Tips for Using a Point & Shoot Camera

Do you feel inadequate because you have a puny Canon SD900 or Fuji F30 in your pocket while your friend is lugging around a digital SLR?

Don't.

You can get a better picture than he can, for the following reasons:

Your camera is light and compact enough that you have it with you at all times.
You have about as good a lens as he does; like most first-time SLR owners, he hasn't bothered to upgrade from the cheap low-contrast zoom lens that was included in a kit with his camera body.
He is using the pop-up flash on his camera as his primary light. You would never be that uncreative (at least not after reading the rest of this article).
Your camera has a better system for combining light from the flash with ambient light ("fill-flash").
A professional photographer with a pile of $1500 lenses and a tripod is going to be able to do many things that you aren't. But rest assured that he carries a P&S camera in his pocket as well.

The photo at left shows Bill Clinton handing out a diploma at MIT's 1998 graduation ceremony. I was in the press box with a Canon EOS-5 (film!), 70-200/2.8L lens, and 1.4X teleconverter ($2500 total). In the upper right of the frame is a woman with a point and shoot camera. I would venture to guess that her pictures of Clinton are better than mine.

Think about Light

"He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it."
-- Joseph Romm

My personal definition of photography is "the recording of light rays." It is therefore difficult to take a decent picture if you have not chosen the lighting carefully. Read the photo.net tutorial chapter on light.

Just say no

Just say "no" to on-camera flash. Your eye needs shadows to make out shapes. When the light is coming from the same position as the lens, there are no shadows to "model" faces. Light from a point source like the on-camera flash falls off as the square of the distance from the source. That means things close to the camera will be washed-out, the subject on which you focussed will be properly exposed, and the background will be nearly black.

We're at a theater. Can't you tell from the background? That's me in the middle. The guy with the flat face and big washed-out white areas of skin. Part of the problem here is that the camera was loaded with ISO 50 film and therefore doesn't capture much ambient light (i.e., the theater background).

Virtually all point and shoot cameras allow you to control the on-camera flash. What you want to do most of the time is press the tiny lightning bolt button until the "no flash" symbol is displayed. The "no flash" symbol is usually a lightning bolt with a circle around it and line through it. Now the camera will never strobe the flash and will leave the shutter open long enough to capture enough ambient light to make an exposure.

A good point and shoot camera will have a longest shutter speed of at least 1 second. You can probably only hold the camera steady for 1/30th of a second. Your subjects may not hold still for a full second either. So you must start looking for ways to keep the camera still and to complete the exposure in less time. You can:

look for some light. Move your subjects underneath whatever light sources are handy and see how they look with your eyes.
set a higher ISO sensitivity, e.g., ISO 400 or ISO 800 (currently only Fuji F30 and rather expensive compact digicams are designed to give good quality at higher ISO settings; the rest just give you a lot of digital "noise")
steady the camera against a tree/rock/chair/whatever as you press the shutter release
leave the camera on a tree/rock/chair/whatever and use the self-timer so that the jostling of pressing the shutter release isn't reflected on film. This works well for photographing decorated ceilings in Europe. Just leave the camera on the floor, self-timer on, flash off.
use a little plastic tripod, monopod, or some other purpose-built camera support
Yes it was dark in Bar 89. But I steadied the camera against a stair railing and captured the scene with a Minolta Freedom Zoom 28-70 (current eBay value $5?). Note that not using flash preserves the lighting of the bar.

Just say yes

Just say "yes" to on-camera flash. Hey, "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" (Emerson; slightly out of context).

The on-camera flash on a compact digital camera is useful. It just isn't useful for what you'd think. As noted above, it is not useful for lighting up a dark room. However, it is useful outdoors when you have both shaded and sunlit objects in the same scene. A JPEG photo or a print cannot handle the same range of contrast as your eyes. A picture that is correctly exposed for the sunlight object will render the shaded portrait subject as solid black. A picture that is correctly exposed for the shaded portrait subject will render the sunlit background object as solid white.

Here the chess players are being shaded by some overhead screens while the background foliage is not. The on-camera flash makes sure that the foreground players are bright. In fact they are a bit brighter than they probably should be and note the washed-out highlight on the leading edge of the table, which is close to the camera. This picture was taken by prefocusing on the shirtless player on the right, then moving the camera with the shutter release half-depressed to the final composition. Without the prefocusing the camera would have latched onto one of the chess tables in the center of the picture, quite far away. The foreground men would have been out of focus and also tremendously overexposed since an amount of flash adequate to illuminate a far away subject would have been used. [Note that many $1000 SLR cameras would not have been capable of making this picture except in a completely manual mode. Their flash metering systems look for light reaching the central area of the image rather than computing appropriate flash power from the focussed distance.]

Pressing the little buttons on a P&S camera until a single solid lightning bolt appears in the LCD display will keep the flash on at all times. Note that a side-effect of the "flash on" mode is that you also get the same long shutter speeds for capturing ambient light that you would with "flash off" mode. The standard illustrative picture for this has an illuminated building at night as the background with a group of people in the foreground who've been correctly exposed by the flash.

Sometimes it all comes together, as it did here in Coney Island. Without fill-flash, the ride operator would have been a silhouette. Prefocussed on the human subject's face. "Flash on" mode.

Prefocus

The best-composed photographs don't usually have their subject dead center. However, that's where the focusing sensor on a P&S camera is. Since the best photographs usually do have their subject in sharp focus, what you want to do is point the center sensor at your main subject, hold the shutter release halfway down, then move the camera until you like the composition.

Virtually all P&S cameras work this way but not everyone knows it because not everyone is willing to read the owner's manual.

A side effect of prefocusing is that most P&S cameras will preset exposure as well. Ideal exposure with a reflected light meter is obtained when the subject reflectance is 18% gray (a medium gray). If you don't want to wade into the exposure compensation menus, try to prefocus on something that is the correct distance from the camera and a reasonable mid-tone. I.e., avoid focusing on something that is pure white or black.

Burn Memory

If a memory card is lasting for months, something is wrong. You aren't experimenting enough. An ideal memory card for has 50 pictures of the same subject, all of them bad. These prove that you're not afraid to experiment. And then one good picture. This proves that you're not completely incompetent.

It takes at least 10 frames to get one good picture of one person. To have everyone in a group photo looking good requires holding down that shutter release button. You should have pictures from different angles, different heights, flash on, flash off, etc.

Buy a stack of 2 GB SD cards and challenge yourself to fill them up!

Try to Buy a Decent P&S Camera

You can read our buyer's guide. My personal ideal point and shoot camera would have one of the following lenses:

24-50 zoom (35mm film equivalent; zooms out wide enough to capture a subject and the background context)
24-70 zoom
a single focal length (non-zoom) because it is one fewer decision to make at exposure time
Sadly, the marketplace doesn't agree with me and compact cameras with these lenses aren't available. Almost always you get a zoom lens, which would be more useful on a full-sized SLR camera because the user interface is better/quicker (i.e., you can turn the ring on the lens instead of pushing little buttons to drive a motor).

by Philip Greenspun

website : http://photo.net/learn/point-and-shoot-tips

People are not ‘Sites’

One realization that I had a number of years back after a trip was that I was actually thinking in terms of ‘capturing’ photos of people. In a sense I was photographing them in a similar way to the other tourist ’sites’ that I was photographing along the way - almost as trophies.

I realized that my approach was totally arrogant, disrespectful and very rude. People are not ‘tourist sites’ - they’re people and they deserve to be treated as such.

A much better approach is to take photos in a relational way. This doesn’t mean you need to have talked to them for hours, swapped numbers and told you deepest secrets before photographing them - but it does mean that taking their photograph can actually become a friendly interaction between people from different cultures.

Learn a few words in their language, smile lots, tell them something about yourself (or show them a picture of your family at home), take an interest in their work, home and family, show them the pictures you’ve taken of them on your LCD, tell them that they look great, shake their hands and generally be polite and warm and you’ll find that photographing them is a much richer experience for all.

Also knowing a bit about the culture and what is and isn’t appropriate in terms of your dress, interactions between genders and more can be very useful to know.

The results of this approach are that not only do both subject and photographer potentially come away having experienced something of value - but the photographs you take are generally better as the subject is more relaxed, you might have been able to get a little closer and there is some kind of connection between the two of you.

Should You Ask for Permission Before Photographing Strangers?

One of the most debated issues around the topic of photographing people when traveling is whether you need to ask their permission first.

