Honest 836 Report post Posted February 3, 2011 Photography tips for Beginners Learn the basics before you step out to take a picture Buying a digital camera is easy. Anyone with money can do that. But just because you have a camera does not make you a photographer. Even if you have the eye of a photographer, you need to learn the basics first before you step out to take your first picture. Today we will be discussing some of the basic things that you must keep in mind while photographing. Check your battery and memory card Always keep a tab on the amount of power in your battery. When you are not using your camera or before you are going out somewhere with it, make sure you recharge the battery. If you are going to take a lot of pictures, especially with a flash, then it makes sense to take a fully charged spare battery with you. Also, make sure that you have a memory card inside your camera before you head out. Some cameras do not notify you when there is no memory card present inside and allows you to save the images on the internal memory. This might fool you into thinking that you have the memory card inserted when you could just be four shots away from running out of internal memory. Always check the memory card and make sure it has enough memory left for your shots. Also buy a spare one if you are planning to shoot a lot. They don't cost much these days. An 8GB Class 2 SDHC card would set you back by Rs. 650, whereas a 16GB card costs Rs. 1,400. For better performance, especially during video recording or high speed shooting, consider a faster Class 6 or Class 10 cards, but also expect to pay a lot more. Keep the lens clean Taking care of the lens is one of the most important things about photography. Think of them as your own eyes and take care of it in a similar way. For a lens to deliver the best possible performance, it should always be kept clean. Cleaning a lens also requires a great deal of care; don't clean it with the same cloth you wipe the floor with! Refer to the following video to learn how to properly clean your camera lens. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7S6VARidHk&feature=player_embedded Hold the camera properly It's important that you learn to hold the camera properly while shooting to prevent blurry shots, or worse, dropping the camera. Always hold the camera with both your hands. You may think you look cool shooting with one hand but it's bad for the photos you click. Place your index finger of your right hand on the shutter and the thumb on the area next to the display. Hold the base of the camera with the other hand to stabilize it. Make sure none of your fingers are covering the lens, the flash or the focus assist light. Don't keep your elbows floating and instead stick them close to your body to reduce shake. Stand with your feet slightly apart and don't stand on a moving or unstable surface. Also, right when you are about to press the shutter, hold your breath in for a second to become completely still and then release your breath once you take the shot. Of course the best thing to do would be to not hold the camera at all and instead keep it on a still surface or mount it on a tripod. This is especially necessary when you are shooting in low-light without a flash or at high zoom levels, where even the tiniest of movements gets magnified. When you are shooting video, make sure you are not blocking the microphones on the camera. Also, do not hold the camera vertically. Unlike still images which are saved in portrait orientation when you hold the camera vertically, the same does not happen with videos. So if you don't want to watch your videos with your neck at an angle, hold the camera normally while shooting. Familiarize yourself with the settings Cameras today come with a great deal of features built-in. Some may simply be gimmicks, while some can be of great assistance while shooting. So it is important that you are familiar with all the features that your camera has, so you can get the best out of it. Read the manual when you buy the camera and find out how you can go about accessing all of them. You don't want to be stuck fiddling with the settings when people in front of you are waiting to get their picture taken. Use auto mode for a quick shot Sometimes it is best to leave all the settings behind and use the auto mode when you quickly need to take a shot. You could lose a precious moment as you try to adjust the settings on your camera. Just stick it into auto and press the shutter and hope that the image comes out right. Remember, you can always adjust the image later in a photo editor but you cannot get that moment back once it has passed. Disable digital zoom Even though all cameras have optical zoom these days most of them still give the option of digital zoom in the settings. As you may know by now, digital zoom is not true zoom and all it does is mess with your photos. And since you may accidentally end up using digital zoom once you reach the end of optical zoom, it would be best to disable it completely from the settings. Don't use the flash unnecessarily A flash is useful in only a handful of scenarios. One is when it is completely dark. Second would be when the subject is illuminated from the back, causing its front to be in its own shadow. In this situation a flash can help light up the front of the subject. But apart from these situations a flash is of little use. In fact, the harsh white light can ruin your images. If you are into artistic photography, you would do better by switching the flash off. If all you want is to make sure all the subjects in your pictures are properly visible, then it makes sense to use the flash. In either case, don't leave it on auto mode, making it fire willy-nilly. Use