Focus on the details
When a scene is simply too big to fit in your picture without it getting uncomfortably close to the edge of the frame, focus instead on one of the details that makes it unique. An abstract crop can often have greater impact and give a more original view of a tired, over-used view we've all seen before.
Shoot speed head-on
You can't properly capture speeding subjects as they come towards or move away from you. If you're shooting track events, position yourself side-on to the action so that it passes across your field of view rather than coming towards it. Shooting into a chicane works well on TV where we delight in seeing the cars snake around it in sequence, but fares poorly in static frames.
Focus on the action
If you really want to convey an impression of speed in your images, pan your lens in line with speeding cars, horses and runners and shoot with a fairly slow shutter speed -- 1/125 second or below -- to blur the background. Keeping the subject sharp in the frame while blurring the background gives a more effective impression of speed than static backgrounds and blurred subjects.
Reflect on things
Do rainy days and Sundays get you down? Don't let them: embrace the photo opportunities afforded by the puddles. The rain is as much a part of the story of your holiday as the food you ate and the sights you saw. Use reflections wherever possible for a different take on otherwise well-known scenes.
Don't believe the megapixel myth
We're glad to see manufacturers are starting to see sense here, with many high-end cameras now sporting comparatively modest pixel counts. At the lower end, however, some manufacturers continue to cram 16 megapixels and more on tiny sensors that can't cope with high levels of incoming light. Pay for quality, not quantity, remembering that as few as 10 megapixels is plenty for printing at A3 using online photo-printing services
Flickr: your shopping assistant
Baffled by numbers and stats? If you can't get your hands on a camera to try before you buy, at least have a look at the shots it produces. Flickr uses the metadata attached to every photo shot by a digital camera to catalogue them by manufacturer and model, allowing you to click through a representative sample of output in its enormous online archive. Find it at flickr.com/cameras.
Don't be a memory cheapskate
Buy the fastest memory cards you can afford to minimize the time it takes for your camera to write each shot to the media, and how long you'll have to wait before you can take the next shot. Wait too long and you'll miss something.
Cards are ranked using a simple class system, where the class number is simply the number of megabytes the card can store per second. So, your camera will be able to write to a Class 4 card at up to 4MBps, and a Class 10 card at up to 10MBps. Faster cards are more expensive, so if you're having trouble justifying to yourself the extra expense, compare them to the speed boost you get from upgrading the memory in your PC or Mac.
Size matters
Think carefully about how you want to balance the convenience of carrying fewer large cards with the security of travelling with a larger number of lower capacity ones. On the one hand you'll spend less time swapping 16GB cards than 2GB media, but if you lose a single 16GB card, or it corrupts, you could lose all of the shots from your trip.
Splitting them across several cards, and locking full cards in your hotel safe so you're only carrying around empty cards plus the one on your camera means you'll be taking fewer risks with your digital memories.
Replace the cards regularly
Memory cards might not have any moving parts, but that doesn't mean they don't wear out. On the contrary they each have a finite life, and every time you write to, delete from or read the card you're bringing it another step closer to the end of that life. If you don't want to risk corrupting your pictures far from home, replace heavily used cards every couple of years.
Break all the rules
Be truly original. Ignore the rule of thirds. Shoot at high noon. Shoots sports photos at slow shutter speeds for blurred results. Whatever you do, make your pictures stand out from the crowd and relish the results.
Source. www.cnet.com
When a scene is simply too big to fit in your picture without it getting uncomfortably close to the edge of the frame, focus instead on one of the details that makes it unique. An abstract crop can often have greater impact and give a more original view of a tired, over-used view we've all seen before.
Shoot speed head-on
You can't properly capture speeding subjects as they come towards or move away from you. If you're shooting track events, position yourself side-on to the action so that it passes across your field of view rather than coming towards it. Shooting into a chicane works well on TV where we delight in seeing the cars snake around it in sequence, but fares poorly in static frames.
Focus on the action
If you really want to convey an impression of speed in your images, pan your lens in line with speeding cars, horses and runners and shoot with a fairly slow shutter speed -- 1/125 second or below -- to blur the background. Keeping the subject sharp in the frame while blurring the background gives a more effective impression of speed than static backgrounds and blurred subjects.
Reflect on things
Do rainy days and Sundays get you down? Don't let them: embrace the photo opportunities afforded by the puddles. The rain is as much a part of the story of your holiday as the food you ate and the sights you saw. Use reflections wherever possible for a different take on otherwise well-known scenes.
Don't believe the megapixel myth
We're glad to see manufacturers are starting to see sense here, with many high-end cameras now sporting comparatively modest pixel counts. At the lower end, however, some manufacturers continue to cram 16 megapixels and more on tiny sensors that can't cope with high levels of incoming light. Pay for quality, not quantity, remembering that as few as 10 megapixels is plenty for printing at A3 using online photo-printing services
Flickr: your shopping assistant
Baffled by numbers and stats? If you can't get your hands on a camera to try before you buy, at least have a look at the shots it produces. Flickr uses the metadata attached to every photo shot by a digital camera to catalogue them by manufacturer and model, allowing you to click through a representative sample of output in its enormous online archive. Find it at flickr.com/cameras.
Don't be a memory cheapskate
Buy the fastest memory cards you can afford to minimize the time it takes for your camera to write each shot to the media, and how long you'll have to wait before you can take the next shot. Wait too long and you'll miss something.
Cards are ranked using a simple class system, where the class number is simply the number of megabytes the card can store per second. So, your camera will be able to write to a Class 4 card at up to 4MBps, and a Class 10 card at up to 10MBps. Faster cards are more expensive, so if you're having trouble justifying to yourself the extra expense, compare them to the speed boost you get from upgrading the memory in your PC or Mac.
Size matters
Think carefully about how you want to balance the convenience of carrying fewer large cards with the security of travelling with a larger number of lower capacity ones. On the one hand you'll spend less time swapping 16GB cards than 2GB media, but if you lose a single 16GB card, or it corrupts, you could lose all of the shots from your trip.
Splitting them across several cards, and locking full cards in your hotel safe so you're only carrying around empty cards plus the one on your camera means you'll be taking fewer risks with your digital memories.
Replace the cards regularly
Memory cards might not have any moving parts, but that doesn't mean they don't wear out. On the contrary they each have a finite life, and every time you write to, delete from or read the card you're bringing it another step closer to the end of that life. If you don't want to risk corrupting your pictures far from home, replace heavily used cards every couple of years.
Break all the rules
Be truly original. Ignore the rule of thirds. Shoot at high noon. Shoots sports photos at slow shutter speeds for blurred results. Whatever you do, make your pictures stand out from the crowd and relish the results.
Source. www.cnet.com
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