10 Tips For Digital Photography

By: Christina Hale

Break Studios Contributing Writer

These are 10 tips for digital photography to ensure that you always get your perfect shot. Nothing is worse than uploading your pictures onto your computer and realizing that they are not as perfect as they seemed on your camera’s preview screen.

  1. The most important digital photography tip of any kind that you need to master is, knowing your camera. Take the time to read your manual or do online research on how to properly work your camera. Most digital cameras come with so many options we don’t even know half of what our cameras are actually capable of. You need to know your camera to always achieve the best pictures.
  2. Only press the “shutter” button in halfway until the preview screen shows camera has fully focused. If you often get blurry pictures on your digital camera that is because you are not allowing your camera to fully focus before taking the picture.  By pressing the “shutter” button in only halfway you are allowing the camera to fully focus before trying to take a picture.
  3. Be aware of where your hands and the camera strap are at all times. It is always such a shame when you realize that part of your picture is showing one of your fingers or the camera strap. One good way to ensure that neither gets into the picture is to wrap the camera strap around your fingers.
  4. Use the camera’s zoom ability to take a picture of what you really want. It can be very hard to remove unwanted distractions in a picture after it has already been taken, so just avoid them as much as possible when taking pictures. Know exactly what you want in your picture and zoom in so that you are focusing on that and not all of other outside things like signs, poles and strangers.
  5. Always be aware of how much memory you have available. Nothing is worse in digital photography then realizing at the perfect picture moment that your camera’s memory is full. There are two ways that you can avoid this; one way is to always delete everything off your memory card as soon as you upload it onto your computer, the other way is to purchase an extremely large memory card. Of course whenever you upload images you always want to save them to a secure website or CD so that if your computer crashes you still have your images stored safely.
  6. Consider purchasing a tripod for your camera to help you get those perfect still shots. Some people have a hard time holding their hands steady and that can ruin some photographs that would otherwise be perfect. A tripod could also help to get a better photograph if the wind is blowing.
  7. An important digital photography tip is to use fill flash when taking portraits. If you use a fill flash on your camera when you are taking portraits then it will help to avoid the common shading that ruins portrait pictures in imperfect lighting.
  8. The secret tip on how to get the perfect movement shot is to use the continuous shot option on your digital camera. If you are one who mostly only takes pictures for your family you will probably use this more often then you could imagine.
  9. The most important digital photography tip is not to be afraid. While you may not be a professional photographer you can still play around and take shots of everything around you! You never know when you may get that perfect scenic shot that takes your breath away.
  10. You should never be afraid to change your digital photography orientation when taking different shots. One shot may be best if you take it in landscape while other may look best if you take it in portrait. It is important to look at the differences; it can really make a world of difference in the photos. If you keep your camera landscape and try to get your friends in front of a national monument then your friends will be quite small and you will have a lot of excess that you don’t want. When in doubt, try the picture in both orientations.
Posted on: Apr. 01, 2010