Technique - Composition

The most common piece of composition advice is the Rule of Thirds. This is the idea that if you split your picture into thirds vertically and horizontally, the ideal location for your subjects would be a third to the left or right, and the horizon should be lined up a third up or down.

STW Rule of Thirds by Lariffic.

This is universally accepted to be pedantic and trite. Oh, there's truth to it, yes, as you can see in the example. No doubt, using the rule of thirds will have you taking decent pictures, but as soon as you learn this rule, you will realize that it is overly simplistic, and that great photographs seldom adhere to such pithy guidelines.

What is useful about the rule of thirds is the idea that you should get your subject away from dead center. A camera's not a gun. You don't get better shots by lining up your target in the crosshairs. Keeping a subject away from center can convey things.

Runner 693 by tychay.

For example, the runner above is put off to the right, giving the feeling of movement, that she will be crossing from one side of the photo to the other. But from a rule of thirds perspective, this photo fails. The horizon's in the middle of the picture. But honestly, does that matter?

what you can also learn from the rule of thirds is to shoot pictures from unusual angles, and don't just line up the horizon. Get down, go up high, get creative with your angle and perspective.

The most basic piece of advice for decent pictures is to fill the frame, and don't leave a lot of dead space... unless that was your intent.

empty quarter1 17-6-05 by localsurfer.

Camera basics - zoom

Zoom lenses are relatively new to the consumer market. Most all point-and-shoots offer some zoom ability, and most everyone with SLR's have at least one zoom lens. Here are a few things to remember about zooms.

The more zoomed in, the more the image will blur from hand movement. So when you're using a big zoom, you may have to stabilize the camera. If you watch sports photographers, they often have a stand to hold up their zoom lenses.

When zoomed in, there's less light entering the camera, and you'll need to expose more. This often translates to shooting with a slower shutter speed or a wider aperture.

It's worthwhile to mention that there is a huge difference between digital zoom and optical zoom. On some digital cameras, they offer you the option of a digital zoom and/or an optical zoom. The optical zoom is just like a film camera's zoom. The digital zoom is a software technique to enlarge the image. You should never use digital zoom, because it magnifies but does not resolve!

If you have no idea what I just said, think of it this way. Digital zoom is the same as taking a picture, loading it onto your computer, then enlarging the image. There's no added detail. It's the same picture, just blown up. The optical zoom will be a different picture with greater detail.

Camera basics - types of cameras

There are many different kinds of cameras. The most ubiquitous is the point-and-shoot [PaS] camera: you point it at something and shoot. While PaS is convenient, it has its limitations. Before digital, one of the big limitations was parallax.

Parallax is when what you see through the viewfinder is not what you actually catch on film. That's because they're lined up differently, and usually it's close enough, but sometimes close doesn't count.


The SLR (single lens reflex) camera eliminated parallax by using a system of mirrors to make the viewfinder view go through the lens. Thus, SLR's are WYSIWYG. When you take a picture with an SLR, the mirror flips up and exposes the film. So, you cannot see the image while you expose the film.

Most digital cameras have LCD displays which show you a WYSIWYG real-time display. So, parallax is more academic than anything else. But just like an SLR, when you take the picture, the display cuts away, and you can't see the image while you're exposing the CCD.

SLR's are favored by professionals because they have modular systems for lenses, they are more solid constructions, they all have hotshoes for external flashes, and SLR's give the photographer complete control.

While things like camera phones and pocket cameras (like my Elph) are enticing, they are often made with inferior optics ["glass"], have poor quality CCDs, and because they are so small, are very prone to blur from hand movement. They've found a place, but will never replace conventional cameras, and certainly not SLR's.

Camera basics - megapixels

You can think of megapixels in the same way as negative size. In film, you can shoot with 35mm film, or 2.5 inch negatives like portrait photographers, or in the old days, guys like Ansel Adams used 5"x7" glass plate negatives. Nowadays, it's hard to find any film other than 35mm or APS (which is even smaller) in the stores. So, more megapixels roughly translates to a larger image.

As you might imagine, more megapixels is nice, but more megapixels do not equal better pictures. A horrible lens or a low quality CCD can both make for a terrible picture despite megapixels.

This is why professionals use SLR's, where it may not have as many megapixels, but the CCD is higher quality and the lenses are better.

Camera basics - flash

The purpose of a flash is to add light to a subject when the situation is too dark. Also, flash can be used to add additional light to "fill" out the picture, softening shadows and bringing out a subject.

Flashes have an effective distance. Beyond that, the flash is useless. It's be like trying to light up the Golden Gate Bridge with a desk lamp. So please turn off your flash when you're shooting at a distance.

Most cameras these days have built-in flashes. For the most part, these flashes are underpowered, and will actually detract from the quality of your photos. Whenever possible, it's always better to use an external flash. External flashes have more control, and also can be aimed and diffused, or remotely activated! This versatility lends itself to flash bounce. I'll talk about that in photo techniques.

Hotshoe by PenguinG4.

External flashes attach via a "hotshoe" which signals the shutter release to the external flash. Be careful about using external flashes with new cameras. Sometimes the voltages don't match, and you can damage your camera. Your best (but most expensive) bet is finding a flash that was designed to work with your camera.

Most flashes will require some cycle time to recharge, so pictures taken in rapid succession may not flash!

Camera basics - film

You might think that in this digital age, there's no need to talk about film, but the concept of film is valuable, and still applicable. Film varies by quality (duh) and by speed, called ISO (or ASA, the same thing). Film such as ISO 100 is very fine grain and very insensitive to light. Thus, it can be greatly enlarged without difficulty and can be used in very bright light.

"Faster" film such as ISO 800 has less fine grains, but it much more sensitive to light, so better in low light conditions. Typically, you have to get up to ISO's like 1600 before the graininess of fast film is really evident.

You can adjust ISO on most digital cameras, and the results are light sensitivity and graininess. I find that ISO 400 is a good balance between the extremes, but different speed films have their place.

The film quality itself is important too. Cheap film and cheap processing make for bad pictures. It's worthwhile to spend a little money for decent film and a photo processor that you trust (not the local supermarket...).

In digital cameras, this quality corresponds to the image sensor known as the CCD. A low quality CCD will give you low quality pictures. It's why, no matter what lens or how many megapixels, a cameraphone will never take as good pictures as my Nikon d70.

Camera basics - shutter speed

There isn't too much to understand about shutter speed. Speed is expressed as fractions of a second, so 60 = 1/60th of a second. Shutter speed moderates the amount of light allowed through the aperture. This can be used to limit light exposure, but can also be used to convey action.

If something is moving faster than the speed of the shutter, then it will be blurry because the film will remember all the time for which it's exposed. So, for example, if you were shooting a hummingbird at 1/20th of a second, the wings would be blurry, but if you shoot at 1/2500th of a second, the wings should be sharp.

Conversely, if you held the shutter open for hours pointed at the night sky, you could see the stars moving in the sky. That's the power of shutter speed control.

It's worth noting that anything slower than 1/60 will usually result in blurring from hand shake. To be safe, it's best to shoot all your shots slower than 1/60 with a tripod or with the camera stabilized against something.