a1 Photo Tips

Only a couple of years ago, a digital SLR camera came with a price tag out of the spending range for many of us. That has surely changed - indeed, it is changing right now. Those advanced digicams are steadily coming down in price and becoming more affordable, while the list of features keeps getting longer.

Well, why would you want a dSLR camera in the first place? If all you do is snap some pictures of the family while on vacation, plus some generic shots of birthday cakes and X-mas celebrations - then maybe you don’t want or need one. But if you are really interested in making good pictures I’m pretty sure you want one - if you haven’t got it already. Or if you have a digital SLR then you may be already thinking about upgrading it!

Some of the strongest reasons for getting a digital SLR, as opposed to a simpler digicam are:

1. You Choose the Lenses

While simpler digital cameras have a non-interchangeable zoom lens permanently attached to the camera body, you can choose whatever kind of lenses you prefer if you have a dSLR. For instance, you may be very much into wildlife photography and therefore need some really long telephoto lenses. Or at the other extreme: you may be a real-estate agent and need to take pictures of interiors of houses, to show prospective buyers - then you want a high-quality wide angle lens.

If you get a camera with permanently attached lens, it will always feel like a poor compromise in case you are one of the people with special interests like these.

2. You Get More Speed

Generally, a dSLR camera has a larger image sensor than a simpler digicam. This means, among other things, that the sensor captures light more efficiently, so that you will be able to make pictures in lower light. For instance, my old Canon Powershot has a sensitivity range up to 400 ISO - and at that setting the image quality is noticeably impaired.

By contrast, a brand new dSLR camera can have an ISO-range up to 6400, with little visible effect on image quality. (Example: the Nikon D700, read more about that and other comparable cameras in my post about Three Full Frame dSLRs.)

What does this mean in the real world? Well, the difference gives you to four f-stops smaller aperture, or sixteen times faster shutter speed. Like, instead of needing to use a tripod for the shot, at 1/8 of a second, you can now shoot at 1/125 of a second - enough to capture most subjects, except the really fast-moving ones.

3. You Get More Control

In general, dSLRs are built for those people who are serious about what they are doing, and therefore offer you more ways to control your settings. You may for instance be able to modify how the camera sets the autofocus - or even disable the autofocus completely and use the manual focusing ring on the lens barrel, like in the old days.

Also, you can most likely get various accessories to your digital SLR, which are not available with a simpler camera; like special gear for extreme macro photography.

All this sounds terrific - but of course there are disadvantages too. The main one is still the cost. And a second one is that a dSLR is by design larger and heavier than a simple consumer digicam.

There may be as many ways to make a good portrait shot as there are subjects - and yet there are also a few ground rules you can keep in mind, applicable to most situations.

And when I say “portrait” I mean a picture where the emphasis is on the face(s) of the subject(s). A picture where you don’t see the face of the subject is not a portrait, IMHO. Usually the subject is a human being - although there can also be “portraits” of animals; in the latter case they tend to be pets, like dogs or cats. (ever heard of an “alligator portrait” or a “shark portrait”?)

Rule #1: The Eyes Must Be in Focus

Well, I’m sure you can come up with some example of a good portrait shot where the eyes of the subject are NOT in focus - but that is a rare exception to the rule. In 99.9% of all portraits, you expect that at least the eyes are in good focus.

OK, in the excellent portrait of an old lady from Sikkim here by “Sukanto Debnath“, the subject happens to have her eyes closed - but these closed eyelids Are In Focus!

There are other features of this picture which make it such an enormously successful portrait, such as:
- the dark blue cloth which frames the woman’s face
- the way the light emphasizes the sculptural qualities of her features
- the way she tilts her head, which is placed off-center, creating a strong diagonal line
- how that blue cloth also forms a diagonal line
- and then there’s the initimable expression on the woman’s face!

Rule #2: There Should Not Be a Distracting Background

This rule is something I keep ruminating about for ALL types of pictures, anyway in a portrait I find it particularly annoying to see a background which competes with the subject for my attention.

This fine picture by “striatic” shows how you can leave a lot of space around a subject and yet focus the attention squarely on the subject!

Also, what else is so striking about the picture? Well, here everything is perfectly symmetrical! The man is placed right in the middle of the picture, his posture is also symmetrical (like, both hands in same position); and he looks straight into the camera. Altogether, this creates a strong effect.

