Digital Photography Basics

Undoubtedly, the best thing about digital photography is the fact that photographs can be easily taken, stored, printed, transferred, and even modified, without any hassle. Owing to advantages like these, digital photography has become the first choice of budding photographers - with only a few people still adhering to conventional film photography.

Basics of Digital Photography

In the beginner's guide to photography, its basics can be broadly categorized into three parts:

• Buying a digital camera.
• Understanding how to take pictures.
• Touching up digital photographs.

Once you understand these attributes, you are ready to enter this creative field - and things will follow.

Buying a Digital Camera
You need to take a few things into consideration when choosing a digital camera, the most important being the battery life. Make sure you buy a camera with a decent battery life. Remember that battery life and price are not related. Many cameras with good battery life come at a relatively low price. The clarity of the image is determined by the megapixels of the digital camera. Normally, cameras range from 2 to 8 megapixels. If you are pursuing photography as a hobby, any camera up to 5 megapixels is ideal for you but if you want to pursue a career in photography, we recommend you to choose a camera of more than 5 megapixels.

Optical zoom physically moves the camera lens, whereas digital zoom magnifies the image using a microchip. Optical zoom is better than its digital counterpart. Any camera with 3x optical zoom is the ideal choice. Exposure settings, such as, shutter speed and lens opening, form an important aspect of your digital camera. A camera with good exposure control will even help you to take clear pictures of moving objects. It would be ideal to buy a digital camera with user-friendly controls. Important components, such as, macro mode, resolution and flash should be easy to use. Using the camera for some time will help you to get used to its operations and make photography much easier for you.

How to Take Pictures Using a Digital Camera
After you have armed yourself with a good digital camera, the next step is to learn it's functions and understand how to take good pictures. Understand your camera by going through the manual properly. Learn the basics, such as, how to use different camera modes and when to use flash. The decision to use flash depends on the situation. In some situations using flash indoors can mar the skin color, while in some situations you might need to use flash even outdoors. Macro mode in your digital camera is ideal to take closeup pictures of objects.

When you close in on the object with your camera, ensure that you have focused properly on the object before you click. A slight shake can ruin your image and therefore it is important to hold the camera at a level. Use the tripod when necessary, it is one of the most important tools among your photography equipment. The ISO settings of the camera stabilizes its sensitivity to light. Low ISO settings facilitate longer shutter speed, while high ISO settings facilitate faster shutter speeds. Therefore use low ISO settings when taking a picture of a still object and high ISO settings when taking pictures of moving objects. These are the basic techniques which will help you to make the most of your hobby.

Touch Up
At times, things such as red-eye effect, tend to spoil your photographs. In such cases, you can use your touch up skills to fix these problems. Use image editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop, to effectively remove red-eye or sharpen the image. Using these editing tools, you can also add blurring effects or experiment with colors. You can also rotate, crop or resize the image with this software, before taking the final print or storing the final copy of the image.

There are no shortcuts to success - and you need to understand the basics of digital photography to make a mark in this field. If you just take the camera and start clicking pictures without understanding these basics, it will obviously show on the pictures. Photography is a rewarding hobby and can pay rich dividends, but only when taken seriously.