So you got a fancy new compact camera for Christmas? Awww. Your mommy loves you. Maybe even a full fledged dSLR? Your baby’s Daddy really loves you. Perhaps you’ve even got a new cell phone that takes better pictures than your previous one and you’re just trigger happy. Your brother-in-law doesn’t really love you. He just got guilt tripped into getting you a present because you got him one last year and he didn’t, and it was all awkward at the dinner table. Kidding. In an case, you’re happy, grateful and enthusiastic about your new camera. And excited about annoying your loved ones for a month, or until the giddiness wears off. But you’ll be damned if you’re going to read an instruction manual. Pshh! You don’t even read your mail. You’d just like to fire that puppy up, dive right into automatic mode and hope for the best. That’s usually fine for most civilians. But if you want to act like you know a thing or two behind the viewfinder, this guide’s for you.
Let’s forget about fully automatic mode for a moment and assume that all cameras are stupid. Because they are. They’re constantly getting better but their image sensors are still Neanderthals compared to the human eye.
1. White Balance is King
You know when you take a bunch of pictures indoors, and they look all blueish or greenish? Before you go digging for the gift receipt or warranty information, try adjusting your White Balance. White Balance is just fancy camera lingo for what tone a picture takes on. It can be warm, cool or sickly green depending on your setting. Most of the time automatic works fine, but there are instances when you’ll need to set it manually for the best results. For example: You’re in the living room getting ready to snap a photo of your little brother unwrapping his new fire truck. You’re not using the flash. (We’ll get to that shortly) Lil bro is sitting near some warm light coming from the table lamps. The problem is, the adjacent kitchen is also shining a bit of ugly fluorescent light into your shot. In Automatic White Balance mode, your camera may get it right and go with the warm light setting, but what if it doesn’t? Your brother may look like Swamp-Thing. The best thing to do is set the White Balance to “Indoor” or “Tungsten” or “Incandescent” or whatever else your camera’s menu calls it. Then fire away all night in the living room. Your little brother will no longer look like he needs to vomit in the pictures.
Likewise, if you’re going to be shooting your mom in the kitchen while she prepares the pasta, switch your White Balance to “Fluorescent”. And so on and so forth. Experiment with the settings in each situation and it will quickly become second nature. The advantage to keeping White Balance locked to a particular setting is that all your pictures for that day, or room or situation will all be one consistent tone. Automatic White Balance may serve you for 80% of the day but you may fudge up a shot that is great otherwise.
2. Mind Your Macro
This setting is found exclusively on compact and point-and-shoot cameras. You may notice a button or an icon with a little flower on it. This is what activates/deactivates Macro Mode. What is Macro Mode? Its the setting that allows your camera to focus on objects very close to the lens and nothing else (like flowers).
Most camera manufacturers are notorious for putting the Macro button right next to a commonly used button like “Menu”. It inevitably gets pressed accidentally, making all the pictures of your Lil bro blurry. You can’t understand why, and you bring it back to BestBuy for an exchange. The new model works great, until you accidentally press the Macro button a week later, and your pictures look like they were shot in a sauna. Its not your fault. Its mostly poor ergonomics in the industrial design. Just watch out for that flower icon in your camera’s display while you shoot. If you see it on, disable it until you really need to use it, like for your booger collection.
3. Flash Fanatics
First thing’s first: Stop, I repeat, STOP taking pictures of skyscrapers with your Flash on. Not only will it not work, but you’re going to look like a silly Times Square tourist, and nobody wants that. Your camera’s built in flash was not meant to signal Batman. It can only illuminate your subject from about 5-25 feet, max. dSLR owners may find that their slightly larger on-camera flash yields only slightly better results.
Your camera may have a flash that pops up mechanically with the push of a button, or one thats static and always exposed. Its the latter configuration you have to watch out for. Again this piece of advice is more geared towards compact owners. Cameras with always exposed flashes typically come out of the box in Automatic Flash mode. In this setting, your camera will decide if it needs to use the flash, and usually its very liberal with it. Lighting from a camera’s built-in flash is never as flattering to your subjects as natural light, so try to use it only when you need it. On most cameras, the flash setting is easily accessible through a dedicated button on the back of the camera. It will typically have a lightning bolt icon. The three common settings are:
- Automatic Flash. Your Neanderthal camera will decide when you need extra light.
- Flash On or “Forced Flash”. This will fire your flash regardless of available light. This setting can be useful in a dance club or concert, where you always need to have flash on to light your friends properly. In Automatic Flash mode your camera’s light sensor may become confused with all the flashing lights around you and not fire consistently.
- Flash Off. Your flash will not fire at all. In order to expose the picture properly, your camera will compensate by slowing down the shutter. What this means in English: Because there is less light, your camera needs more time to collect it, and any movement by you or your subject can cause blur. In relatively dark environments, your camera and your subject must remain as motionless as possible.
Following these three rules can get you on a good start in your new found love of photography. So grab you shiny new camera and start shooting! Now you look a little more like this guy:
