Hobby Photography Tips – Resource for Learning Photographers

Here is some advice that teaches you to take better pictures with your digital camera.

1. Use flash in daylights
Pictures of people can become better when you turn on your flash, because hard shadows that hit your subject faces in broad daylight will be taken away.

2. Get closer
No need to be cautious about walking close up to your subject when taking pictures. It is in fact essential to get more details, and/or use the zoom. Portraits become often more beautiful if you take smaller picture sections. Compact digital cameras do not cope with long distances to your subject, and usually don’t do produce good pictures if you’re standing more than a metre away.

3. Know your cameras flash range
Small cameras have seldom sufficient force in the flash range. Remember that compact digital cameras will not reach more than two, three metres. When you use the flash, go closer to the person so you get sufficient lightning, and don’t get dark pictures.

4. Locate where the natural light is coming from
Sharp light coming sideways develops shadows and gives persons unnecessary many unwanted facial shadows. Take a step to the side or go somewhere else, in general do what you can to minimize the unwanted shadows. Turn on the flasher if it helps.

5. Choose a good background
Portraits become often better with a neutral background without interfered elements like travelling cars, or people walking. Go closer to the person you’re taking picture of, or use the zoom to minimize the background around.

6. Better child pictures
Infants and Childs are popular picture subjects, but the most common error that the mother and father do is that they stand up when they take the pictures. If you sit down on the floor and take the picture from the child’s perspectives, you will produce much better pictures, also the pictures becomes both better and funnier to look at.

7. Composing the picture
The pictures do not always become best if the subject is placed precisely in the center. Try with different placements. Imagine you that the picture is divided in three parts left-to-right and from the top and down. Experiment with moving the subject between these thirds.

8. Focus in on the right things
If the camera has a button that locks the auto focus can this to be used in order to lock focus on the person or the main subject before the picture is to be composed. Many cameras have focus measurement indicated as a cross in the middle of the picture. The person or the item standing on the side of the cross risks becoming blurry. Many cameras lock focus when you press the shutter halfway down.

9. Experiment
Play with the camera’s functions and teach yourself how they function. Try with using a tripod and to take pictures on movable objects with long shutter times. Speak with people you take pictures of and to see them in the eyes; it creates a better contact with the subject.
Teach yourself the macro function, it can give the pictures an entire new dimension. It is also recommended to lean Photoshop and photo editing programs, so you can enhance you’re pictures afterwards. In order to become a good photographer you need to know, that you have to take lots of pictures! Many will be bad, some will be good, and some will become extraordinary.

10. Organize your pictures on your computer
The computer’s hard disk has an ability to devour pictures. They disappear entirely in the jungle of files and documents. Don’t make hundreds of folders and subdirectories on your computer with pictures, but put the files where they are easy to find. A good way of organizing your photos can be to use you’re camera’s own software in order to do the organizing job easier, or use other programmes like Adobe PhotoAlbum or iPhoto. Those programs can even edit and print copies for you which are nice features.

The technology of today’s modern camera has come a long way these past years. There are cameras that are exceptionally good at enhancing picture quality automatically. We should all be glad we own such great tools to be creative with. On the other hand it should also be said that there’s always room for improvements and I’m sure we will see even better cameras very soon. In the meantime let’s go over what you as the photographer can do to make the most out of your pictures. Follow these tips and enhance your photos from acceptable to great in no time!

Let’s begin with lighting. You should always try to use all the available light that you have in your position. If you’re in a situation that you have enough light to be able to say easily read a book, then you most likely wont need to use your flash, so turn the camera’s flash off. This tip is based on that camera flashes can make the human skin look pale and unnatural. If you’re indoors in a place where there are not enough light, then try to place you’re subject by a window, and then use the fill flash feature on the camera.

The next important tip is to always be aware of what background you’re having. When taking pictures of peoples, you don’t wan to have trees growing out of peoples head, or moving vehicles in the picture that server as a distraction. It can often be a good idea to take some steps to either side of where you’re standing; the background can change dramatically in just few steps.

When you’re ready to shoot try to aim your camera slightly down at the subject’s face. A good idea is to experiment a bit, and don’t shoot just face on to the subject. It is better to try a little to the side, and maybe go for like three quarter view. This way you will see more of the subject’s face. A camera higher looking down in a three quarter view will make your subject slimmer.

