Tips & Tricks to Understand Digital SLR Photography
Both professional and amateur photographers -- those who are old enough -- remember the days when taking pictures meant carrying around dozens of film canisters, taking care to handle and store them properly and having them developed, often to find that they hadn't properly exposed the photos or used the correct film speed. The most dramatic difference between film and digital photography is the ease of control a digital camera offers the photographer. However, that control comes with a learning curve.
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Understanding Formats
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Photographers need to understand the differences between the image formats used by their cameras and their advantages. Handheld digital cameras almost always shoot JPEG images, but professional and semi-professional cameras offer a second option, usually the RAW or TIFF format. The camera processes JPEG images more extensively, compressing them and modifying them according to a set of parameters such as white balance, contrast and sharpness. This means that the camera discards more image data, but it also means that the resulting JPEG file size is much smaller and the image is saved to the memory card much faster. A memory card can store fewer RAW or TIFF files than JPEG files, but RAW and TIFF formats allow more precise control in editing.
Understanding Shooting Modes
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Almost all digital cameras have more than one shooting mode. Some offer modes which set the exposure for a specific context, such as night mode, which uses a wide lens aperture for shooting in dark conditions, and sports mode, which uses a fast shutter speed to freeze the action in a fast-moving scene. Automatic mode allows the camera to evaluate the scene and set the exposure. Aperture-priority mode sets the shutter speed automatically, while allowing the photographer to set the lens aperture, which affects depth of field and how much light can reach the sensor. Shutter-priority mode sets the aperture automatically, while allowing the photographer to set the shutter speed, which affects images sharpness. Manual mode allows the photographer to control all exposure settings.
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Understanding Metering
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Digital cameras meter automatically, which means that they evaluate the available light in a scene and suggest exposure settings based on the evaluation. The first step toward understanding and controlling exposure is learning to read the light meter on a camera. Photographers select and fine-tune their exposures according to the meter's indications. Many cameras give the photographer a choice between evaluative-metering -- which meters based on an average of the light available in all parts of the scene -- and spot-metering -- which allows the photographer to meter for a specific area of the photo.
Understanding ISO
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A digital camera's ISO setting controls the light sensitivity of the image sensor. ISO is the digital counterpart to film speed, which is the measure of the light sensitivity of a type of film. A high ISO setting increases the camera's light sensitivity, which makes it possible to capture sharp images in low lighting. Most cameras offer four or five ISO settings ranging from ISO 100 to ISO 1600. The disadvantage of a higher setting is that the images captured have more of a grainy quality than images with a lower setting.
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- Photo Credit digital camera age image by Steve Brase from Fotolia.com
