essential photography tips

This means you can, technically, save money by opting for a smaller sensor, as you ll be able to buy less powerful lenses to achieve the kind of results you would otherwise only get with a longer, more expensive zoom.

Related to point 6 f/8 and be there if you have a lens with both f stop and focal measurements on the barrel, understanding how they relate to each other can help you take great spontaneous photos with a high degree of confidence.

In the image below we ve set our aperture to f/5.6, as indicated by the red line pointing to the 5.6 reading on the lower gauge. We ve then set the range on the yellow gauge to around 1.2 metres by positioning this at the top of the same line. We can now use the green scale to understand how far away from the camera our subjects need to be if they are to be accurately focused.By following the lines running from the two green entries for 5.6 on either side to their measurements on the yellow scale, we can see that so long as we re more than 1m away from our subjects they will be in focus (the green 5.6 on the left is linked to around 1m on the yellow scale, while the green 5.6 on the right is linked to the infinity symbol, which is like a number 8 on its side). Anything closer than that will be blurred.

This gives us a great deal of freedom to snap whatever we want without making any further adjustments, so long as it s no closer to us than 100cm. To create a more intimate effect, adjusting the distance ring so that 0.4 sat at the top of the red marker would mean that only those objects between around 36cm and 50cm would be kept in focus.Use zone focusing to understand which parts of your image will be in focus at any particular aperture setting.

If you re doing any kind of indoor photography, invest in a cheap pair of lights. Buy at least a pair, complete with tripod stands and reflectors to direct the light. Opt for continuous light rather than flash units, as they re cheaper, easy to use and great for beginners, as you don t have to take test shots to see how the shadows fall during setup.

Different colours and levels of light are measured using the Kelvin scale. For the best results, look for studio lights with a temperature of around 5,500K 6,000K to emulate bright daylight. Lights with a lower colour temperature often render a colour caste in your images that will have to be corrected in Photoshop or an alternative image editor.This professional studio bulb maintains a constant colour temperature of 5500K, as specified on the furthest end.

Minimise shadows in your studio lit work by investing in an inexpensive light box. Effectively a five sided cube with gauze sides and top, you position your lights so that they shine through the sides of the box, diffusing the light and softening the shadows. Light boxes usually ship with a felted back cloth that can be attached using Velcro to create an infinite field of view by obscuring the seams of the box.An inexpensive light box makes it easy to shoot with artificial light without casting strong shadows.

If you can t afford studio lights, even out harsh contrasts when shooting with natural light by positioning a large sheet of paper or card to reflect the incoming light onto the unlit side of your subject. If shooting people, ask them to hold the card themselves outside of the framed shot. Alternatively, invest in a set of reflectors. You can pick up a new, multi part set with white, silver and gold reflective surfaces for around ?12 on eBay.This shot would have benefitted from a reflective surface positioned to the left of the frame to illuminate the right hand side of our subject s face.

Using automatic settings to shoot into the sun will throw your subject into silhouette as the camera dials down the exposure to compensate for the bright background. Shooting people with the sun in front of them, meanwhile, solves the silhouette problem but introduces another one: squinting. Solve this by keeping their back to the sun and forcing the flash to fire (switch from it auto to on or forced ) to correct the exposure on your subjects faces without leaving them squinting.

The most aesthetically pleasing images are those in which the subjects are aligned with the one third power points in every frame. Position horizons one third up or down the height of the image, and people one third in from the left or right. Likewise, if you re snapping a frame filling head shot, position the eyes so they re one third down from the top of the frame.

Some cameras give you the option of displaying an overlaid grid on the rear LCD to help you line up your subjects along these lines. If yours does, go one step further and put key elements on the points where the horizontal and vertical lines intersect.Here we ve added short red ticks to the top and the bottom of this frame to show how the man warming his drum is positioned one third of the way in from the right of the frame, and the flames of the fire are one third of the way in from the left.

Half pressing the shutter release fixes the focus and exposure settings for the shot you re about to take. Pressing it all the way captures the frame.

Use this to your advantage by metering for particular conditions by putting your subject on one of your camera s focus positions and half pressing the shutter to lock its settings then, without releasing the button, recompose the framing to align your subjects on the one third power positions. This way you ll get perfect exposures every time, whatever the composition.

If you don t have a light meter, use your camera s auto mode to gauge the optimum settings, even if you don t want an immaculately exposed result. Examine the shot s settings and then switch to manual mode and replicate them before pushing individual elements shutter speed, sensitivity, aperture and so on to achieve the moody result you re after.Let your camera do the hard work: take a picture in auto mode and use its self selected settings as the basis for your manually dialled variables next time around.