Find out more tips on Photography
by David Peters
In order to be a photographer, you must be able to make decisions, not simply point a camera and press a button. Photography can be an important activity as it can help people, adults and children, understand what the media projects every day. Besides that, it is a good hobby, and photography can help people understand the world around them, especially through someone else's eyes. It is a great way to bring together a community project as well.
When you buy a digital camera, you have to know how to take care of it to keep it in its best condition. In order to have the clearest photos possible, you must make sure to regularly clean your optic lens and keep from leaving fingerprints on it. If this happens, parts of your pictures will be blurry, and dirt can build up over time. Not all cleaning products are suitable for a camera lens, so make sure that you don't use tissue paper, any household cleaning solutions, and definitely not saliva. Instead, you should buy the proper products at a camera store, in order to keep your camera at its best.
Most cameras with autofocus provide a two-step shutter release. Depressing the shutter lightly half-way locks the focus; depressing it fully takes the picture. This two-step shutter release allows you to select the part of the picture you want to be in focus (especially if it is not in the middle -- usually the focus zone -- of the screen), depress the shutter release half-way to lock the focus, and then reframe the picture. Your main subject, even if it is not now in the camera's focus zone, will still come out in focus in the final picture. When depressing the shutter, do it gently, not with a jerk. Do not hammer it down with your index finger. Place your index finger on the shutter, and let it rest gently there until you are ready to take the picture. Then depress it gently half-way to lock the focus. Reframe, hold your breath, and then depress it fully, but still gently, to take the picture. This helps you maintain your composition and keep your horizon level.
When you look at a picture where there are objects in the foreground and in the background, you may notice that, besides your main subject, some objects in front of your main subject and going all the way back to behind your main subject are also in focus. This "zone of sharpness" is called the depth of field. The depth of field is dependent on the aperture you are using, the focusing distance, and the size of the projected image. The depth of field decreases as you open up the lens, i.e. as you move to a larger aperture. It decreases as you move closer to your subject. And, at a fixed image size, the depth of field is the same irrespective of the focal length used. You would want to use a shallow depth of field to isolate your main subject from its surroundings, as in a portrait. You can accomplish that by moving in close, by zooming in (again, because it makes the background appear larger and more out of focus) and/or by using a large aperture.
One aspect of taking a pleasing photograph is depth of field. When you look at a picture, you will notice that all the area surrounding the focused subject is also focused. This area is called depth of field. In order to change the way the depth of field in a picture is seen, focused, and lit, you must change the width of your lens. The wider the lens is, the smaller the depth of field will be. To decrease the depth of field you can also move closer to your subject. To increase it, you can use a smaller lens or move further away from your subject.
Landscapes are the opposite end of portraits in the sense that you mostly want all the picture to be in focus. To achieve this effect, use as small a f/stop as your camera allows, say f/16. The smaller the f/stop, the greater the depth of field achieved, and objects near and far will be in focus (again, with consumer digital cameras and the short focal lengths of their lenses, good depth of field is achieved even with 'large' f/stop). You could use the Law of Thirds to capture 1/3 land and 2/3 sky, or the other way round, 2/3 land and 1/3 sky. You would surely want to use a wide-angle lens setting. Adding a foreground object might help achieve a sense of three dimensionality. If water is involved, a slow shutter speed will give the impression of flowing water. If the sea is involved, a polarizing filter will cut glare and give the 'transparent' water effect.
A tripod is a good investment in photography, especially if you want to take panoramic pictures. You'll have to set your tripod in a place where you can swivel the camera smoothly from left to right, and not up and down. You will have to figure out where you want your pictures to overlap, so that you don't have huge gaps in your resulting picture. Once you figure that out, you can swivel your camera in one direction, clockwise or counterclockwise, to take the pictures you want. Once you're done, all you have to do is put them together with a simple graphics program or photo-editing software.
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