Digital Focus: Avoid Common Boo-Boos
Frame photos properly, work with centering features.Dave Johnson
Avoiding Photographic Blunders
The holidays are a special time for me. It's when my mom sends me lots of pictures of decapitated siblings. Actually, I'm pretty sure that my sister is alive and well, but since my mom has a tendency to shoot first, frame later, heads are optional in many photos. Likewise, that action shot of my cousin Kyle catching a football would look great--except that Kyle and the aforementioned ball were long gone by the time my mom snapped the photo. The snowy lawn looks great, though.
Let's put an end to those types of photographic boo-boos once and for all. Here are a few tips you can use to tame your digital camera and take better pictures today, before another poor soul loses her head thanks to your shutter finger.
Keep an Eye on the Preview
Your digital camera has two viewfinders--an optical finder and an LCD display. Remember that the optical viewfinder doesn't show you exactly what the lens sees. In photo parlance, it's not a "through the lens" image. So under some circumstances (especially when you're close to your subject), the camera will take a picture that's slightly different from what shows in the optical viewfinder. And that can result in beheadings or other goofy pictures.
The solution? Use the digital display to frame your shot before you shoot, or double-check your photo after you take it. That's the beauty of digital cameras: You can check your work and take the shot over if necessary. But if you absolutely, positively have to get it right the first time, be sure to watch the digital display.
Anticipate the Delay
Digital cameras are unique (and sometimes annoying) in that there can be a lag between when you snap the shutter and when the picture is actually taken. That's because the camera does all sorts of things when you press the button, from focusing to setting exposure and white balance. That's not a big problem if you're taking portraits or stills, but shutter lag can drive an action photographer insane.
Get used to the delay and try to anticipate it, pressing the shutter sooner than you really want the exposure to occur. You can also try panning the camera, which means turning your body to keep the subject in the viewfinder before, during, and after the exposure.
Focus on the Prize
Have a razor-sharp focus on the wrong subject? That can happen if you're trying to take a picture of something that's not in the center of the picture. Your digital camera will generally lock onto whatever is dead center in the frame--unless you have a camera like the Nikon CoolPix 995, which lets you set up focus zones elsewhere in the picture.
The solution is to aim the camera at the real subject and put a little pressure on the shutter button to lock in the focus. Then re-frame your picture, being careful to leave enough pressure on the shutter release to keep the focus locked without actually taking the picture. When it's properly framed, press all the way down on the shutter.
Bracket Your Shots
Don't trust a one-in-a-million shot to your camera's automatic exposure judgment. On vacation in Paris, suppose that you see a beautiful shot of a French café reflecting poetically on the Seine. Take the picture, but then take it once or twice more, using the exposure compensation control to underexpose and overexpose the shot slightly. When you get home, find the picture you like best, and discard the rest.
If the lighting is dicey, or if I'm trying to do something really creative like capture a silhouette near sunset, I might take as many as six pictures, each with a somewhat different exposure.
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Dave's Favorites: Pictorico Ink Jet Paper
In my experience, you tend to get the best results from ink jet printers when you use the premium paper branded by the printer's manufacturer. Epson paper tends to work best with Epson printers, and Canon printers excel when fed Canon paper. I'm not part of a conspiracy to get you to buy the most-expensive paper; it's just that papers, inks, and printers from the same company are typically engineered to work best together.
I've put that theory to the test, feeding literally hundreds of dollars of paper through a number of printers over the last few years. I almost always find that the manufacturer's own premium paper wins.
That's why I was surprised to find a brand of paper that worked as well or better than Epson paper in my trusty Epson Photo Stylus 1270. I'm talking about Pictorico ink jet paper, available from AGA Chemicals.
Pictorico paper is based on a unique coating of ultra-fine ceramic particles. From an engineering perspective, that means the ink doesn't absorb very deeply into the paper. Ink stays closer to the surface, dries quickly, and doesn't have time to bleed. The paper itself has great characteristics for viewing; it doesn't scatter the light as much as other papers, so images appear sharper.
There are almost a dozen kinds of Pictorico paper available, from photo glossy to canvas, polysik fabric, and card stock. My favorites: the textured papers like canvas and fabric, which can lend a whole new dimension to printed pictures. I highly encourage you to try some Pictorico paper, available at most computer and photography shops.
Q&A: How Slow Is Too Slow?
I sometimes take blurry pictures, and I suspect it's because the shutter speed is too slow and I shake the camera during exposure. What shutter speed is safe to hand-hold a camera?
-- Jackie Duvall, San Francisco, California
It really depends upon the focal length of the lens you're using--longer lenses require more stability than shorter ones. The rule of thumb in traditional photography is that your slowest hand-holdable shutter speed is 1 divided by the focal length, so a 50mm lens should be shot at about 1/60 second or faster. A 500mm lens, on the other hand, will give you the jitters unless you expose it at 1/500 second or faster--it's not easy to hand hold a telephoto lens and get decent results.
Step up to digital photography. Your digital camera's real focal length is shorter than its 35mm equivalent, so you're shooting at perhaps 20mm instead of 50mm. The rule of thumb still works, but the net effect is that you can hand-hold a digital camera at slower shutter speeds. If you're shooting in very dim light and your shutter speed is a quarter-second or more, though, consider using a tripod.
Send your questions to question@bydavejohnson.com, and please be sure to let me know where you're from.
Hot Pic of the Week
Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $10 and $100.
A gentle reminder, folks: We're disqualifying some really wonderful pictures every week because the submissions aren't following the rules. Be sure to include everything we ask for in the e-mail message, including a description of your picture and your complete contact information, or your entry is wasted!
Here's how to enter:
Send us your photograph in JPG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels, to hotpic@pcworld.com. Entries at higher resolutions will be disqualified immediately. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo, along with a short description of the photo and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering please read the full description of the contest rules and regs.
This Week's Hot Pic:
Sunset Over Street, by Jason Ryan, Waukesha, Wisconsin
Jason's sunset photo caught my eye because of the dramatic lines of color in the sky. It also made me think of a project that's easy to try with a digital camera but can be a real nightmare with a film camera.
Try this: The next time you see a great sunset like this, set your camera on a tripod and take the picture twice. First, expose it for the sky (as Jason did here); then take the same shot again, exposing the picture to capture the detail in the foreground. Then digitally combine them in an image editor, eliminating the near-silhouette effect you can see here. I'll walk you through this kind of special effect in a future feature.
December's Hot Pic of the Month:
Each month we choose one of our weekly winners to be the Hot Pic of the Month. This month it was a very close call, but we chose the snow-covered landscape of Sister, taken by William Bruce Bach, from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. William has won a PC World CD-carrying case.
