People who notice that I like photography sometimes ask me this question. It often leads to
a long conversation where I mention certain photographic tips, tricks, and techniques accumulated
over time. A somewhat condensed version follows. Just keep in mind that there are always exceptions,
and that my opinion is worth every penny you paid for it :)
The real question should probably be slightly different:
How Can I Make Better Pictures?
Buying a better camera might be one of the ways to get there, but there are other, often more important things to keep in mind. Like this one:
Throw away all the bad shots. If you don't, people will not see your good pictures because they will fall asleep looking at the bad ones.
Now with Captain Obvious out of the way, let's look at what else can be done before, during, and
after the shoot.
At this point even the most polite listeners say, "wait, that's good to know, but it does not answer my question - what camera should I buy?" Fair enough. Choosing a camera these days is very simple. There are many models, but little variation between them. So the only important decision to make is whether to get a point-and-shoot or a DSLR. If you plan to shoot moving objects, especially indoors, get a DSLR. They focus faster and have higher sensitivity. Otherwise get a point-and-shoot and skip the next screenful or so on selecting and carrying interchangeable lenses.
Camera brand is not important. There are successful professionals shooting Nikon, Canon, and even Sony. If one of the companies made better cameras, all others would go out of business by now.
If you decided to go with DSLR, don't be limited by the kit lens that came with it —
try different lenses:
Fast means maximum aperture around f/2. Lloyd Chambers provides justification: I find that f/2 lenses are a sweet spot in terms of size, weight, optical performance and versatility; while f/1.4 or 1/1.2 is nifty, the compromises are often a nuisance (e.g., focus shift). Conversely, f/2.8 is often a nuisance for being a little too dark for shooting handheld at dusk in the narrow slice of time where the light levels balance beautifully.
Normal means focal length around 50 mm.
Prime means that the lens has fixed focal length and cannot be zoomed. Prime lenses are lighter, cheaper, faster, and you'll have one less control to worry about.
Wet cat on the right was shot with a 50 mm prime.
Dry cat on the left was shot with a 400 mm lens. Note shallow depth of field, even at f/5.6.
See how short the list above is? This is intentional.
People (myself included) tend to spend too much time, money, and effort on lenses, but too little on light, support systems, and training.
Normal zoom is not here because it is expensive and heavy, and because most of things that can be shot with a normal zoom can be shot with a normal prime just as easily.
Wide angle is not here because its forte is reportage, and I don't do it. Most other things, including architecture and landscapes, can be done with a normal lens.
Bike rack on the right looks like it
was shot with a moderate wide angle, but it is a vertical panorama made with 50 mm prime on a 1.6 crop body.
That said, lenses tend not to lose value as much as bodies and are inexpensive to rent, making experimentation possible. My all-time favorites are:
Lens brand is not that important. Pop quiz: which lens is optically better:
To see the answer, drag your mouse from here... They're all excellent. In fact, it's the same lens. ...to here, or press Control-A (Command-A on the Mac).
You'll need some way to carry around all that gear. Consider a modular belt system like kinesis. Unlike regular bags or backpacks it spreads the weight around your waist. Yes, it looks ugly, but you'll feel so much better at the end of the day you won't mind. The belt system also allows to get rid of those annoying camera straps that always get in the way.
Exception: for long lenses or
on-camera flash, Spider Holster is more practical.
Screw Spider Holster pin directly into collar socket, bypassing the plate.
Rotate the collar 45° from vertical.
No matter what kind of bag you choose, don't forget to replace metal zipper pulls with cord loops. Metal pulls jangle loudly, and the ones inside the bag can scratch the equipment.
Use available light: all the light there is plus all the light you can bring. At the moment it means small off-camera flashes (hat tip Strobist), but I expect LED light panels to become more common soon.
Geotag your images: throw a GPS receiver that can record track logs in the bag, turn it on before shooting.
Set camera time to GMT (not local time) so that you don't have to think about DST and time zones during synchronization.
If you return home with all film exposed/CompactFlash used up and no spare fresh battery you did not take enough with you.
Don't worry about dust on the sensor until you see it in your images. There is always
some dust, but normally it is visible only at unrealistic apertures like f/22.
Take more than one frame of a subject. If it's worth shooting once, it's worth shooting twice. People blink, look away, facial expressions change. If not sure about exposure or focus, bracket like crazy. You only need one good take, and bits are cheap.
Watch where your focus is. Subject's eye closest to the camera should be in focus, but if you try to focus on the pupil autofocus might latch onto the eyelashes instead. So focus on the inside corner of the eye instead.
In Getting the
Most from Your EOS-1 Class Digital SLR, Canon recommends to "Avoid recomposing
after focus lock during portraiture or close-up photography: This technique can cause
focusing errors when shooting subjects within 15 feet of the camera, especially
when using large apertures to reduce depth of field." Here's a
diagram that helps to understand what happens. You lock focus on the eye (green lines), then
recompose (red lines). Now focus plane is behind the eye (see yellow arrows?).
I bet half the people complaining about backfocus in various forums experience that phenomenon.
Switch focusing point (that red rectangle highlighted in the viewfinder when focus lock is achieved),
or if you feel adventurous, shift your body back a bit between focus and recompose to compensate.
Check the background. Human brain tends to filter it out. You and your subject move, background does not. Stereoscopic vision feeds distance information to your brain. But this additional information is not retained in the final picture, and then suddenly you see tree branches sprouting from your subject's ears.