I’ve heard strong arguments both for and against asking permission ranging ‘anything goes’ type approaches right through to people asking that you need to get written releases for every person you photograph.

My personal approach has been to attempt to find some middle ground. Here’s how I break it down:

1. If the person is the main subject of a photo that I’m taking I generally
seek permission to take their photograph.

2. If people end up in my photographs incidentally (for example if I’m
taking a street scene which includes numerous people) I do not seek
permission.

3. Similarly - if I’m at a show or watching someone perform I generally
don’t ask permission unless there has been direct instruction not to
photograph during the show.

4. In reality ’seeking permission’ usually means catching a person’s eye,
smiling, pointing to my camera and raising an eyebrow in a questioning
way. Gestures like this usually cross all language barriers and their
response is generally just as obvious.

5. If I’m selling the picture I would always attempt to get written
permission. My lawyer readers would be able to advise us a little more
on this one.

6. If I’m photographing children I always attempt to seek the permission
of parents (this can be difficult as kids can be very persistent when
there are people with cameras around).

7. I generally do not ‘pay’ people for letting me take their photo. This is
something that different photographers have different standards on but
for me it doesn’t quite feel right. I do tend to travel with little gifts from
home in Australia which I do sometimes give to people that I meet
along the way - but I don’t really use these as ‘payments’.

8. If someone says no or seems quite uncomfortable with me
photographing them (remember in some cultures it’s bad manners to
refuse anything and some people will say yes when they really don’t
want you to photograph them - so use your discernment) I always
respect their wishes.

9. Keep in mind what you’d feel like if a stranger walked up to you in your
neighborhood and asked for a photograph and act in a way that you’d
want to be treated in that kind of situation.

It is worth saying that from what I know - laws vary from country to country on what is acceptable to photograph without permission. For example I’m told by my US friends that in the US anything visible or in plain view from a public area can be legally photographed (including people).

My approach above comes out of my own experiences, cultural perspective, personality and perhaps even ethics. I don’t force it on anyone - it’s just what i do. For a legal opinion you might want to consult a legal expert in the region to which you’re traveling.

By digital-photography-school

Website : http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/photographing-people-when-traveling/

Food Photography - An Introduction

Interested in learning about Food Photography? Read on for some introductory tips.

Visit any bookshop and head for the cook book section and you’ll be overwhelmed by the array of books filled with scrumptious recipes accompanied by wonderful photography of the meals being written about.

Colorful stacks of vegetables drizzled with rich sauces on a clean white plate with glistening table settings - you know the shots. Sometimes the photography is almost the true focus of the book with the recipes taking a secondary role.

But how do you photograph food and get such great results?

1. Lighting

Treat the food you’re photographing as you would any other still life subject and ensure that it is well lit. Many of the poor examples of food photography that I’ve come across in the research for this article could have been drastically improved with adequate lighting. One of the best places to photograph food is by a window where there is plenty of natural light - perhaps supported with flash bounced off a ceiling or wall to give more balanced lighting that cuts out the shadows. This daylight helps to keep the food looking much more natural.

2. Props

Pay attention not only to the arrangement of the food itself but to the context that you put it in including the plate or bowel and any table settings around it. Don’t clutter the photo with a full table setting but consider one or two extra elements such as a glass, fork, flower or napkin. These elements can often be placed in secondary positions in the foreground or background of your shot.

3. Be Quick

Food doesn’t keep it’s appetizing looks for long so as a photographer you’ll need to be well prepared and able to shoot quickly after it’s been cooked before it melts, collapses, wilts and/or changes color. This means being prepared and knowing what you want to achieve before the food arrives. One strategy that some use is to have the shot completely set up with props before the food is ready and then to substitute a stand-in plate to get your exposure right. Then when the food is ready you just switch the stand-in plate with the real thing and you’re ready to start shooting.

4. Style it

The way food is set out on the plate is as important as the way you photograph it. Pay attention to the balance of food in a shot (color, shapes etc) and leave a way into the shot (using leading lines and the rule of thirds to help guide your viewer’s eye into the dish). One of the best ways to learn is to get some cook books to see how the pros do it.

5. Enhance it

One tip that a photographer gave me last week when I said I was writing this was to have some vegetable oil on hand and to brush it over food to make it glisten in your shots.

