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Digital Photography Composition 101
Darren writes "With the 'Rise of the Digital Camera' I suspect we will also see the 'Rise of the Dodgy Digital Photo'. As digital cameras get in the hands of more and more snap happy photographers there will be more and more average images cluttering the PC's of the world. Already there must be millions of self portraits taken at arms length (complete with double chins), countless pictures of Aunt Mildred (cut off at the knees) and just as many out of focus shots of everyday objects in the living rooms of new digital camera owners too lazy to move from the couch. Its time to learn how to take good digital images before its too late! Digital Photography Composition Tips aims to teach the world a few basic guidelines for improving digital photographer's skills everywhere."
I found that buying a camera with a rotatable LCD screen helps immensely when you try to pictures from impossible angles. Also if you know next to nothing about photography or you just need to take pictures 'at the moment' without setting your camera up (like on a crowded japanese train), I suggest getting the Olympus 5060 which is really brilliant at adapting the settings to fit your picture (and it does it in < 50ms).
Props to the GNAA.
eden.h4xx.com - whacky free for all image board
Agreed. I don't understand why this is on /. at all. Digital cameras are not new; bad photography is not new; and these rules are not new.
Given the infinite monkey hypothesis (given an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters, and time, the complete works of William Shakespeare would eventually be produced), I would assume that the total amount to 'good' pictures should be increasing.
1. The cost of developing for viewing is nil (immediate feedback).
2. You can immediately delete any bad pictures.
3. As a result you take more pictures because RAM is free.
Thus, by sheer accident of the technology, neophyte shutterbugs are finding out the secret of the pros: take as many pictures as possible - one of the bunch is bound to be a beauty!
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I used to do this as well, but went to this: /yyyy-mm-dd some description/image description.jpg
/2004-05-05 cats, flowers, around work/flower 2.jpg
I found that after I'd aquired a few thousand images it became pretty hard to find that picture of the leg of my couch with just looking through directories. At least with looking at a list with files like:
it's a bit easier to find. I'd love to use a tool like photoshop album (doesn't support the naming conventions I like), jasc paint shop album (no RAW support) or others (some too simple, some overly complex), but I just haven't found one that fits with everything I'm looking for.
Takes lots of photos. Throw out the ones that aren't very good. This will be the vast majority of them, even for a professional.
Actually, this was my technique with film as well. Digital has saved me a fortune.
My guess is that higher-end digital cameras under $1k offer more capable burst modes (5/10/15) not to mention movie-clip recording functionality. So the problem you mention is not an inherent feature of digital cameras. It's just a question of having the right firmware (cheaper) in place - the lens/focus hardware (expensive) isn't limited in that aspect, it's just a question of programming it to do what you want.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
These tips are great, but i think that everyone would see a big improvement in their picture quality if they followed the #1 of photography - fill the frame.
9 times out of 10, when you're shooting someone or something, you need to prioritize what the focus of the photo is supposed to be, and fill the frame with it. The rest of the composition usually falls into place.
It's the simplest way to get better composition without a lot of extra thinking. Either use your feet, or use your zoom and get closer to your subject.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Very true; this whole story reminded me of Philip Greenspun's old Dickless Yuppie statement.
(1) Get a good bounce flash, e.g. like the Canon 420 EX for Canon EOS cameras.
(2) Get a diffusor ($0.01 worth of milky plastic, usually $5-$10 retail). For most shots either bounce the flash off the ceiling or use the diffusor. Never use a direct-pointing flash unless you have no choice (e.g. shots from a distance).
(3) Learn how to properly use Tv, Av, and Manual modes with the flash to properly fill the image. I generally either use Av with the flash sync fixed at 1/200, or Manual mode to control how much of the shot is from natural light and how much is from the flash (on the Canon the flash exposure is automatic when operating in manual mode though for obvious reasons you have to be more careful about its exposure range capabilities).
(4) The proper use of a flash for fill is even more important in bright sunlight due to the huge contrast between shadow and sunlight (especially on faces). I almost universally use the flash with the diffusor for daylight shots.
And that's pretty much it. Most people don't use flashes properly, but it doesn't take much exposure :-) to at least double and maybe even triple the number of good shots you take in a day. As usual, I just happen to have some great examples:
The BalloonHat guy at NextFest
No! Please don't. Go for little details. Notice how the absence of sunlight also causes the absence of harsh shadows.
Indeed, don't expect a grand landscape to look great in dull light. Or the sky. Or lots of other "splendid" things. But do take advantage of the "mother of all soft boxes": an overcast sky.
I wholeheartedly agree with your (or rather, Robert Capa's) tip to get closer. Fill the frame.
Unfortunately my mid-range digital camera does not have ISO settings, which it seems are quite valuable for manual settings. That's unfortunate, because it's sometimes hard to figure out what to do in low light, especially.
