Fireworks

Fireworks are great photo subjects, due to the nice colors and all sorts of patterns they create. However, they are not so easy to capture in a photo, especially with compact Digicams, due to many reasons:

1. It is not easy to predict the moment, unless you have been watching for some time.

2. The camera must be held steady, to take good photos

3. Automatic focus does not work well, so the shutter lag is even higher for a compact camera.

Contrary to what many people say, you CAN take good photos of fireworks without using an SLR. Fireworks are bright objects, so the small lenses are good enough to catch enough light if you get the other things right. The two photos below were taken using a compact camera without a "Fireworks" mode. They are a bit grainy, but not that bad!



















The following tips will help you to take better photos of fireworks.:

1. THE MOST IMPORTANT TIP: Do your homework. Check what your camera can do, before you go to see the fireworks.

2. If your camera has a"Fireworks" mode, use it. Some people just do not know that the camera has it. If this is not available, other options are "Night Landscape" and "Landscape (with flash disabled)"

3. Use a tripod (a mini tripod or a monopod is good enough), if you can find one. Otherwise, steady the camera by resting it on/against something.

4. If it is possible to set ISO speed in your camera, set it to 100 or 200.

5. If it is possible to set the focusing distance manually, set it to infinity. This is very likely if you bought your camera in 2007 or later. Just that you have to go into the menus to find how to do it.

6. Watch the first few fireworks without taking photos. You will find that the fireworks are launched from about two or three locations, and usually go off within a certain range of heights. Now you can aim the camera properly. Keep it unzoomed and you can crop the unwanted stuff later.

7. Press the shutter before the firework goes off. You can compensate for shutter lag, and also capture a stem that connects the firework to the ground.













8. If you can change the shutter speed, reduce it to about 2 seconds for brighter fireworks (towards the end of the show). Use 6-8 seconds for lone fireworks at the start.

9. If your camera has a "BULB" shutter setting (the shutter will be open so long as you are pressing the shutter release button), keep pressing it until multiple fireworks go off.

















For those who use a DSLR, there are loads of URLs with tips. For completeness, I add the following tips for them.

1. Get a cable release, you will not regret spending the money :o)

2. Time your shots to have or avoid stems in fireworks, depending on your taste.

3. Lower shutter speeds can create photos of things that you actually did not see. Do experiment.










None of the above photos have been edited. A bit of editing can improve photos of fireworks greatly, if you have time for it.

Lastly, a few important tips.

1. Once you position the camera, there is no need to watch the fireworks through the viewfinder. Just press the shutter, and enjoy fireworks in full size.

2. Fireworks are there for many people to enjoy, so make sure not to disturb others while taking photos. Don't grumble if kids are jumping with joy in front of your camera, or get annoyed upon an occasional knock on your tripod.










Have fun first, then take photos!

The Subject of a Photo

As I stated in an earlier post, a photo is considered generally good if the others see what you wanted to capture. This post is about what you want to capture, that is the "subject".

If the subject has the following properties relative to the rest of the content, it generally makes a good photo:

1. Bright and/or colorful:

If the subject is darker or less colorful than the other things in the background, it does not receive the attention you want it to, after being photographed. Move around so that the background is less bright and colorful. Use flash where necessary (I will write more details about flash photography in a later post). Try to get the sun behind you so that the subject is well lit.














2. Closer to the camera

Do not include things that are closer to the camera than the subject, unless they are used for framing the photo. Even with a photo (which is 2-dimensional), the eye can judge the distances fairly well, and pays more attention to the objects that are nearer. As for those of you who are into abstract art, I guess you can ignore this rule :o).


3. In focus

Keep the subject well focussed, so that the eye knows where to look. Use the portrait mode or sports mode of the camera so that it will let more light in and focus into a smaller depth. Good examples for this can be seen on my post about flowers.

For photos of people, faces are the most important; so, try to get them well exposed and focussed. For compact cameras, the best way to achieve this is to half-press the shutter when the face is in center of view and then move the camera to get the right composition to take the photo.