6. Get Down Low

A mistake that many beginner food photographers make is taking shots that look down on a plate from directly above. While this can work in some circumstances - in most cases you’ll get a more better shot by shooting from down close to plate level (or slightly above it).

7. Macro

Really focusing in upon just one part of the dish can be an effective way of highlighting the different elements of it.

8. Steam

Having steam rising off your food can give it a ‘just cooked’ feel which some food photographers like. Of course this can be difficult to achieve naturally. I spoke with one food stylist a few years back who told me that they added steam with a number of artificial strategies including microwaving water soaked cotton balls and placing them behind food. This is probably a little advance for most of us - however it was an interesting trick so I thought I’d include it.

Website: http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/food-photography-an-introduction/

How to take a Photograph out of a Plane Window

Here’s a quick tip for those of us lucky enough to be taking a trip in an aeroplane and wanting to get the classic ‘out of the window shot’ that often is featured early in a travel photo album.

One common mistake that people make with taking this shots is to put their camera’s lens right up against the glass of the window in the hope that it will help cut down on reflections and in the hope that it will steady their shot.

While it might help a little with reflections it generally does anything but steady the shot and will often usually increase camera shake’ due to the vibrations of the plane.

A better strategy, if you’re using a DSLR with a fitted lens, is to attach a lens hood to your lens and get in as close as you can to the window without actually touching it.

Alternatively, use your free hand to cup around the lens as much as you can to shield it from reflections.

Of course for high quality aerial shots you’ll want to shoot out an open window from an appropriate altitude - but then most of us are not in that league so the window seat on an airliner is our best option.

Here are a few more tips that come to mind on photographing out a plane’s window:


switch to manual focus - quite often cameras get confused when shooting through glass (and on most planes its two or three scratched and marked sheets of glass). Switching to manual focussing mode and locking your focus on your main focal point can help a lot.

shoot early in the flight - windows tend to ice up or get condensation on them once you’ve been flying for a longer period of time. Shoot early when you’re window is clearer and your shots will be better for it.
be ready for the plane banking - it is difficult from an airliner to take shots of the ground (due to window size and the angles that are possible through them) but opportunities do present themselves for such shots on the few occasions that the plan banks before landing and after take off. The key is to be ready and to shoot fast as these moments don’t last long.

turn off your flash - for starters it’ll have no impact on your shot (its not strong enough to have an impact beyond a few meters) and secondly it’ll just cause reflections against the window.

look for points of interest - sometimes the scenes out of plane windows seem quite spectacular to the eye but when you look at your photos they can be a little empty and un-inspirational. Look for a point of interest to bring your shot to life. It might be the wing or engine of the plane, it could be a cloud formation, another plane, a coastline, a change in the landscape below or a setting sun etc.

Website: http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-take-a-photograph-out-of-a-plane-window/

How to Photograph Pets

Grant (a reader) sent me an email this week asking for a some tips on Pet Photography.

Here’s my top ten tips on taking great photographs of your pet:

1. Start with Your Pet’s Personality

Before you start photographing your pet ask yourself ‘what sets it apart from other animals?’ Think about what type of personality it has and then attempt to capture some of that in your shots. For example if everyone knows your pet as a sleepy, lazy or placid little thing set up your photo shoot around it’s bed or where it goes after a meal to lie in the sun and you’ll have every chance of capturing a shot that sums your pet right up. Alternatively if your pet is hyperactive, inquisitive and always on the move it might be better to do your shoot at a local park where it’s racing around, jumping for balls or playing with other animals.

2. Think about Context

In choosing the location to photograph your pet you might want to consider a variety of other factors also. For starters choose a place where your pet will be comfortable and at ease. Also consider the familiarity of the location and the emotions that it will evoke in you as the pets owner. For example you might have a place that you and your pet have had some special moments together that will mean a lot in the future as you look back over your shots. Lastly consider the background of your shots. Ultimately you don’t want your backgrounds to be distracting from your photo - sometimes the best locations are the plainest ones - a large patch of green grass, a well lit room with white walls and plain carpet etc can be ideal. Of course this can also be tool plain and sterile - my motto is that if the different elements in the background of the shot don’t add to it avoid them.

