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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."
Most of the books I have found assume you are already a film photographer and only cover the difference between film and digital; the books about film photography are not always entirely relevant to digital photography. The books about digital photography seem to assume you can't even take an autofocused picture with flash without help -- that's about as far as they seem to cover.
I'm looking for something that explains what all the complicated settings on my digital camera (regarding white balance, metering, aperature, and so on) mean and do.
Any suggestions?
..is the now-infamous "me taking my own picture by standing in the bathroom facing the mirror with my new digital camera".
I've never seen one taken with an analog camera. Perhaps they love the new toy so much they have to record one of their first good times together?
Here's another website that I've been going to; it's got digital as well as traditional photography forums: Photo Takers Forum.
My problem is that I can't afford an SLR. I'm generally happy with my Fuji FinePix 3800, but it's very bad in low light (my camcorder is absolutely fantastic, however, but the resolution of the still frames pales in comparison). I've bought some filters and conversion lenses, and I'm really having a great time learing with it.
Sadly, it doesn't take a digital camera to make most people lazy. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to encourage my brother-in-law to take better pictures by using sarcasm ("nice use of backlighting, there!") to no avail. Quick tip to backlighters: use a flash! It brings out your subjects in the foreground!
My wife is the queen of "shaky-cam", no matter how many times I tell her to use the flash indoors. She'll come back from an event at my childs school, hand me the camera, and I end up throwing about 80% of the pictures away. I tried to teach her how to use manual settings to compensate, but she doesn't even want to try to learn.
Still, even "snapshotters" can make prints like a champ with simple editing software (I have to admit I often use Microsoft's Picture It Express 7.0 that came free with a Kodak picture CD - red eye removal, cropping to standard image sizes, basic color/brightness/contrast editing... and free). For example, the first thing in the article is composition - very often you can fix this with creative cropping. Doesn't always make up for poor photography to begin with, but you can fix an awful lot.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
There's also the Holga -- sorta like an analog version of the camera phone. All plastic camera, a single aperture, uses 120 film. It's low-tech, but sometimes low-tech is good -- especially because it forces you to concentrate on the composition as opposed to all the bells and whistles.
Some cool sites:
www.toycamera.com
http://www.digitalsucks.com
http://www.eyecaramba.com
http://www.metaincognita.com (Disclaimer: this is some of my own stuff)
Beware, though: the Holga is controversial. People don't like it because the photos tend to look similar. I'll agree with that. They're similar -- but sometimes they're pretty interesting.
Thanks, this seemed like it had been up before, but I couldn't find the earlier article.
I agree, the digital pictures aren't really about the quality, it's about the memories. I like to go through my albums, just to be reminded of the good times I've had with people. It doesn't matter if the subject isn't perfectly centered. Hell, I have a series of pictures that have my foot in them on purpose (I hold my leg up, and it appears at the bottom, like a puppet. It's a series of pictures chronicalling the "Travelling Foot").
Sometimes you shouldn't be serious about taking pictures.
-no broken link
You failed to read the last article "How to Break The Rules" which gives hints as to why and how to go against the standard guildlines.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
I'm not a professional nor even a good amateur photographer. However, using some common sense I've found that I can consistently come up with some excellent shots that are comparable to my hard core photography-obsessed friends.
#1. Its digital. Take a ton of shots. Take shots you don't think will turn out; take lots of the obvious shots. Shoot your camera with reckless abandon. It costs you ~nothing~. This technique was validated by a professional photographer friend later on...he claimed that at professional shoots you sometimes have a ratio of 10:1 or 100:1 of good vs bad shots, even with an optimum setup and years of experience on his side.
#2. Know the limitations of your camera. If you don't have an big zoom lense, don't expect long distance shots to turn out. Digital zoom is pretty useless. Most digital cameras have a good short-to-middle distance focal length. Anything beyond that and you're pushing beyond your camera's limits.
#3. Next best investment you can make to getting a good camera = tripod. Extend the exposures to get more clear pictures in low-light conditions, or dark coloured subject matter. Lots of shots I took at the time looked good in the LCD screen, but later turned out to be slightly blurred.