Have Another Look in a Year!

Last week, I and a friend of mine were talking with two professional photographers (who are my host-parents ). My friend brought up the point that the points that some photos taken some time back and not considered as good photos at the time, now seem to be very good photos.

My host father responded: "Have another look at the photos, about a year after you shoot them. If there are photos that you still see as good photos, they are good."

Thereafter, he explained the reasons. When we look at the photos that we took recently, our memory about the subjects, the sounds, the environment etc. complements the content of the picture. Simply, we remember more things than the photo shows us. After a year, most of these memories are gone, and you will experience only the content of the photo (well, this might not work for your own child's photos :-p). So, if the photo looks good to you now, chances are high that it is a well-taken photograph.

So, have a look at the photos that you took some time back, when there is some free time. Find out which photos interest you, and which type of photos you have been able to take better.

Flowers

Flowers are great photographic subjects due to several reasons; nice colors, beautiful shapes, and interesting patterns created by large numbers of them. Here are a few tips to take better pictures of flowers.

1. When you photograph a single flower, it is best to highlight it by making the background blur. For compact digi's, most of them have a separate shooting mode for flowers. If your camera does not have it, try the mode for portraits. Selecting these will make the camera try its bets to take a photo with the flower well-focussed and the background blurred.















However, this effect can easily be achieved in automatic mode too. Move around so that the distance between the camera and the flower is smaller than the distance between the flower and the background.

2. If the flower is centered as in the image above, the photo tends to become a bit boring. To improve the photo, make the flower off center and use the flowers, blossoms and leaves in the background to compose the photo nicely.



















3. Look very carefully before you take the photo. Avoid withered flowers and dried leaves in the background by moving around.

4. Get close to the flowers. Use different angles and take more than one photo, you will find that some angles work better for some flowers.

5. If there is nothing much in the background and the flower is elongated (or has a long stem), the photo might look empty. Angle the camera to put the flower along the diagonal, you can get away with this if the background is sufficiently blurred.



















6. If you are in a park or a garden with a lot of flowers, capture the arrangement. Move around and have a good look, then take photos from places where you enjoyed the view best.















7. Bees and butterflies, if they are around, can be included to make photos more lively. Needless to say, be careful with bees.

8. Just after a rainfall is a nice time to take photos of flowers. The raindrops augment the photos.















9. While the above are basic guidelines, you can add your own taste to the photos. In the above photo of tulips, I deliberately included the tulip showing its inside, to the photo. While some people might find it not-so nice, I liked it that way.

So much for today. Enjoy!

Get to Know your Camera - Part 2

In this post, I will cover a few more things that you should know about your camera. These are little things that help a lot, so I thought of spending some time on them before moving to more specific photo tips.

(1) Try to learn what your camera can see:

Occasionally, there are situations that call for taking a photo without looking through the viewfinder or at the display (trust me, I will explain them later). I think many of you have tried taking your own photo, but this is just one example. If you have time for it, try taking photos without looking at the display and guessing what it captures by the orientation of the camera. If you have been using your camera for a while, this does not take long (even if it is an SLR). Make sure that you un-zoom the lens as much as possible, when practicing.

(2) Find out a few important numbers:

If you know how many photos you can take after fully charging your battery, and how many photos your memory card can hold, it will save you from a lot of trouble. The manuals have these numbers, but then there are two problems. One, you don't read the manual. Two, the condition of the battery changes with time.

(3) Have a look at the photo size and quality settings:

Although your camera is marked as so many Megapixels, it can take photos at lower resolutions. More, it can save your photos at lower quality, to save space on memory card. There are both goods and bads in these, but I will keep them for later posts. Just try to find out what your camera has to offer.

So much for specific things to get to know. However, the best way to get to know your camera is to take as many photos as you can. After some time, you will even be able to estimate the shutter lag and take the photo at the right moment!

In my next post, I will discuss about taking good photos of flowers.

