Digital Photography Basics

                                                                                               Photography Basics 

In General:  look for the moment, turn your flash off, look for the light,  fill the frame, put everything on auto, shoot a lot, read your manual several times.

Exposure controls whether an image is too light or too dark. The camera's light meter averages the tones in the view finder to 18% gray. If you photograph a gray wall, a black wall and a white wall, all three will come out middle gray.

- The meters in modern cameras are great and most of the time will give you a well exposed image. 

-Avoid shooting a subject with a background that's very bright, like a big window or bright lamp behind your subject. Your meter will average in the bright light and make your subject look too dark, i.e. underexpose the image.

-Most of the time the auto setting will do the trick for a subject that is average. Many cameras offer settings like aperture priority, shutter priority, manual, etc. that require a detailed understanding to use creatively.

White Balance controls the overall color cast in a photo. Different light sources have different 'color temperatures', tungsten light bulbs have an orange/yellow color, florescent light is green, while shade at 12 noon is very blue. We want to match the color of the light source we are shooting with the right color setting on the camera to avoid getting an unwanted color cast. Many cameras have settings to approximate different light sources, e.g. you may find a setting under white balance that says tungsten or has an icon of a light bulb. Some cameras offer a custom white balance option that allows you to more exactly render the color of a given scene. Your camera manual will tell if you have this option and how to use it.

The 'JPG Quality' Setting controls how much compression is used when an image is closed. The lower you have the JPG Quality set, the  more images you can fit on your flash card and hard drive, but there will be more image degradation, making your image look digital.

The Technical Image Quality depends on things like bit depth, sensor size, quality of the lenses used, quality of light, sharpness, color algorithms employed by the manufacturer, exposure and white balance, as well as other factors.  Probably all Single Lens Reflex cameras (SLRs) made by Sony, Nikon, Canon, Fuji, Leca, Minolta etc will give you excellent color and image quality. Point and shoot consumer cameras will have varying degrees of quality, but are usually good enough to please the average amateur shooter. 'DP Review' is a good place to read reviews comparing all levels of professional and consumer  cameras.

A Good Photograph  usually has good light, good composition, is technically good, tells a story, pleases the eye, invokes a response, captures a moment, time, place,  feeling,  or an idea.

Composition

-designing space 

-fill the frame with what matters, leave out what doesn't  matter

-careful about the background, no lamps coming out of subject's head

-balance / dynamic imbalance

-rule of thirds

-relationships of points, lines, shapes, patterns, planes

-frames

-lines have energy, add to emotion, lead the eye around the image

-foreground / background

-positive space / negative space

Light

-has color

-conveys emotion

-has energy

-creates drama

-reveals where it falls and hides where it doesn't

-shows texture

http://sites.google.com/site/learnphotographybasics/

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