice game, and has learned a cool trick with flipping the cup around.

I'm using an automatic camera where I can't manually set Aperture or Shutter Speed, but I can look later to see what the camera chose for me.

For this photo, I put my camera into "Night Mode." The flash went off, and froze the motion. With all of the extra light from the flash, the shutter speed opens and closes quickly. It used an aperture of f2.8 and shutter speed of 1/8 of a second.

I wanted to keep the shutter open longer to try and capture a motion trail. You've seen a photo of a road, with the taillights of cars just looking like one long red blur? That effect is created using a long shutter speed. The problem with keeping the shutter open for a long time is that the camera captures all of the motion as it's open. So, if my hand shakes, it will capture the movement and make the photo blurry. I didn't have a tripod, so I supported the camera on the table as best as I could. Obviously I didn't get very still, as he is quite blurry. The camera used an aperture of f2.8 and shutter speed of 1 second.

This one is a little better. I had him try not to move anything except his hand when he was doing this. (Not so easy.) The camera used the same aperture and shutter speed as in the previous photo.

Now I decided to try using a high ISO. I set the ISO at 1600 (the highest my camera will go.) This made the camera sensitive enough that it used a shutter speed of 1/2 second. (The aperture was F2.8 in all of these photos because that is the setting that lets the most light in. In a dark situation, the camera should always use the lowest aperture it has.)

You can see how much lighter the photo is, but can also see how much more noise the photo has.

So which version is best? None are award-winning photos. Hopefully you've learned a bit more about the different settings on your camera though!

Overexposed sky

2009-06-01T09:22:00.002+08:00

It's easy to get an overexposed sky, as in the above photo. Overexposed means that an area of the photo is too bright. This sky isn't blue - it's white! Much too bright.

There are two ways to fix this.

1) Turn down your exposure compensation. In this photo, (shooting with my Canon SD900) I turned it from 0 to -1. Scroll down for an example on how to do this.

2) Focus on a brighter area of the scene and hold the shutter button half-way down. Then, point the camera to the area you want the photo of. If you use this method, it is possible to expose the sky correctly, but the people in the photo may be too dark. Practice with different amounts of sky and people together until you get a good balance of light and dark.

Much better!

Blurry night photos

2009-03-27T22:22:00.000+08:00

If you try to take photos of anything at night, your results may look like this.

The blur is from your hands shaking.

First, make sure your flash is off. Then, set your timer. Most cameras have a 10-second and a 2-second option. I prefer 2 seconds so I don't have to wait as long.
Set the camera somewhere solid, like a table or wall. I've improvised using a business card holder to get the camera to stay steady. Press the shutter and wait 2 seconds. The camera will hold the shutter open for a second or two, so make sure the shutter is closed before you touch the camera again.

If you think the lights are too bright, or the black isn't dark enough, set your exposure compensation lower. (Check out the post below for how to do that.)

Whiteout

2009-03-26T22:07:00.001+08:00

Have you ever taken a photo at night and seen the person's face turn entirely white, washing out their features? Too much flash.

There are two ways to fix this.

#1 - Take a couple steps back. Use your zoom to recompose the photo if needed. The further away the flash is, the less it will light your subject.

#2 - Turn the flash down.

First, access your Exposure Compensation menu. (If it's not under the Function menu or something similar, you may want to dig out your manual.)
Normal exposure is set at 0. If you have a lower value, it means the photo will have less light. If you have a higher number, it means more light. Since we want the flash to be not as strong, set the exposure compensation at -1, or -2/3.

If it's still too light, go further down.

Forcing a flash

2009-03-25T21:59:00.003+08:00

When you are shooting something against a bright background, the object you want to focus on can become too dark. It's calling back-lighting. This happens a lot outside on sunny days.

It's also easy to fix, if the subject is close enough to the camera for the flash to be effective.

Just go into your camera's flash settings. Look for the lightning bolt; use this as the setting. You should see this on your screen or viewfinder when you try to take the photo again.

Much better! If the subject wasn't lit as well as you would like, take a step closer to your subject and try again.

Get closer...

2009-03-22T17:40:00.000+08:00

I'm guessing that you have a lot of vacation photos that look similar to this - basically a shot that shows a lot of the surrounding area of whatever your point of interest is. I think this shot pretty much sucks. (I take a lot of these. Anyone who says all of their photos are great is lying.)

I took all of these photos with my point-and-shoot camera. It's nothing super special.

These are some of the easiest photos to make more interesting! First, find a unique detail you want to focus on. Then, look at the background for any distractions. Look all around for different angles you can shoot at. Squat down and see what it looks like if you are looking up at it.

In this case, I focused on one elephant (out of the thousands circling the shrine). I tried different angles until I found one where you could see the main part of the shrine in the background. It worked out perfectly that the main elephant covered 1/3 of the photo, the shrine another 1/3, and 1/3 was empty space.

The result.... a vacation photo that you'd be happy to display.

Cropping

2009-03-22T17:10:00.000+08:00

Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard for photo editing, but if you don't have several hundred dollars to spend on it, there are a lot of free alternatives. One is Picasa; another is Adobe Photoshop Album Start Edition. If you don't want to download anything, there is Adobe Photoshop Express, which is web-based so you can access your photos from any computer with internet.

This isn't too bad of a shot, but a bit of cropping could make the composition a little more interesting. See how the monkey is centered?

It is easy to crop the photo to make it better. Let's make it so the monkey fills two-thirds of the frame.

It's more interesting to have him fill the frame more.

The Rule of Thirds

2009-03-22T16:46:00.000+08:00

One of the most basic things you can do to make your photos better is pay attention to composition. An easy way to do this is to use the rule of thirds.

The photo should have the point of interest where two of the lines intersect. This photo takes it even further with having the two colors of water and the sky all taking about a third of the frame. Things typically look good if they use one or two-thirds of the frame.

How to take better photos

2009-03-21T17:00:00.000+08:00

I like photography. I also like helping people make their own photos better. I'm by no means a professional, but I think most of my tips can help improve your images!

These tips are able to be used by anyone with a camera. If you have a simple point-and-shoot, this site will be very helpful to you. If you are semi-pro with a nice SLR and know how to use it, then these tips will be a reminder of the basics for you.