the appropriate mode on the camera You will notice that your camera has multiple modes, such as, macro, portrait, landscape, etc. These modes are created by a combination of settings that otherwise you'd have to adjust manually to achieve the same results. Although auto modes aren't always reliable, they can give surprisingly good results at times with minimal effort from the photographer. Macro mode is very useful when shooting object that are very close to the lens. Make sure you stick your camera in the right mode depending upon the conditions to get the best results. Use optical viewfinder if possible Using optical viewfinder has a couple of advantages. First, since the camera is now up against your face, it is more stable than when floating in your hands. Secondly, it lets you disable the display and conserve some battery. Most point-and-shoot cameras these days don't come with an optical viewfinder though and unlike those on DSLRs are bound to have some amount of parallax. Always shoot in RAW if possible All the DSLRs have this option and nowadays several point-and-shoot cameras also offer you the choice of saving images in RAW. An image saved in RAW format is unprocessed and hence in its purest form. This file is not directly usable for printing and very few applications can open it. It is usually meant for image editors, where you can take the unprocessed image and then make whatever changes you see fit and then save the image in a traditional format such as JPEG for viewing or editing. There is no fixed format for RAW and each camera manufacturer has its own version, so you need to make sure your image editor is compatible with it. Also, shooting in RAW only makes sense if you are going to edit the image later, otherwise it would be better to shoot in JPEG, as RAW files are very large in size and take up sizable amount of space on the memory card. If you are unsure, you can use the JPEG+RAW mode, which most cameras supporting RAW have, which saves the same image in both JPEG as well as RAW. Backup your images Make sure you always backup your images. If you have stored the images on the hard drive, make sure you have another copy of it somewhere else as hard drives are prone to failure. A smart thing to do would be to save the images on an online service such as Microsoft SkyDrive or Flickr. The former is free while the latter has a yearly fee, but is more suitable for those who want to share their photos with others. Do keep in mind that there is a slim chance of failure with cloud based storage as well, as was demonstrated by a recent incident where an account of a Flickr user was accidentally deleted by Flickr, causing four years' worth of images to be lost in an instant. If your images are on a memory card and you are waiting to transfer to a computer then use the lock switch found on all SD cards. This puts the card in a read-only mode, which means you cannot write or delete any data on the card. You can also get an Eye-Fi card for your camera, which wirelessly upload images on the card to a computer through Wi-Fi, so you don't have to worry about the data on your card getting deleted. In the next part of this article we shall discuss some of the more advanced techniques that you can employ to take great pictures. Thanks to Prasad Naik. Courtesy : Techtree 10 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manishashar 6 Report post Posted February 4, 2011 Nice 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
KAPILKDEV 68 Report post Posted February 4, 2011 Good info Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Genius 817 Report post Posted February 4, 2011 Good Info Kamal Ji +1 BTW when i first read the head i saw Po***graphy for beginners missed "h" there ...... and i was shocked ......LOL Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Honest 836 Report post Posted February 4, 2011 Lolz Genius Bhau......"PO***GRAPHY".....na na na. Thanks all for your appreciations. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ami1 237 Report post Posted February 4, 2011 Lolz Genius Bhau......"PO***GRAPHY".....na na na. I REALLY NEED TIPS ON THAT. URGENTLY. Me and Genius can come for private sessions if you want Shall i PM our preferences ? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Honest 836 Report post Posted February 4, 2011 ^^^ Lol.....Amitbah Bhai. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kshah 452 Report post Posted February 4, 2011 (edited) Good Info Kamal Ji +1 BTW when i first read the head i saw Po***graphy for beginners missed "h" there ...... and i was shocked ......LOL Your photo in undie would be considered po***graphy, so beaware while swimming. Edited February 4, 2011 by kshah Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Honest 836 Report post Posted February 4, 2011 ^^^ Hmmm.....lolz Kalpak Bhai. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
KumaarShah 143 Report post Posted February 4, 2011 @Dr Vinay You have mentioned in your post +1 for Kamalbhai, but by mistake it has been clicked in the wrong place, I presume.... Po***graphy ka asar ho raha hain kya? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
drali 6 Report post Posted February 4, 2011 Yeh topic kahan ja raha hai Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Karthik R 246 Report post Posted February 5, 2011 Unanticipatedly, this topic has invoked interest in me, like never before Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
coolminilife 6 Report post Posted February 5, 2011 thankyou kamalji for tips Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Genius 817 Report post Posted February 5, 2011 @ Kumar - its done now @ Kartik - let it flow buddy Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