Crop tight. Resolution of modern sensors is high enough so you can actually get away with some cropping in post, but it's still better to make a cropping decision when shooting. You can't take a step left or right in post. Just make sure to leave some room in the direction the subject is looking or moving.
Look around the edges of the frame. There's already enough photos with faces in the middle, empty sky filling top half of the frame, and the feet cut off at the ankles. No need to make any more.
Use histogram to check exposure, then dial in correction if needed. Even when shooting RAW, cameras show histogram after applying white balance and JPEG gamma, hence clipping in individual channels may not be apparent.
When shooting in the crowd you can get higher line of sight
by turning the SLR upside down.
Before turning off your camera return it to the same default state, e.g., ISO 100, no exposure compensation, aperture priority, f/5.6, AI Servo. This sounds like work, but consider the alternative: shooting outside with plenty of light and feeling great, that is, right until realizing that you're at high ISO ever since last night's campfire.
Take the flash off the camera. Compare two pictures on the right. Same model,
camera, lens, and post processing.
The first picture was taken with built-in flash.
The second was taken with two off-camera flashes: one high camera left shooting through an umbrella, another high camera right behind the model.
Creative lighting with off-camera flashes is a large and interesting subject in its own right. I liked Strobist Lighting 101 so much I even participated in translating it to Russian (local copy).
When shooting JPEG, use grey card or simply a piece of paper to set custom white balance, especially indoors. When shooting raw, include grey card or any white object in one of the shots for setting white balance in post.
Use the poor
man's image stabilizer technique when shooting handheld at long shutter speeds:
take a burst of frames so that later you can keep the largest file (due to the way
compression works it's usually also the sharpest). Chipmunk on the left (100% crop) was shot
with a 400 mm lens, no tripod, no image stabilizer. Popular rule of thumb requires shutter speed of 1/400
or faster, but this frame was shot at 1/40. All other frames from the same burst were blurry.
Do not chimp too much. In case you haven't heard this jargonism before, “chimping” is checking the LCD screen of the camera often, especially combined with making various sounds when spotting good photos. Watch someone do this and you'll understand the reference to looking like a chimp.
When doing aerial photography, remember that Earth is moving
in relation to you. Image stabilizer will reduce the effect of aircraft vibration, but
you would still need to keep shutter speed at or above 1/500.
Come up with numbering and archiving system and stick to it. If you can't find a photo there's not much sense in making it in the first place. I rename the files when transferring them with exiftool:
exiftool "-FileName<DateTimeOriginal" -d "%Y_%m%d_%%-4f.%%e" ~/Pictures
Similar results can be achieved on the PC with
epinfo.exe -r -f "%Y_%m%d_%%03d.jpg" g:\dcim\100canon\img_*.jpg
Both will convert cryptic filenames like IMG_1234.JPG to more manageable 2007_1226_1234.JPG.
You can use exiftool in the same breath to embed metadata, e.g., copyright notices:
exiftool \
-creator="John Doe" \
-CreatorContactInfoCiUrlWork="example.com" \
-copyrightnotice="Copyright © 2009 John Doe" \
-xmp:marked="True" \
-overwrite_original_in_place \
~/Pictures/*.CR?
Geo tags should be applied to raw files before tweaking anything in Camera Raw. ACR will ignore XMP sidecar if the raw file is modified.
Did I tell you to throw away all the bad shots? Now is the time, before they are bagged, tagged, and archived. On average I keep 1 in 25 frames. Your mileage may vary, but it probably is not going to be 1 in 1.
To make it easier to choose the sharpest frame from a burst I wrote a very simple ExtendScript
for Bridge called DeselectLargest.jsx.
Mercilessly throw away frames that are out of focus — nothing will salvage them.
Forget iPhoto. Adobe Bridge that comes with Photoshop Elements is much better. I also like
There are many ways to do HDR, so far the best I found is enfuse.
I call enfuse directly from Bridge using BridgeEnfuse.jsx.
Save it to the same folder as DeselectSharpest.jsx, select images to enfuse in Bridge, right-click,
choose "Enfuse x files". The script will create new TIFF in the same folder with the same name
as the first selected file, appending underscore at the end.
Even cheap modern inkjet printers are capable of producing stunning results, but the consumables remain expensive, and I have doubts about the longevity of inkjet prints. Luckily these days you can find a decent lab that can print digital files on regular photo paper. Labs having Fuji Frontier printers tend to be above average.
Another advantage of using a lab is not having to think about printer color calibration.
You would still need to calibrate your monitor to ensure that colors in prints from the lab
will match what you see on the screen. Luckily with SpectraView II screen calibration is easy.
All rules can be broken, but there are some that I break more often than follow.
Many professionals including Scott Bourne recommend to put the sun at your back, but the exact opposite is usually better.
There are ways to avoid buying and carrying around large and heavy tripod. Tabletop
tripod is more useful than most people realize. For example, it can
be pressed against the wall. Other options include a clamp with attached ballhead, ziplock filled with dirt,
and umbrella as a makeshift monopod.
Photo stores will try to shame you into buying UV filters for each lens "to protect the front element", but
most of the time it is not necessary and often
degrades
image quality. Use lens hood instead. It provides sufficient protection against accidentally
touching the front element and helps to control flare, too. The only filter I use is circular polarizer.