Almost everyone has a pocket digital camera nowadays. Most people use them for taking shot of family and vacation, and just everyday things to remember their life. Many of the pictures I see people taking with pocket cameras have flaws that make them disappointing to the person taking the shots. Which makes them not good for memories. I will tell you how to get good pictures out of you pocket camera that you will be proud to show everyone.

The first and most important thing to do is to take some time and read the manual with the camera in hand, so you can test and lean how the features work. Knowing how to use the features of the camera will go a long way to improving your pictures.

Most pocket cameras come with 5 to 20 shooting modes that will help you have the setting correct for the type of picture you want to take. The shooting modes are normally portrait, landscape, indoor, snow, beach, and a variety of other choices. What they do is optimize the camera settings for the pictures you are taking. The landscape setting will set the aperture and shutter speed at the best settings to get you the most in focus from front to back of your picture, (depth of field), so you can have foreground objects in focus as well as the far away objects. For landscapes focus the camera about 1/3 of the way into the shot. The other shooting modes do the same thing for the other types of pictures.

Use the flash. Get as close as you can when taking shots of people, then use the flash to fill in shadows and make the overall lighting of the picture better. I f shooting at night, use the night shooting mode or slow sync mode. It will allow you to get the person in the front lit with the flash as well as the background lighting. The picture will not be of a person standing in a black nothingness. If subject is too far away, don't use the flash. Steady the camera against something so it will not move and slowly squeeze the shutter release, I even hold my breath when I am shooting the shot.

Look behind the person to make sure the shot is not ruined by something that will look like it is coming out of their head in the background. Look around the rest of the shot through the viewfinder to make sure that there are not other distracting objects in the picture. Using bright colors as the focus of the picture can also lead to enhancing the shot.

When photographing people, focus on the eyes.

Try to frame the subject with something, some trees of a wall or something that will draw the viewers eyes into the picture so they will see what you want them to see. Anything that will enhance the subject.

Try to use the rule of 3rds. Get the subject out of the center of the shot. Picture a tic tac toe game drawn in the viewfinder, try to put the subject on one of the crossing lines.

Look through the viewfinder, think about how you want the finished picture to look. Try to frame the subject, use bright colors, focus on the eyes, use the shooting modes, use the flash when it will help, be creative, and most of all read the manual, so you know how to use the features on the camera that are there to help you get better pictures.

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