Cameras - Camcorders

How to take pictures like a pro

By Ben Halcomb - Samsung Product Manager for Digital Still Cameras

Taking photos can be lots of fun and are the precious memories and hallmarks that you keep of that holiday or that wedding or that other special occasion in your life. In the days of old film cameras, photography was a bit of a hit and miss affair as to whether your photo was actually any good, so today with the modern digital still camera there is a lot more room for experimentation, because if you don’t like the shot you can simply delete it and try again. Also, all of the other smart camera features in Samsung’s Digital Cameras like face detection and image stablisation also help you to take better photos.

So let’s look at some common scenarios or problems that you encounter when taking photos and I’ll give you some handy hints on how to take photos like a pro:

All of my portrait shots of people have red eyes

• The main people that are affected by red eye are people with light coloured eyes.
• You can turn on the red eye reduction function in the camera, this helps a little
• You can also turn on as many room lights and open blinds to let natural light in, this raises the amount of available light and will help reduce the red eye effect
• Most good cameras now have a red eye removal function in the camera also that will take the red eye out after you have taken the shot using in camera software.

My close-up shots are out of focus

• Firstly put the camera in its macro mode, this will set the camera up to photograph object close to the camera and should turn the flash off if the macro mode has not already done this
• You will need to steady the camera with a tripod or sit the camera on a flat firm surface, the shutter speeds will be slow so the camera needs to be still!
• The object you are photographing needs to be still also
• By doing all of this your images should improve a great deal!

How do I take sharp photos of fast moving things e.g. my kids playing sport

• The best way is to put the camera into its action mode
• Use the half depress function on the shutter button, point the camera at where you will take the photo and pre focus by pressing the shutter button half way down and hold it there. Then you just pan the camera to follow the action to the spot you had focused on and push the shutter all the way down to take the image, this will reduce the shutter lag down (the time focus and take the shot) down to virtually nothing, this will capture the action for you.

How do I take a photo through a window (at an aquarium or high rise building)

• This one is easy, light travels in straight lines, so do not look straight at the glass object, shoot at an angle
• Put the camera up close to the glass and turn the flash off

How do I take a good photo at night or in low light

• A tripod will help you take better night shots
• Most cameras these days have a night scene mode, turn this function on if it has it
• You will need a time exposure to take good night shots (about 4-10 seconds), with no flash, your camera should be able to do this automatically if it has a night mode.

The jargon buster

Depth of field: The area between the nearest object in focus and the furthest object in focus. If you are taking a photo over a long distance, e.g. photo of a beach, if the main point of focus is relatively close, the objects in the far distance will generally be out of focus because they will be out of the depth of field.

Exposure: is the amount of light that is collected by the image sensor while taking a photo. If the photo is exposed for too long then the shot will be washed out but if the exposure is too short then the photo will be too dark. Most digital cameras have a built in light meter that measures the amount of ambient light.

Megapixel: is a measurement of resolution (size of the photo) in millions of pixels. An 8 megapixel image is made up of 8 million pixels. Obviously, the more pixels the more level of detail, but the larger the file size.

Apeture: related to exposure, the aperture is the size of lens opening that lets the light into the camera. Apeture is measured in f/stops and will control the depth of field of a photo. A wide aperture (low f/stop number) gives low depth of field and is good for drawing attention to an object by blurring the background, while a narrow aperture (high f/stop number) will give a high depth of field for good landscape photos over a longer distance

Shutter Speed: the shutter speed is the length of time that the shutter is open to take a photo. It is usually measured in seconds or parts of a second. A typical shutter speed for a photo in sunlight is 1/125th of a second. A very short shutter speed is used to freeze a fast moving object while a very slow shutter speed can be used to blur an object for artistic effect.

Image stablisation: is a series of auto-compensating features built into the camera to reduce blur caused by camera shake

Face detection: is an electronic feature within a digital camera that detects the round shape of a person’s face and will automatically adjust the exposure and focus at this point to take clearer and shaper “people” photos

ACB (Auto Contrast Balance): when a photo is backlit (the light source is directly behind the subject), the subject will generally be dark due to the amount of light entering the camera. The Auto Contrast Balance within the camera will automatically compensate to balance out of the subject and remove the “shadow” effect so that the detail can be seen.

CCD: stands for charge-couple device and is a light-sensitive circuit that processes the image and stores and displays the data for a photo as an electrical charge which translates to colour. The good CCD can improve resolution and directly affects the quality of the photos where resolution is not hampered in low light conditions

ISO: is a measure of the sensitivity of the image sensor. The lower the ISO, the less sensitive your camera is to light which will reduce the amount of “noise” (grain) in a photo. Higher ISO settings are generally used in darker situations in order to achieve a higher shutter speed resulting in a better exposed photo. Situations where you might use a higher ISO setting are things like indoor sporting events, concerts and areas with “no-flash” zones (such as art galleries and churches)

SLR: stands for Single Lens Reflex which are the professional style of cameras used for serious photographers. These cameras allow for a lot of variation of the camera settings in the camera and unlike the point and shoot cameras where the auto features such as focus can slow the time to take a shot, an SLR camera will take a photo when the button is pressed. You will usually take a photo with an SLR through the viewfinder rather than using the screen. The other term is DSLR which is Digital Single Lens Reflex - that is a digital camera with single lens reflex control.

About Ben Halcomb

As well as being Samsung’s Digital Still Camera Product Manager, Ben has been in the photographic industry since 1989 and has been a multi-award winning photographer at the Australian Professional Photography Awards (APPA’s), held every year at PICA. One of these being a Gold award for Environmental Portraiture scoring 92 out a possible 100 points.

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