Digital Camera Master

Now that you know what your camera’s various exposure modes are for, you can think about using them when you encounter unique photographic situations. Every situation is a little bit different, but here are a few general guidelines that can get you started.

A. Portrait Photography
Taking pictures of people can be fun but intimidating. It’s hard to get a natural pose from people when they know they are being photographed. The best way to capture good portraits is to work with your subjects so they are a little more at ease. If you’re trying to capture spontaneous, candid moments, then back off and try to blend in with the background. If you’re trying to capture a fairly formal-looking portrait, you have a little more work cut out for you. It’s up to you as the photographer to put your subjects at ease. Talk to your subjects and get them to respond. If you can get them to loosen up, they’ll exhibit more natural responses and look better on film. Take pictures periodically as you pose your subjects to get them used to the shutter going off, even if it isn’t a picture you intend to keep.

I should mention that digital cameras have a cool advantage for portraiture that SLRs don’t: the LCD display lets you put your subject more at ease. Try framing your picture using the LCD display, keeping the camera some distance away from your face. That leaves you free to interact with your subject without having an intimidating camera obscuring your head.

B. Action Photography
Action photography is often considered the most exciting kind of photography, but it’s also the most demanding for both your technique and your equipment. As in all kinds of photography, you can no doubt take some great pictures with anything from a wide-angle lens all the way up to the photographic equivalent of the Hubble telescope. And wide-angle lenses do, in fact,have a role in action photography. But the essence of many action shots is a highly magnified immediacy—something you can only get with the telephoto lens.

The shutter priority setting on your digital camera was born for action photography. To freeze action, you’ll need to use a fairly fast shutter speed. Luckily, this higher shutter speed works to your advantage by opening up the aperture and diminishing the depth of field; this focuses the viewer’s attention specifically on your subject. On the downside, of course, focusing is more critical since the depth of field is more shallow.

In general, I recommend that you use the fastest shutter speed available to capture action. On the other hand, you can use a technique called panning to capture the subject in good, sharp focus and keep the background as a motion blur. Panning is convenient both when you want to make a somewhat artistic statement about the subject’s motion and when you know the camera can’t muster up a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the motion the ordinary way.

Panning involves some effort on your part. To create a good pan, you need to twist your body in sync with the motion of the subject as you press the shutter release. Here’s how:

1. Position yourself where you can twist your body to follow the motion of the moving subject without having the camera’s line of sight blocked by something else.

2. Set the camera’s shutter speed for about 1/60. Feel free to experiment with this, but if you set the shutter speed too slow, you can’t capture the subject effectively—it blurs. And if the shutter is too fast, you won’t get the pretty blur in the background.

3. Twist your body with the motion of the subject and track it through the camera’s viewfinder or on the LCD display. Press the shutter release and continue tracking the subject until after you hear the shutter close again. Just like in baseball or golf, ensure that you follow through the motion even after the shutter releases. That way, you don’t stop panning in the middle of the exposure. You may need to practice this a few times to get the shot right, but electronic film is free.

The farther away the background is, the less motion blur effect you’ll get. For best results, get close to the object and its background. If the background is too far away, the blur will be minimal and it’ll just look out of focus.

C. Nature and Landscapes
Unlike action photography and portraiture that rely on telephoto lenses to compress the action into an intimate experience, landscapes typically work best with wide-angle lenses that allow you to include huge, expansive swaths of land, air, and sea in a single frame. Zoom out for best results most of the time, and adjust the camera’s exposure in aperture priority mode (if possible) to get deep or shallow depth of field, depending upon what works best for the picture in question.

Photographing a Waterfall or Running Stream
The two ways to capture running water in a photograph are with a fast, freeze-framing shot or with a longer exposure that blurs the water into a continuous stream effect. Both effects can look good, but I have a fondness for the latter. The effect looks great, and it’s easy to do: you simply need to take a long exposure of the water. Here’s how:

1. You need to ensure that your camera will give you a long exposure, on the order of a half second. You can get this by shooting in automatic mode in the early morning or late afternoon, or using a manual mode if your camera allows.

2. Set your camera on a tripod (the long exposure requires a steady support).

3. Compose the image and take the shot.

If you can’t get your camera to use a setting that’s slow enough to blur the shot, try adding a neutral density (ND) filter to the front of your lens. ND filters reduce the light entering the lens without affecting the color; they’re handy for creative photography when you can’t wait for the sun to go down.

Shooting Wildlife
Wildlife photography is like action photography; it typically takes a telephoto lens, fast shutter speed, and a tripod. Try to fill the frame as much as possible.