I'd love a digital SLR, but that's a lot of scratch.
Here is a really cool site that let's you virtually try out different settings: CamerasInteractive.
Pretty neat stuff.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The article leaves the "Hold the camera still" to near the bottom of the list. If you practice holding the camera still, braced against your face, a wall, frame or nearly anything, chances that your picture will have much better focus and that you will have at least a chance of a good picture. If you move the camera, it doesn't matter which brand you choose or how well you compose the picture. If you really have a problem with that, then consider a camera with automatic movement correction. (I have not tried them yet, but H Keppler gave it good marks.)(Pop-Photo)
Sometimes I am not out to get the perfect shot with my digital camera. Therefore, my laziness sets in and I will not take the time to get the right settings on the camera, pick the right place for myself and subjects, and throw out the rule of thirds. But as with anything, practicing these simple things makes it second nature when you take any photo - after a while you'll look at snapshots you took without thinking, but realize that the composition isn't as haphazard as you'd expect!
Often the pictures don't look right because the the white balance is set for natural (or fluorescent or incandescent) lighting when the flash throws a light with different characteristics.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Just fyi for those on the clock. The entire left hand side of the front page is Nudes. It may be just boobs but obviously many companies are going to have a problem with that.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Try Photofinder, from the HCI Lab in the University of Maryland. It's experimental software, not commercial, but I've found that it have some very interesting ideas on storing and retrieving a big collection.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
The camera has to work.. It has to have a good lens, but in the overall analysis it has little to do with images. I've taken great pictures with a cheap manual focus ae-1 and a fixed focus 55mm lens and crappy photos with a better camera. Sometimes technology helps but its not the be all end all to taking pictures. People have been holding cameras over there heads and taking pictures without the benifit of that screen for a long time.
Ken rockwell has a good summary of this philosophy, called You camera doesn't matter
I spent a few minutes recently looking through O'Reilly's Digital Photography Hacks... it has sections on white balance, etc.
BTW, if you have a camera that can shoot RAW format, you can do white balance totally in software, without having to worry about it at all while shooting.
Nothing to see here; Move along.
Michael Freeman has some nice books. You can check them out here.
/. but here is my advice:
What I like about his digital photography series (light and lighting, nature and landscapes, portraits, and close-ups) is that he provides lots of nice colorful examples.
Those work nice for me because I try to emulate them and generally end up with nicer pics than if I didn't know where to start shooting from.
Metering and aperture are the same basics from film days and those are the things you have to learn by experience. (Much like typing, you can't expect to understand how the whole photo-graphy works unless you understand aperture and shutter).
To understand white balance, take a picture of an object inside, under fluorescent lighting, and then take the picture of the same object outside in direct sun, and compare the two.
The one taken inside will have a yellow tone to it, which you wouldn't notice without comparing because our brains compensate for color differences.
Camera's white balance can usually filter out negative (or sometimes desired) effects of various color sources (fluorescent, tungsten, direct sunlight, bright background etc.).
I don't know as much about photography as some folks on
take lots of pictures, and often.
You'll get better at composition, and will start seeing the photos in your head. That's one advantage of digital over film. It doesn't cost anything to shoot 150 pics in one day, and pick out 5-15 satisfactory ones.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
One low light trick I use in low light conditions (I don't like flash in crowds and because it flattens the image): Set the 2-second timer. A lot of camera shaking comes from the act of pressing the shutter. That shaking is gone after 2-seconds. Doesn't work for action shots, but your shutter is open too long for decent action shots anyway. Bonus tip for arms-length self portraits. My Canon ELPH has a little silver logo-button on the front. When I see my reflection in the logo, I can compose the shot. Fun for vacations.
I've had horrible problems with low light photography with the digital camera.
You need a camera with a higher ISO setting, or a more powerful flash. I was shooting at ISO 3200 over the weekend, and got some great results. (Canon digital EOS w/hacked firmware - a bit noisy but very good results anyway).
Most camera manufacturers provide converter software as part of the package, and in some cases it's of a higher quality than the stuff built into the camera. This shouldn't be surprising, since there are fewer time and processing power constraints in off-line processing.
AFAIK, though, the best available software is Dave Coffin's dcraw program. It's available as free software under a non-advertizing BSD-style licence. It can be used either as a standalone converter (with Windows, Mac, and Linux versions available) or as a GIMP plugin. The author also claims that the program, or at least parts of it, is used in many commercial programs including Photoshop. I've been pretty pleased with the results so far.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
I have been doing photography for almost 10 years and there is no way I will trade my film Nikons for anything digital short of digital SRL because everything else is simply crap. From what I've experienced, digital cameras are divided into crappy and very crappy. Here is my opinion on this matter.
