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Bracket Exposures - your camera meter can be fooled by certain situations, like shooting into the light (as in the boat images above) or by dark subjects against light backgrounds. The answer is to bracket your exposures. This usually means taking one shot at the meter's recommended exposure, then one above and one below the recommended exposure. Try it at first with one stop over, and one stop below the reading, then repeat this in different situations. When you get the hang of what your camera's doing, you can just do one at the correct exposure, then one under or one over, depending on the situation. If you're shooting Jpegs, you should try half a stop each way. Shooting RAW you have more leeway for tweaking the exposure later on in processing. This kind of practice will make judging a scene easier and more intuitive, so that you'll know what adjustments are needed. See also Digital Blending
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| | Shoot in RAW mode - I often come across digital photographers who shoot all their images in Jpeg. This makes it easy to process the images, sure, but also means that you're throwing away valuable image quality every time you take a shot. Raw files are like a digital negative. You can work on them without impairing quality much, whereas working on a Jpeg, you lose quality with each adjustment. Always shoot Raw, then convert to Jpeg back home if you want, but keep the Raw file intact. As your processing skills improve over the years, you'll be able to go back to the Raw file and create much better images from it, and print those images larger than you would a Jpeg, without much quality loss. Jpeg's compress the image by throwing away information.
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| | Take fewer photographs- some digital photographers seem to take far too many pictures 'it doesn't cost anything' they say. What it does is make you 'snap-happy'.
Spend more time concentrating on one shot is my advice. Treat your composition as a painter would, look around every part of the frame. Do you really want that distracting branch in the corner? Move your tripod, or move the branch if it's loose (much quicker than doing it later on computer). Is this image expressing what you see in the best possible way? Would a lower/higher viewpoint be better? Would it work better with a slower shutter speed or a wider aperture? Is the foreground really interesting enough? These are the sort of questions I ask myself while I'm framing up my subject. Then once you've got a great composition, sure, take several at different exposures to make sure it's in the bag, but don't snap away without thinking.
Taking snaps is like going fishing for tiddlers - wouldn't you rather catch a big fish?
If I come home with one good image from a photoshoot I'm happy |
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