Photography Tips

This section describes some of the basic aspects of photography so beginners or people who need basic explanations can learn something useful.

The Histogram

Submitted by Stephen on Fri, 05/11/2007 - 16:12

The histogram is a powerful feature that can give a photographer a lot of information if that person knows how to read it and what it means. The histogram is just a graph that on one side shows the colors from dark to light and on the other side is the amount of pixels that has that shade.

So if there is a big bunch of data to the left of the histogram the picture has a lot of dark pixels (and might be underexposed). If they are all bunched on the right side the picture has a lot of light colored pixels in it and might be overexposed.

Get to know all the settings on your camera

Submitted by Stephen on Fri, 05/11/2007 - 19:04

The first thing a photographer should do is get to know all the features of the camera. Even if you don't use all the features (most people won't) you should at least know what they are so if you need to use them you know it's there.

Program Mode
Program Mode is the fully automatic mode that makes the camera select shutter speed and aperture.

Aperture Priority Mode
Aperture Priority Mode lets you select the aperture and the camera selects the shutter speed hat according to the in camera metering system will correctly expose the picture. This is often used if you want to control depth of field.

Shutter Speed Priority Mode

Your camera's meter

Submitted by Stephen on Mon, 05/21/2007 - 11:44

Your camera meter does one thing and it does it well. It tells you the settings to make whatever you pointed it at 18% gray. The best way to describe how this works is if you have a room that has one white wall and one black wall. If both are lit with the same amount of light and you shoot both of them the pictures will be the same. They will be both gray. The meter will underexpose the white wall and overexpose the black wall. So keep this in mind when you are shooting in obscure situations like snow.