“Let me see, let me see,” says my fiance. I just took her picture in front of the beautiful Getty Villa garden. As she sets the digital camera to “play” back the shot I just took, I stand there waiting to move on to take the next picture. But she then looks up at me. “Why did you take it like that?” she says. Apparently, I am not a natural at capturing the best of her or the beautiful background. Where did I go wrong? Don’t you sometimes have the same problem when trying to capture the moment? Well, hopefully the next 7 tips will help you make picture perfect.
Picture Perfect!
Light at Night
From fireworks to Disney light and water shows that happen at night, you probably set your ISO too high which results in a loss of color. Slow down the shutter speed to 1/8 of a second, set the aperture to 4 or 5.6 and your ISO to 200. Since your camera can’t focus in the dark, turn on manual focus and set it to infinity. This will help you capture the color you see at night with your camera. What if the background is too bright?
From Sand to Snow
Cameras with the now modern and up to date technology automatically adjusts for the brightness of sand or snow which makes it look grayish and your face darker than normal. To fix this, you should point your camera toward the sky and press the capture button down halfway. Now that the camera has adjusted for the sky’s brightness, you point the camera back at your partner and capture a beautiful picture in the sand or snow. So the light capture is right, so what about trying to get the Statue of Liberty in the background?
In Front of Large Objects
I get in trouble for making my fiance look like an ant in front of a landmark. What you can do is both of you stand farther away from the large object to take the picture. Now you say that either your partner or the landmark will be out of focus? The solution to that is set your camera’s aperture higher to something like 8 and both of them will be clearer. So the light and large objects are taken care of, now onto the reflection from glass or windows.
Behind Glass
Flashback! No, not the kind in a movie. It’s the kind where you blind yourself when taking a picture in front of a glass window or barrier. You just want to take a picture of what’s behind but all you get is the flash in your eye and a bright light like your life is about to end or something. The cure to that is to take the picture at the angle where you can still see the things behind the glass and the flash will reflect at an angle away from you and the camera. Light, background, large objects, glass, so what about the dark concert hall?
Concerts
No flash please! Doesn’t that get annoying? You paid so much money and all you can do is take a dark picture of the concert hall that looked like you were hiding in a cave with a bunch of people. To fix this, set a high ISO setting, use the rail or chair in front of you to stabilize and take the picture. Better yet, use the 5 sec timer function to snap the shot so you even eliminate the shake from your finger hitting the button. And now you have a “Figaro” perfect picture! Ah, the concert is not as romantic as the sun upon the horizon, but the faces are always so dark.
Dawn and Dusk
Back lit and dark faces is the usual result when trying to capture that romantic sun rise or sunset. So you use a flash and your partner’s face is white as a ghost. Just set your flash exposure compensation to -1 and the light from the flash will be lighter. Ok, now on to the games!
Sports
Fuzzy athletes or just got it too late! Things are just happening too fast at a sports event and your pictures come out all in a haze. There’s two ways to capture that potential historical sports moment. Set your shutter speed to be longer, around 1/8 of a second, and then pan your arms and hips to the speed of the movement while you take the picture. This will give you sharper shots of what you are taking and a nice blurred effect background. The other way is to position yourself where the action is coming towards you and take the picture with the highest shutter speed.
Tada!
You are now equipped to capture a picture perfect moment. Well, maybe not perfect but at least better. Anyways, I hope these tips weren’t too technical. I learned from doing the research, but if you have some ideas feel free to leave a comment, I’d love to learn more.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
There are a lot of good tips on here; however, it would help to be clarified on such terms like ISO or aperture.
Still though, I have learned a lot of good things from this article and would be glad to try it on my own camera.
@Wesley. ISO is the setting for film speed on your camera, even if your camera doesn’t use film. Pretty much it is how long the “film” needs to be exposed to the light of the picture you are capturing. Basically you set your ISO lower (100 to 200) in outside sunny conditions b/c there is plenty of light and if it is dark you set the ISO higher (over 200 to 400) b/c there is not enough light. You usually can set the ISO on the camera menu buttons with the center button surrounded by the arrow buttons.
Aperture also has to do with how much light can reach the “film”. It is actually the size of the hole in the lens that controls how much light passes through to be captured in the image. The higher the number the smaller the aperture (or hole) and vice versa. So again if there is a lot of light to capture then you set a higher aperture on your camera (and so forth).
I’ll most likely to a follow up post to this article to clarify the technical terms.