Get to Know your Camera - Part 1

Before I move on to tips for taking different types of photos, here are some basic things that are helpful for you to learn:

(1) Learn the 'picture modes' available in your camera:

Almost all digital cameras have some preset modes for taking photos of different subjects and in different situations. most of the time, these help you to take reasonably good photos. Some of modes common to many digi-cams are

• Portrait
• Landscape
• Night Shot
• Night portrait
• Sports or fast motion

Some of the cameras have additional modes such as "Snow" and "Fireworks". Understanding and using them will reduce the number of "bad" photos that you take.

All right. The question is how we are going to learn these. Don't worry, I am not going to ask you to read the manual :o). The camera manuals are too thick, have small font, and are quite boring to read. Instead, I would recommend reading reviews at the following two places.

Digital Photography Review
Steve's Digicams

These two places provide both basic and advanced user guides, and are quickly updated with new models. However, feel free to browse a bit and look for other places too.

Just one more thing. There is a chance that you might find something not-so-nice about your camera, while reading the review. But don't worry so much about it. From most of the camera makers, you get what you pay for, and they produce good photos in many situations.

(2) Learn to "half-press" the shutter release

This is one important thing many of us ignore, when taking photos with digicams. When you press the shutter realease button (let me call it the shutter from here, as most of you call it that way) halfway, the camera adjusts its settings to take what it thinks as the best possible photo of what it sees. These settings will not change so long as we don't take the finger away from the shutter. In my later posts, I will explain how we can use this feature to "cheat" the camera and thereby take better photos.

So much for today. In my next post, I will provide a few more tips. Have fun playing around with your camera!

About Digi Cams

The target audience for this blog are those who have a digital camera. The following are the good reasons for buying a 'digi cam':

1. No need to spend on film
2. No processing cost or time
3. Easy and fast to show/send to others
4. Immediate preview
5. LCD display is easier to use than a viewfinder (other than for digital SLRs)
6. Video clips can be recorded
7. More options: face detection, smile-shutter, blah blah blah

The following are the problems we face, after buying digi cams

1. Consumes a lot more battery power
2. Unlike film, memory cards are not cheap and cannot be bought anywhere
3. Shutter lag: it takes some time for a digital camera to take a photo, after you press the shutter
4. Need more light, most of the time
5. Almost impossible to have long exposure times ( does not matter unless you are a pro)

If you have a slim/compact digi cam, you have extra problems. The main reason for this is the small lens diameters. The optical engineers have no choice but to use those tiny lenses that don't let much light in to the camera, because we won't buy the cameras unless they are small. The main problems are:

1. Difficulty to take photos in low light:
Due to small lens diameter, the cameras don't get enough light into them when taking photos under low light. Difficulty to focus, and camera shake are the common results of this problem.

2. Camera shake or motion blur:
When taking photos during evenings, or at places that are not so well lit, these cameras take too much time to take a photo. If we don't manage to keep the camera still for that long, the result is an image blurred due to motion. Some cameras are said to have built in correction for camera shake, but most of the time this is not sufficient. Some cameras just give you a warning, but then it is not so useful if you keep trying and failing.
Another reason for camera shake is the small size of the camera. There is no solid grip, and the press of a shutter provides enough force to shake it.



















3. Flat photos:
The small lenses result in high depth of field in photos. To say in simpler terms, everything that is near and far would appear well focused in your photo. This might sound like a good thing, but it is not when you want to take a photo that clearly shows what you want to show and suppresses the rest by blurring them. More, depth is not conveyed properly in your photos.

4. Too much automation:
This is the biggest problem. The camera decides what are the best settings to take the photo, and thereby captures really bad photos when there is a slight change from the usual scenes that people want to shoot. The photo below was a result of shooting in "Fully Automatic" mode with a fairly good digital camera.



















I guess this is more than enough for now. during my next posts, I am going to post a few tips to get rid of, or at least minimize, the above problems while taking better photos.