Your Digital Camera and You

So you've shelled out a few or too many dollars for that nice digital camera.  And not those overly-complicated SLR types, but the simple point and shoot type.  

But you are still having problems:  the castle at Magic Kingdom is blury.  The sun coming through the living room windows is super bright.  Your relatives all look like ghosts or they simply faded to black.  And there just doesn't seem to be any room for enough pics!  Not to worry, all these problems will be addressed.

First off, get to know your settings and menu.  This goes for everything.  If you don't check the menu out, you won't go far.  If you are afraid to delete photos, take your card out or download them onto your computer.

 

Here are some typical situations where people have trouble and how to solve them:

1) Not enough room for more pics:  Go in your menu.  Look for "resolution," where you can set the megapixels.  Even though your camera may go 5, even 10 megapixels, just set it to 3.  Three megapixels is equal to your typical 5"x7" print from 32mm film, the stuff you are used to.  Anything 5 megapixels or over is equivalent to what you get out of a medium format camera, which are used in professional photoshoots for posters and calendars.  

2) Night/low light shooting:  If your subject is close enough, then the flash is all you need.  But, if it's far away, ie, a float on a parade or the Magic Kingdom then your flash is useless.  

What you want to do is go to manual mode.  It will allow you to adjust the two most important parts of ANY camera, the aperture and the shutter speed.  Both control how much light gets into the camera, with a difference. 

 
Aperture is a portal that can be narrowed or widened.  The narrower it is, the more depth of focus, which means more objects will be in focus.  At night, you probably aren't worried about that, so you want to make sure that the aperture is wide open.  Here's the tricky part, the smaller the aperture number, the more open the aperture is.  So, dial this thing down as much as you can.

Next is shutter speed.  The shutter is a metal curtain located after the aperture.  How fast it opens/closes is the shutter speed.  You want this to be slow, ie, you want this to be a higher number, anywhere from 1/60th speed on up.

Ok, put your camera on a tripod, or make one.  My brother and I at Disney World improvised with our wallets and pocket change.  Then, put your camera on timed-mode.  Yes, that timed mode, the one your dad used at Thanksgiving, where he sprinted to get in the shot, even though he had 12 seconds to cover 5 feet (it's still fun).  If you don't, and try to take the pic by pushing the button, the camera will shake and the shot will be blurry.  But, with timed mode, you just leave it alone and let it do its thing.  

 

3) Subject is under/overexposed:  What this means is that what you are trying to take a picture of is either pitch black or super white.  The problem comes from something metering.  Metering is measuring how much light there is in a picture so the photographer or camera will know what are the perfect aperture and shutter speed settings.

Usually, a camera will meter everything that is in the view master and get an average.  So, when you take a pic of the boat with the bright sunshine behind it, it looks super dark, b/c the camera is adjusting for the light behind it.

What you do is get in your menu and switch to "spot metering."  You should see an icon on your LCD that has a dot inside a circle.  Instead of metering the entire area, it will focus on a small area, ie, your subject.  Now the camera will adjust for that spot alone.  In a bright-background situation, if your subject is close enough, put your flash on to compensate (the lightning bolt symbol).  Also, spot metering works very well in the inverse, where you have your bright subject w/ a dark background.     

Even in situations where the subject and background aren't highly contrasted, you may still have exposure problems.  This can be solved by taking the pics in the morning or late afternoon as opposed to noon.  Also, look in your menu for exposure value or "EV."  Sometimes this feature has its own button.  This automatically adjusts aperture and shutter speed, all you have to do is tell the camera you want the picture lighter or darker.  And don't just take one picture, take several at different exposure values.  When you get home, pick the ones you like.