Now get the right focus. If you’re going for a picture with a statement that clearly depicts the important factor in the image, then you would want to get close to your picture-subject. Try to fill the frame with for example the person you’re shooting.

A very good tip is to never place your subject dead center in an image. This is not good photography. Instead put your subject slightly off center, not much but just a tad. If it’s a group of people you’re shooting, then try to find an imaginary center line going into your group, and then place that line a little off center in the view that you see though your lens.

I hope you have ultimately learned something new from these tips. They certainly wont make a prize-winning photographer tomorrow, but you will be on you’re way to better photography. You will be pleased to know that you now will take photos people you know will give you excellent feedback on for yours to come.

Most digital cameras today will offer you both digital and optical zoom to choose from. These two are often not known by the average camera buyer. Many people don’t know the difference of the two, or simply what it is. Optical zoom works pretty much like the zoom lens that you would have on a 35mm film camera. It basically changes the length of your camera’s lens, in such a way that your subject will be drawn closer to you. The very good thing about optical zoom is that it won’t reduce the quality of the picture. Digital zoom on the other hand can be dangerous to use when you want good looking images, and who doesn’t want that right? Digital zoom works a little differently; it takes the picture, crops it, and then enlarges the left part of the picture. Because of this process of cropping and enlargement, it can greatly reduce the image quality. What this means is that you will have a larger view of an object with digital zoom, but the risk is that you could get unfocused pictures. If you want to use digital zoom be careful and not overdo it.

Actually a good tip would be to completely turn off the digital zoom on your camera if you can. This way you will be prevented to automatically overdo the zooming. When the optical zooming of your camera reaches its limit, it can automatically go over to digital zooming, since it is often an extension of the optical. Our advice is still to only stick with optical zooming if you want really good quality in your pictures.

There are some things you could do if you want to really get a close view of your subject, and at the same time wish to have good quality pictures. The best tip is to physically move closer before you take your picture. Usually only a foot or two will do wonders. If you are in a situation were this isn’t possible, you can simply set your camera to take the picture at the highest file size that your camera offer you. When you do this, you can then take a picture that can be cropped later on to include only the subject you desired in the first place. The picture will still be clear and good to watch at, since you didn’t do any digital zooming.

Digital zoom has some uses however. If you only are taking pictures that are meant to be posted on the internet, then high quality isn’t necessarily the most important thing. It is good to remember that pictures online can be a much lower quality in the camera, and still look very acceptable when posted in an online image gallery, or sent in an email. If however you are going to print your images never use digital zoom. Follow this advice and all your images will look better in the end.

One question I hear quite often is people asking about how many mega-pixels they should have in their new camera. There is of course no right and wrong answer here; it all depends of what you are thinking of doing with the pictures you are going to take.

Let us just make sure everyone know for sure what a pixel is. In the world of digital prints, a pixel is just a dot of a color that ultimately makes up the image. Therefore one megapixel is equal to one million pixels. It is important to be aware of that the more pixels your camera has, the more information it will record into every image. Said in a different way; the more detail your images will have.

If you are having trouble deciding how many mega pixels you need, you should think about what size prints you will most likely be using. If you are not planning on printing out your images at all, but just want a camera to share pictures on the internet, then you won’t need more than a one mega-pixel camera. You could also use it to print out 4 x 6 images with such a camera, with an acceptable quality. One mega pixel is today of course very cheap.

If you think about printing out 5 x 7 images, then a 2 mega pixel camera will be what you are looking for. It will produce good quality 5 x 7, but can also be used for 8 x 10 prints with a fair quality. Should you want to print 8 x 10 with excellent quality, then a 4 mega pixel camera is a obvious choice. A 5 mega pixel camera will of course do even better, and is meant for pictures that will print high quality 11 x 17 prints.

Most families will find that a 4 mega pixel camera will suit their needs just fine, and could be considered the best choice for families. Here the quality of both 5x 7 and 8 x 10 prints are very good, but also the file sizes that these cameras will create, are not so large that you need to worry about available space on your computer.

Cameras that have 6 mega pixels or more, are really unnecessary for all, but are more suited for those more serious photographers. Like professional photographers will most likely want something above 7 mega pixels, because they are planning on printing out very large images, like post-size prints and similar sizes. When this is said, the choice is yours to make. We will also advice you to buy a camera that maybe has less mega pixels, but increased optical zoom. The conclusion is however to buy a camera that you think will fit your need now and in the future.