#4. Avoid use of the flash. Its a 'brute force' attempt to get good lighting. Work with your ISO setting and exposure levels first. (remember your tripod!). If you don't know about ISOs or exposure, who cares, just take the same pic 3-4 times with different levels...you learn.
5. Be brutal about your pics. Take 200, delete 190. Don't be the guy with the unending home movies... only keep and show the best of your best pics. You'll also get a good rep for taking good photos this way.
6. Learn the basic filters in Photoshop and touch up your digital pics if necessary. I prefer Photoshop sepia and B&W to the filters that come with the camera.
For hard core photographers this may all seem obvious, but for us beginners I found these 5 or 6 tips are what really made the difference for my pics. And they're easy to execute.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
I'm sure you're joking and trying to be funny, but unless you know a lot about photography and camera technology, reading the manual and learning what each of the functions the camera does will help move you beyond snapshots and into pictures that can be great.
For example, do you know the difference between spot, center weighted, and evaluative metering? Do you know which situations demand one or the other? Maybe you do, but maybe you don't, but if you read the manual chances are you'll have a better idea than if you just put everything on "green" and snap away.
Results will vary, of course, but I've taken some awesome low-light shots this way. For example, this one. This technique isn't limited to digital photography either (with the exception of the setting-the-ISO part).
1) Find 1939 article on "Leica photography composition tips"
2) Change "Leica" to "Digital"
3) ?????
4) Profit!
P. S. For best results, use Digital Kodak Verichrome Film and process in Digital-76 developer.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It takes longer than pure digital, it's more complicated, it requires detailed technical knowledge, there is exotic machinery that must be mastered, every tip in this article still works, and you end up with amazing digital images with the warmth and tone of film, much to the amazement and envy of professional photographers everywhere. What's not to like?
Slow burst speed is not a problem with the firmware or the lens/focus hardware, it is a simple I/O problem. Do the math here. If your digital camera could take 5 fast shots of 4 megapixels each, where would it put the data? It can't get it through that slow CF or SD interface that fast, so it has to buffer it somewhere. What the expensive cameras have that the cheap ones lack is RAM for the buffer so that it can store the shots while waiting to push them off to the storage device.
Lots of agreement to lots of previous posts...my $0.02:
Back in the day I shot lots of black and white with my Canon F1. The B&W file was cheap (bulk loaded) and I could develop it myself. The great thing about B&W is that it teaches you composition. No pretty flowers to distract the eye...you look for shadows and highlights, an emotion, some action.
I always always figured that 10% of my pics were good enough to print, the rest was junk.
My brother in law just got a fancy Canon Digital SLR (his mom came into some $$ and bought it for him). He's a nice guy, but doesn't know a THING about photography. I'm always explaining f-stops, and shutter speed, and lighting conditions, depth of field, etc. He needs to learn the basics...and at least in the digital realm, he can do it cheaply.
A good friend will help you move. A really good friend will help you move a body.
Here'a a digital photo course using the GIMP published under the Creative Commons license. You might find it interesting.
I think that one of the best things to come out of the widespread adoption of digital photography is the fact that it has become so much easier for people to (inadvertantly in most cases) document their lives.
What's valuable about this is that the quantity of pictures has increased - and this includes all the crappy candids that capture the moment, instead of the scene. And it's the moment that matters in candids, not necessarily the anal-retentiveness of making sure that the best shot possible is taken.
This being said, the better a photographer knows the fundamentals of photography and the ins and outs of the camera, the better the pictures will be, but when a person starts fiddling with the camera at the expense of the moment, the spontenaity simply goes away and that moment is lost.
*shrug* some of my most valuable pictures are ones taken on a crappy camera, that aren't totally in focus, and that are plain bad pictures. But to me, and to my friends that identify with the moment that was captured, and to my son who will grow up and learn something about me from the pictures that he would never see if the pictures (crappy though they be) didn't exist....none of that matters.