Important Tips on Photography

The mere use of a DSLR does not give an amazing photo. For a great photo, some prerequisite knowledge of photography is important, and off course the rest depends on your experience.
If you are enthusiast about photography, but feel that your photos lack the desired quality, you might want to know some of the tips given below.

Exposure

Cameras have inbuilt metering modes, which determines the optimal shutter speed and aperture depending on the light entering it. It aims at maintaining middle gray, that is, 18% reflectance in visible light.
There are three or four metering modes depending on the DSLR- Evaluative, center-weighted, spot metering and partial metering

Evaluative metering mode- It is the default metering mode in DSLRs. The frame in the viewfinder is divided over several zones. It evaluates and measures the light in all the zones but considers the zone with focus as more important.

Center-Weighted metering mode– Center-Weighted metering mode evaluates only the center area of the frame in the viewfinder and ignores the rest of the area. Unlike Evaluative metering, it does not measure the focus area separately.

Spot metering mode-Spot metering evaluates just a zone of the whole frame. It measures the exposure about the focus area and leaves the rest of the frame. It is a good mode for clicking photos of very small subjects like birds.

Partial metering mode– This mode is generally found in Canon cameras. It covers larger circular area than spot metering, for measuring the light intensity.

Exposure Compensation

You might have observed that your photos look darker or brighter than they appeared while clicking. This is because of the metering scale of the camera. We can increase or decrease the meter reading of the camera by using the +/- button, which is located near the shutter.

Exposure Triangle
We saw how the camera calculates and decides the exposure for a photograph. But it is the Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO that decide the amount of light entering the camera.
Let us see a brief description of each.

Aperture:

The aperture of a camera plays a very important role in deciding how much light is entering the camera. It is measured in f-numbers. If the aperture is wider, that is, lower f-number, more light will enter and if it is narrow, that is, higher f-number, lesser light will enter.

Shutter Speed:

It determines the time for which the shutter will remain open. The slower the shutter speed, the more amount of light will be collected. This will result in higher exposure.

ISO- It controls the sensitivity of the image sensor. If ISO is low, the sensitivity of the camera is low to light. Higher the ISO, higher is the sensitivity towards light, this also causes more graining.

For a good picture, a perfect balance between the aperture, Shutter speed and ISO is required. For instance, if you increase the aperture and shutter speed, you should decrease the ISO to maintain a balance.

White Balance

It is a good practice to set white balance before starting shooting. You might have observed that at times photos have tint of a color. This depends on the surrounding will photography. For example, if a photo is shot in fluorescent light, than the photo will have a bluish tint. Photos are generally darker in snowy surroundings.
We can avoid unwanted tint in photos by using the correct white balance. There is an auto mode in cameras wherein they guess the required balance based on shot. But in many cases it is better to set a white balance by your self.

Some of the white balances in camera are as following-

Daylight: This sets the balance to the requirements in a normal bright daylight. You might not find this white balance in all the cameras as its settings are not much different.

Cloudy: On a cloudy day, sunlight is less, this adds warm tones to the photos.

Fluorescent– This balances the cool tones when shot under a fluorescent light.

Tungsten– It compensates the warm tones when shot under incandescent lights.

Shade– It should be used when shot under shaded areas to add warmth to photos.
Flash– Flashes have cool light, so in flash mode, it adds some warmth to the photos.

Conclusion

The above tips are very useful to set you up for awesome photography. With practice you will expertise the use of these skills and will discover more things to make you photos better. To develop you photography skills, it is best to get a DSLR and start taking photographs using the above presets.