When you get a digital camera for several hundred bucks you are getting robbed by the manufactures because most of cheap consumer point-and-shoot cameras (film and digital) come with a non-replaceable lens. To make the matters worse, these lenses are tend to be on a shitty side. They have less-than-average capabilities, no special effects and if you scratch it, you are shit out of luck. The camera will need to be repaired which may cost you a good chunk of money. Will you ever buy a car that has an engine that you cannot replace? What if this engine happens to be not so good? And there you have it, my problem #1 with digital point-and-shoot cameras: crappy, irreplaceable lenses that make you handicapped when it comes to special effects. In fact, the lens should be the most expensive part of your camera becase it is that important. If you ask professional photographers what to get, most of them will suggest to spend more money on the actual lens because lens is what matters! You can have an all manual old Nikon with a superb lens that will outperform any digital camera that is full of features but lacks what is absolutely necessary: a good lens.
Then there is an issue of color. If I want to manipulate colors, I use different film, filters and ask for different processing. With a digital camera, the hardware can do everthing for you. The problem is that hardware is not perfect. In fact, there is a fair amount of guess work involved when a chip inside your digital camera tries to calculate the color. As a result you get too many digital cameras that are thrown off by reds. Do not believe me? Take a picture of something red on grey background. Then compare it to the real setup. Most of the times reds come out over saturated. If you think that this is not a big deal, take pictures of people with rosy cheeks. Chances are, your subjects will never ask you for a re-print. That is problem #2.
Problem #3 is shot specifict. In particular, very few digital cameras can produce clear nigh shots without making certain things purple. The best way to find out is to take a picture of street lights and objects close to them. In many cases you will see a rim of purple around the lights. Does it matter? Well, if you spend $300 on a camera, don't you think that you deserve a camera that can take good shots at night? Do not get me wrong, if I were to spend fifty bucks, I would not bitch about it, but if Fuji wants me to get their FinePix, they better fix those fuckedup color schemes that come up in night shots!
Problem #4 is zoom. None of 10x zoom cameras that I've seen so far had lens stabilizers. In plain English: when lenses were zoomed out, you could giggle any extended part of the lens. To my best knowlege, only certain Panasonic cameras were able to stabilize the lens and prevent it from being shaken.
Problem #5: accessories. Most of cheap digital cameras do not offer hot shoes or metal tripod mounts. I use tripods in a good fraction of my shots and I would hate to repair my camera's plastic tripod mount every once in a while. In my opinion, a good tripod mount must be mandatory for every camera. If your camera comes without a hot-shoe, you might as well throw it away, because you will not be able to use a flash. I am sorry to disappoint you, but a little flash that comes with your camera is nothing but a fill-in flash. It is not suitable for distant objects, it is not suitable for a large scene. If you want to be serious about photography, you'll have to spend at least $150 on a good flash.
Problem #6: manual features. I believe that every camera's feature must be available in "manual mode." Users must be able to override everything from focusing to shutter speed
For those looking for the photofinder and other U Maryland software, look here:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/photos/
M@
Krispy Cream is people
If you actually think that the result of a slide scanner beats the result of a digital SLR raw image file then I have to respectfully say, "You don't know what you are talking about".
Not only does digital naturally have 1 to 2 zones of added exposure range over 35mm, but scanning any negative with even the best scanner reduces films already inferior exposure range by up to one additional zone! Not to mention reducing films potentially superior line resolution in the process to that of the current crop of digital SLRs.
Don't compare film to a $99 snappy digital camera. If you are going to make judgements such as "Don't use digital". At least start out by comparing the output of a decent Digital SLR with a film SLR.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
I don't have leg shots but do have quite a few shadow shots (my shadow showing in the picture). They say the shadow of the photographer shouldn't be visible... bah. Of course, it all depends on the situation.
The quality of a photo is how well it serves its purpose. Memory shots are of good quality if they bring back the memories. "Art" or creative photos have different criteria: they usually should be enjoyed by other people than the photographer and his friends.
It's a trick that's worked since chemical photography was invented, and it still works with digital today. (I've done it with outdoor night photos.)
One problem with extremely long exposures in the dark that is peculiar to digital is that noise in the sensors becomes extremely apparent. You might see "static" or "snow" on extremely long, dark exposures. If that's a problem you encounter, try keeping the camera as cool or cold as possible (don't put it in the freezer and frost the thing, though!) That means leave it out in the cold rather than tightly held in your jacket, for example; and spare the LCD display as much as possible as the EL panels really warm them up.
John
OK, I'm quite the avid photographer, and there is a supurb site for posting your pieces and getting critiqued, and you can end up selling them there too, it's www.deviantart.com Which is always amusing to me when I tell people my page there (spoco2.deviantart.com ) as they assume it's all about porn or other such 'deviant' behaviour... it's a great site, with digital and film photographers and all sorts of other artists as well... a great place to hone your skills