COMPOSITION COUNTS
Whether shooting digital or film, the rules of good composition remain the same. Somewhere in your picture there should be a focal point. This can mean arranging your shot to include a blooming branch in the foreground, a large rock in the middle ground, or a dramatic sky in the background. Don’t make the common mistake of assuming that, simply because a scene looks breathtaking to the eye, it will work as a photograph. Without a strong focal point, the camera translates the scene into a visually boring mush of small objects. Since some digital cameras don’t capture high resolution, shots without careful composition can be especially uninteresting.
BOOSTING IMAGE QUALITY
Scenics often contain intricate details and subtle nuances of color. In order to faithfully represent these qualities you need to get the most quality–or fidelity–you can from your digital camera. There are certain variables that you have no control over. Short of buying a new camera, for example, you can’t change the quality of the optics or the true number of megapixels. But there are several things you can do to tweak maximum quality from just about any digital camera.
With a traditional camera, your choice of film, processing and exposure plays a significant role in the outcome of an image. With digital cameras you have more choices: file format, resolution, white balance, and exposure.
Your choice of file formats generally includes JPEG, TIFF, and RAW. These formats–which organize the bits and bytes that make up an image–are changed through your digital camera’s menu. Each format has advantages and disadvantages but for best quality you’ll choose either TIFF or RAW, or set your JPEG compression to its lowest setting (less compression means higher quality.)
Many digital cameras also give you a choice of resolution. A 3.2-megapixel camera for example, can produce an image composed of 2048 x 1536 pixels. But through camera controls you can reduce this number and produce an image with lower resolution. This is useful when you are, say, creating images destined only for a screen or monitor, or if you want to save space on your memory card (less resolution often means smaller file sizes). However, if you are shooting scenics (or anything where detail is especially important) leave your resolution to its maximum. (In fact, it’s surprising how many people inadvertently lower the resolution on their cameras and then wonder why their pictures aren’t sharp.)
Here’s another detail that’s new to digital: these cameras adjust to different lighting situations via “white balance” settings. By default most digital cameras are set to “Auto White Balance”, but many digital cameras also offer presets for cloudy, shady and other indoor lighting conditions. Figure out how to do this with your camera, and then the closer you set white balance to the actual conditions, the truer the colors. (Color corrections can also be done later using software such as Photoshop Elements, but with lesser quality.)
Finally, as with film, you’ll need to use the correct exposure. Many digital cameras boast sophisticated metering systems and when set to “Auto” or “Program” modes often produce excellent results. You can often confirm a correct exposure by looking at the LCD–although LCDs don’t always accurately represent the image. That’s why “histograms” are becoming common on many digital cameras–these are graphic representations of your image’s tonal distribution displayed on the LCD. Consult your camera’s manual to see if your digital camera offers a histogram and how it helps interpret exposure.
BEYOND THE BASICS
There is nothing new about infrared photography: rather than capturing visible light, it records the lower wavelengths of heat, and can thus provide some very striking landscape images. In the past, however, it required special films and filters, and since getting the correct exposure was tricky, the results were hit or miss.
Most digital cameras, however, are already sensitive to infrared light. ( Here’s more on figuring out if your digital camera “sees” infrared.) The infrared shot shown above was taken by simply placing a dark red filter over the lens of a Nikon D100.
Panorama photography is also very easy with a digital camera. The shot shown below was actually made by taking a sequence of ten adjacent images and then later, using Photoshop Element’s Photomerge command, the images were “stitched” together into one seamless shot.
In the end, however, the best way to improve your photos isn’t necessarily through technical tricks. Rather, it’s by taking plenty of chances. With digital–unlike film–there is no cost associated with getting things wrong. And so it pays to experiment: try different settings, different exposures, different angles. Learn by your mistakes, erase them, and then move on!
