Digital Lifestyles Reference Guide

Aug 27, 2004

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While there are plenty of ways to tweak your photos in software, using more of the features in your digital camera will result in better pictures without spending hours editing.

Polarize Your Lens

One of the biggest frustrations in taking outdoor images is coming home with a series of otherwise great shots that look slightly faded. Most digital camera manufacturers offer a polarizing filter for your camera lens to reduce glare and eliminate unwanted reflections. If you have a compact point-and-shoot camera, like the Canon Digital Elph series or Casio's Exlim, you might be out of luck in finding a filter for your lens. You can still get richer color, cut down on reflections and improve your photos with almost the same benefit of a filter by holding a pair of sunglasses in front of the lens. Make sure the glasses are as close to the lens as possible, with the frames carefully excluded from your shot. Experimenting with different tinted glasses can result in some artistic outdoor shots too.

Switch to Macro Mode

That little flower icon on your digital camera isn't just for taking pictures of daisies. Anytime you want to shoot something close up, whether it's an insect in your backyard, a glass of your favorite beverage, or the blossom on a rose bush, switch to macro or close up mode, get in close for the desired shot, depress the shutter halfway to focus and take your close up. Using this macro mode gives you a vibrant close up of the central subject of your shot while softening other stuff in the shot for a detailed shot that makes you look like a pro.

Leveling your shots

A tricky part of shooting outdoors is getting the horizon level when shooting landscapes. What appears level on the LCD may not be level when you review it on your PC. Photographers often use a visual rule of thirds to divide the shot into three horizontal and three vertical sections, where the convergent points of these invisible dividers make good focal points for the shot. Digital camera manufacturers make this easier by including a Grid feature to show these lines on the LCD. In addition to assisting in rule of thirds compliance, these grid lines also come in handy for shooting level landscapes.

Get more zoom

Digital cameras include two types of zoom. There's optical zoom, which magnifies what you are shooting, usually between 3x and 10x for most consumer cameras. The other kind of zoom is digital zoom, which enlarges the pixels in the shot to make it bigger while also creating a gradually blocky and distorted image. The first thing to do with any digital camera is turn off this digital zoom feature; it simply won't help with close up shots. If you have a set of binoculars, you can increase the optical zoom of your camera by holding the binoculars in front of the lens, providing additional magnification beyond the optical zoom without loss in image quality.

Frame once, shoot many

As long as your memory card is big enough, you can't possibly take too many variations of the same shot. And with 512MB memory cards priced in the under $50 range, there's no excuse for not having a big card on hand. Take advantage of all that space and shoot several shots of the same thing. If your hand moves or something goes wrong with the first shot, you have several more chances for getting a great image. With several shots to choose from, you get the option of throwing out the bad shots instead of living with something that could have been a little better.

Use a tripod

One of the best ways to improve still images is by using a tripod. In low light or when using manual settings, this is a must to avoid blurry shots. Even with the awesome image stabilization in most point-and-shoot cameras, using a tripod just make things look better. You can often find a flat surface to rest the camera on, which avoids shaky hands or accidental movement as you snap the photo. Considering the portability of my bottle cap tripod, there's no excuse for not carrying one with you everywhere.

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