You can always tell a professional photograph from a beginner’s snapshot…but you might not be able to put your finger on what’s different. Here’s a clue: Every amateurish photo includes lots of wasted space. Try this experiment with a nearby subjectlike your dog. Take a picture standing where you normally would (probably about five feet away and above Rover’s head).
Now take a second picture but first crouch down so that you see the world at dog level. Get close enough that your pet can almost lick your camera lens. (But don’t let him do it; dog slobber is very bad for optics.) Then snap the picture. Compare the two photos on your camera’s view screen, or better yet, on your computer screen. The first shot probably looks pretty boring compared to the second one.
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Ready to soup up your camera? Some accessories are necessities (tripods for nighttime shooters, for example) and some are just plain cool:
Mini tripods.
How many good photos have gone bad because of the shakes? On the other hand, it’s a pain to go everywhere with a big tripod. Mini tripods, a foot or less in length, can fit in a briefcase, backpack, or large purse. They sit on a table-top or some other surface to steady your camera, which is great for low light situations or when you want to set the timer and run around in front of the lens to be part of the picture. One of the most interesting entries in the mini tripod category is the $25 Gorilla Pod (www.joby.com), which has super flexible legs that can wrap around a fence post or tree limb, giving you many more situations where you can steady your shot. Average mini tripod prices range between $20 and $30.
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Shutter lag is the time it takes for the camera to calculate the correct focus and exposure before it captures the scene. In many camera models under $700 or so, this interval amounts to an infuriating half-second to one-second delay between your shutter press and the moment the picture is captured. Trouble is, that’s more than enough time for you to miss the precise instant your daughter blows out the candles on her birthday cake, your son’s first step, and that adorable expression on your iguana’s face. In photography, fractions of a second are a lifetime
Did you get my head spin?” says the break dancer. “Did you get it? Tell me you got that shot! Tell me you got it.” Every digital photographer has a collection of these missed shots, thanks to shutter lag.
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When you press the shutter button on a typical digital camera, the image begins a long tour through the camera’s guts. First, the lens projects the image onto an electronic sensora CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) or CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor). Second, the sensor dumps the image temporarily into the camera’s built-in memory (a memory buffer). Finally, the camera’s circuitry feeds the image from its memory buffer onto the memory card.
You may be wondering about that second step. Why don’t digital cameras record the image directly to the memory card?
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A tripod has two parts: the legs and the pan head. The camera attaches to the pan head, and the legs support the head.
You can buy a tripod with any of three pan head types. Friction heads are the simplest, least expensive, and most popular with still photographers. Fluid heads are desirable if you’ll also be using your tripod for a camcorder, as they smooth out panning and tilting. They’re more expensive than friction heads, but are well worth the money if you’re after a professional look to your footage. Finally, geared heads are big, heavy, expensive, and difficult to use.
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Most digital camera owners don’t see the need for external flashes, filters, tripods, and other fancy attachments. But if you have a hardcore film photography background, you probably can’t imagine life without your beloved accessories. In general, digital cameras that look like full-size, traditional film cameras can accept all the traditional attachments. Most tiny, sliding-cover, subcompact pocket cameras can’t.
Filters and accessory lenses often mean fitting your camera with a tubular lens adapter (Figure below). Usually the smaller the adapter and the finer the threads, the more patience you’ll need. Nothing is more frustrating than stripping the threads on your camera body because you couldn’t screw in the adapter ring properly.
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Cheapo digital cameras are often called point-and-shoot models with good reason: You point, you shoot.
Sometimes these cameras let you pick from a few pre-programmed settings like Night Snapshot or Kids & Pets, but for the most part your camera is doing all the thinking for you. More expensive cameras, on the other hand, let you take your camera off autopilot.
If you’re a first-time buyer, you may think a point-and-shoot is a safe starting point. If you’re looking for a camera that you can grow with as your photo skills increase, manual controls are worth paying for. On the other hand, you may have chosen your digital camera for its gorgeous flip screen or powerful zoom lens, but never use the manual modes that these models often include.
The following are the most popular manual features.
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Early digital cameras made a splash with their sophisticated new electronics, but their lenses were hardly state of the art. If you’ve ever tried reading fine print through a cheap magnifying glass, you have some idea of how the world looks though bad opticslousy.
These days, the scene is much sharper. Sony, Olympus, Canon, Leica, and Nikon all take pride in the lenses for their digital cameras, and they have solid reputations for great glass as a result. (Other camera makers often buy their lenses from Olympus, Canon, and Nikon.)
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In digital camera ads (or even on the camera itself) you see announcements like: “3X/10X ZOOM!” The number before the slash tells you how many times the camera’s lens can magnify a distant image, exactly like binoculars and telescopes. That measurement is called optical zoom.
Then there’s the number after the slashthe digital zoom. Camera boxes often announce digital zoom stats in big, gaudy type, as though that’s all their customers care about. Well, those are the same kind of people who buy into the notion that a higher megahertz rating always gets them a faster computer.
Truth is, digital zoom is nothing to write home about. When a camera’s digital zoom kicks in, the camera’s merely spreading out the individual pixels, in effect enlarging the picture. The image gets bigger, but the picture’s quality deteriorates. In most cases, you’re best off avoiding digital zoom altogether.
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Tip: If you’re used to traditional photography, you may need some help converting digicam optical zoom units (3X, 4X, and so on) into standard focal ranges. It breaks down like this: A typical 3X zoom goes from 6.5mm (wide angle) to 19.5mm (telephoto). That would be about the same as a 38mm to 105mm zoom lens on a 35mm film camera.
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Compared to other 21st century electronic devices, digital cameras are near the top of their game. They’re not like those cell phones that still drop calls, or wireless palmtops with their slow Internet connections. Digital cameras are reliable, high quality, and rewarding in almost every way.
Except for battery life.
Thanks to that LCD screen on the back, digital cameras go through batteries like Kleenex. The battery is likely to be the one limiting factor to your photo shoots. When the juice is gone, your session is over. Here’s a guide to the various battery types for digital cameras:
Proprietary, built-in rechargeable. Many smaller cameras come with a “brick” battery: a dark gray, lithium-ion rechargeable battery, as shown at top Figure. These subcompact cameras are simply too small to accommodate AA-style batteries.
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