The reciprocal rule in photography is that when shooting a photo handheld, your shutter speed should be the reciprocal of the focal length that you are shooting at (1/focal length) in order to avoid blur caused by the natural shaking of your hands. This means that the wider focal length you are shooting at, the … Read more
Understanding depth of field is one of the keys to ensuring that your photos are always in focus in the parts you want to be sharp. Depth of field (DoF) is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. It is determined by aperture, focal … Read more
Strictly speaking, the rule of thirds isn’t limited to photography alone. It is directly connected to the ‘Golden Ratio,’ seen all around us in nature. It is a simple ratio, 1.618 to 1. There are numerous examples of the golden ratio, also referred to as the ‘Golden Mean’ or the ‘Divine Proportion’ in nature. There … Read more
Your camera has several markings on them. The main shooting dial on your camera has the markings P, A, S, M, etc. There are several other markings on the camera and lens body. The S marking is for Shutter Priority. On some camera systems, it’s marked as Tv for Time Value, but they’re all the … Read more
Your digital camera has a built-in system for determining what the proper settings are. It’s not perfect, but it does a decent job most of the time. Knowing which metering mode to use for a certain scene can improve the accuracy significantly. However, the different metering modes can be confusing to some, so I broke … Read more
If you are just starting in photography you must have come across the term focus or focusing quite a few times. Focusing is the process of bringing the subject of the photo to its maximum possible sharpness onto the image plane. The image plane is the sensor (or the film) at the back of the … Read more
Are you desperate to get out of Auto mode but don’t know where to start? Aperture Priority is the next step for a lot of beginner photographers. But keep reading, because at the end of this article, I’ll show you why that’s a terrible approach. You may look at your camera’s mode dial and wonder … Read more
Silhouette photos are very popular and once you know how to take them, actually quite easy to pull off. The best part is that you can create shots like this with just about any camera. Because you are exposing the bright areas of the image correctly and letting the subject go completely dark, you don’t … Read more
So you’ve just purchased your first DSLR camera and you’re headed out to the park, the beach, or some other great outdoor spot to take photos of friends and family. You take a few shots and they look…well…terrible. That’s because taking photos in the middle of the day is not easy for even the most … Read more
You may think group photos are the same as any normal portrait, just with more people. But as soon as you start adding more people to the mix, you start encountering more problems. Finding the right camera settings for group photos can be tricky, especially for beginners (or anyone who is used to photographing one … Read more
