Photography Courses - Students, Do You Need Some Tips?

Calling all photography students!

Getting the most from your digital camera has as much to do with how you are taking pictures as it does with working through all that camera's features. However, understanding those features can definitely help you take better pictures.

You certainly don't need a camera with maximum megapixels in order to get a decent shot. In fact, you might as well ignore megapixels altogether and get your head around some far more important fundamentals.

Using these mean there's much more you can do with a point and shoot camera than simply sticking with Auto mode. In the rest of this article we'll look at some in detail, so you can get the most from your digital camera and take the guesswork out of your next photography courses assignment.

ISO

ASA, or more commonly known these days as ISO settings are a way for your camera to measure its sensitivity to light. This setting can be adjusted on even the most basic digital cameras. Many digital images are spoilt by 'noise', which are imperfections often found in pictures taken in low-light, If that's happening to you, switch off the default Auto setting and try a different ISO speed; something like 200-400 and upwards if your camera allows. Bump this up even more if you're trying to capture an indoor event, or shoot in places where using flash isn't allowed.

White Balance

If your images look lacklustre, white balance is a feature you should investigate. It enables your camera to compensate for the colour of the light surrounding it, so you get images with truer colour reproduction. By default, white balance is an automatic setting. However, if there's no white present or another colour dominates the shot, it can result in a poor quality image.

Try experimenting by manually setting the white balance, or choosing one of the custom settings such as sunlight or cloudy if your camera has them. This will get you a more authentic picture with more accurate colour content.

Exposure Value Compensation

Many photography courses students often overlook the EV compensation feature on a camera. This feature enables you to adjust automatic settings for exposing the image you're shooting, opening up a whole new aspect of picture-taking. The 'brain' inside your camera can often use the wrong exposure value (EV) needed to get an accurate picture. Using EV compensation can override that EV compensation and it can look more complicated than it is because there are usually figures involved on the camera menu, generally between -2.0 EV to +2.0 EV. You can adjust this from plus to minus, usually in 0.5 EV increments. You'll find tweaking into the positive side will provide useful adjustment for things like very bright, reflective areas and images with large chunks of sky. Moving EV compensation towards the negative can help out with low reflective scenes, such as dense forest, as well as providing a boost for targets under bright lights.

Adjusting Aperture

Aperture is the opening in a lens that's created when you snap a shot. The larger the aperture opening, ie F1.8, the greater the amount of light allowed onto the sensor. The size of the aperture also affects the image depth. A small aperture, ie F32, will focus far into the distance, while a large aperture will shift the focus to closer objects. Simple digital cameras tend to adjust aperture automatically, but some will enable you to tweak it.

Some better Digital Camera's offer aperture priority and shutter priority settings. Both enable users to employ semi-automatic controls. The former enables the manual setting of aperture with the camera then controlling shutter speed. This means more control over depth of field. The latter enables the selection of shutter speed while the camera figures out the aperture setting, making it useful for images of moving objects.