3. Get in Close

Pets come in all shapes and sizes but in most cases they are smaller than a human and as a result they tend to end up getting a little lost in photos unless you make an effort to get up close to them. Of course getting close is not always easy, especially if you have a pet that likes to move around, but it’s worth making the effort as the detail that can be gained and the personality that can be captured by an up close and personal photo shoot with a pet can really lift a photo to a new level. If you can’t physically get close to your pet get your camera equipped with a zoom lens. The added benefit of a long focal length is that it will help with isolating your pet in terms of depth of field (ie give you a nice blurry background so that your pet is center of attention with no distractions).

4. Get On Their Level

Get down on your pets level where you can look upon them eye to eye. Images taken by a photographer standing up and looking down on their level not only leave you too far away from your subject but they also mean the shots end up having a very ‘human perspective’. Getting down on your pets level means you enter their world and get a glimpse of what life looks like from their angle - you’ll be impressed by the results as they are more personal and have a real element of intimacy.

5. Mix Up Your Framing

Pets, like human subjects’ look different from different angles and framing them in a variety of ways can bring out different perspectives to your shots. In your photo shoot take some tightly cropped facial shots (even focussing right in on single features like eyes, noses, ears, whiskers etc) but also make sure you take three quarter body shots as well as full body shots. In this way you end up with a series of shots that give viewers of your photos a full perspective on who your pet is.

6. Lighting

Light makes any photograph what it is and when it comes to pets it’s especially important. In general I wouldn’t recommend using a flash as they tend to distract pets and in some cases will even frighten them. The other issue with flashes is that they can create spooky red-eye problems with some animals (in the same way they do with humans). Natural light is a much better option than using a flash and so where possible outside photo shoots tend to work best (or at least in a well lit window inside). The only exception I would give for using a flash is when your pet has very dark (or black) fur as it tends to absorb light and a flash can add detail. With dark fury pets you might want to slightly over expose your images for this same reason. Alternatively with white pets you run the risk of over exposing shots so try to find a location out of direct sunlight and definitely avoid a flash.

7. Include People

One of the best things you can do to add context to a shot is to include the special people in the life of your pet in the image. Shots with the owner or other family members interacting with your pet can make the images incredibly special for years to come. You might like to try posed shots but sometimes it’s the candid shots of owner and pet at play (or snoozing together in front of a fire) that really capture the character of the pet and evoke emotion.

8. Freeze the Action

Many pets present a challenge to photographers because they are active and always on the move. The key with any subject that’s on the move is to freeze their action by using a fast shutter speed. Most digital cameras these days will allow you to shoot in full manual mode if you feel confident to get the mix between shutter and aperture right - alternatively you can work in shutter priority mode where you set the shutter speed and the camera automatically does the rest by picking a good aperture to work with your shutter speed. The last alternative is to use ’sports’ mode which will mean the camera will select the fastest shutter speed possible for your situation. Once you’ve got your shutter speed nice and fast make sure your camera is always at the ready so you can anticipate the actions of your pet. If they are a fast mover you might also want to consider shooting in continuous mode (burst mode) to take a quick series of shots in a row. This can also lead to a wonderful sequence of shots that work well together.

9. Be Playful

Pets can be playful little critters and rather than attempting to contain this to get them posed for that special shot it’s often very effective to go with their playfulness and make it a central feature of your image. Include their toys, stimulate them to look longingly into your camera by holding a special treat above your head or take a picture with them sitting on top of you mid wrestle etc. Make your photo shoot a fun experience for both you and your pet and your shots are likely to reflect it.

10. Catch them Unawares

Posed shots can be fun and effective but one thing I love to do (whether it be with animals or people) is to photograph them candidly paparazzi style. I have very fond memories of stalking a friend’s dog as he played in a back yard one day. I took shots while he dug up flowers, as he buried a bone, as he fell chased a bee around and ask he sat contentedly with his head sticking out of his dog house. The whole time I photographed him he was barely aware of my presence so the shots were very natural without me distracting the dog from his ‘business’.

Update - 11. Try a Wide Angle Lens

One of the techniques I’ve experimented with lately is using a wider angle lens. This allows you to get in close (point 3) but also fit in a lot of the pet. The other benefit of it is that using a wider angle lens will often give your image a little distortion that will give your image a new creative and fun perspective. Read more on Using Wide Angle Lens Distortion Creatively.

Website: http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-photograph-pets/