OK, and I do find dark sunglasses to be permissible in a portrait - at least in an informal portrait like this one…

By the way, did you notice there is ONE thing those two portraits - very different in most ways - actually have in common? Right, you can’t actually see the eyes of either subject… but there was another thing:
In both pictures, the camera was held a bit below the subject’s face - roughly at shoulder level! This is a good rule to keep in mind: people tend to look their best if the camera is positioned so the face is shown a little bit from below. Sure, you can experiment with other angles too but if you like to keep things simple then stick to this rule.

Rule #3: The Subject Should Be at Ease!

Sounds self-evident maybe, but many (perhaps MOST) of the portraits I’ve seen violate that simple rule. A portrait where the subject looks strained and not relaxed at all can never in my opinion count as a good portrait - regardless of how technically perfect it happens to be.

Yes, this includes most pictures with smiling people also. We all like to see smiling faces BUT: what if you clearly feel that the smile is not a genuine, spontaneous smile but just a fake? Do you like to have people fire off fake-smiles at you? No, probably not - personally, I’d feel very uncomfortable and begin to think something is seriously wrong!

And yet… we are so used to see those fake-smiles in many portrait shots - even some made by “professionals”. Usually, a relaxed person simply looks RELAXED! People typically only smile if they are feeling amused about something in the moment, or just extremely happy about life in general.

Those are precious moments, - but you can’t force them. What you CAN do as a photographer is to simply make the subject feel at ease. And if you have excellent rapport with your subject, you MIGHT be able to say something that provokes a spontaneous smile! Otherwise, be content with that relaxed look.

The image shown here, by “lakshmi.prabhala“, is an excellent example of a relaxed portrait.

Compare this image with the first one, of the old woman - the composition is somewhat similar: subject off-center, head tilted, diagonal lines. And that formula is indeed used very effectively in this case also.

Let these portraits sink in, and reflect on what you can learn from how they are executed. (It’s probably pure coincidence that 2 out of 3 chosen portraits in this article are from Asia - I simply picked what I considered the *BEST* while browsing through hundreds of portrait-shots.)

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In case you don’t remember, this was a slogan used by Kodak in the early days of photo-processing. Kodak sold a really simple camera to a beginner-level market, and offered to do all processing of the film, plus printing the pictures. This was a new concept at the time.

Nowadays, with digital cameras dominating the market, some things still remain the same. There is still a huge market for the “push-the-button” type cameras, which supposedly take perfect pictures with absolutely NO effort required from the photographer!

Recently, I happened to notice reviews of some entry-level digicams. There was for instance a Panasonic FX500 digicam, which seems to do most of the thinking for you: …”An Intelligent Auto mode analyses the scene and automatically sets the Panasonic FX500 to the proper Scene mode, and Face Detection is capable of detecting up to 15 faces in a scene.”
Not bad - fifteen faces! This little wonder also sports 10.1 Megapixel image resolution, a 5X zoom factor, and a 3-inch, touch-screen, LCD viewfinder. All of this for a little over $300.

Or how about this Canon SD790 - a similar point-and-shoot camera which you can get for around $250 or less:
…”All I had to show them — no matter their age — was where to find three buttons: the Power button, the Shutter button and the Zoom ring … there are buttons and a dial and they do offer useful functions … But the beauty of this ELPH is that you rarely have to use them“…

So, I guess what most people want in a digital camera is still the same that Kodak offered to give them about a hundred years ago: an instrument that doesn’t make them think!

The difference is that with today’s advanced technology, you can easily manufacture a camera which *almost* thinks for you. Is that a good thing? Yes I guess it is. It is much more fun to use a tool if it does a decent job for you with as little effort as possible from your side.

Most people don’t have the inclination to spend much of their time learning about how to make better pictures. All they want is to make some snapshots from vacations and family events, without needing to spend time figuring out how to use a camera.

Sure, if you are really interested there is LOTS of information out there! For instance, you can buy e-books (yes, downloadable - you don’t need to go to a bookstore!) - with loads of useful tips and in-depth information on how to get the most out of your digital camera. Here are some examples: Example#1 and Example#2.
Take a god look at these - even by simply taking advantage of the free offers, you have a chance of improving the quality of your pictures! Plus the e-books come with a rock-solid money-back guarantee.

However, it does take some of your time to actually absorb this information. I’ve noticed that one type of sales argument for these Photography e-books is something like …”learn the closely guarded secrets of photography that the pros don’t want you to know!”…

In my opinion, there is no such thing as “closely guarded secrets of photography”. The information is out there - available to anyone who is committed enough to bother with the effort of absorbing it!

But most people aren’t. They prefer to buy a little camera which “automatically detects … up to 15 faces in a scene”.

Photo Credit: Frog picture by “Hamed Saber“.