When indoors, it's key to provide as much natural light as possible. That said, be wary of light streaming through windows as it may fill your photographs with harsh contrasts. Don't have your subject stand directly in front of a window as it may cause a silhouette.
In low light conditions, disable your flash and take advantage of ambient light for best results as a flash can mute color and cast stark shadows. Use a night scenery mode if your camera has one. Be sure to hold your camera steady since there will be a longer exposure time.
If using artificial indoor lighting, try adjusting your white balance for more natural color. Most cameras have Tungsten (for incandescent bulbs) and Fluorescent settings to correct color since Auto mode doesn't always get it right.
Outdoor lighting
Outdoors, light is sometimes too much of a good thing. Avoid midday sunlight, as it can cast harsh, unflattering shadows. The best time of day for even, complementary lighting is dusk and dawn.
For low-light conditions, the same rule applies as with indoor shooting: avoid flash and use a tripod to steady the camera to compensate for the longer exposure time.
If your camera allows for ISO adjustment, set it low'in the 50-100 range?for finer details in low-light conditions. If you don't have a tripod, set your ISO higher to make your camera more sensitive to light, allowing for shorter shutter speeds. The trade-off is the risk of visual ?noise? and grain to your photos, but at least you may get a shot you might have otherwise missed.
Daytime shooting
A common question comes up when shooting pictures of people in sunlight. Where do you position the subject relative to the sun for best results?
The best condition outdoors for shooting pictures is an overcast day. Bright sunlight can wash out color. But when the sun is beating down, position your subject with the sun to their side. If they face the sun, they'll squint, and if it's at their back, you will have lighting issues, such as silhouetting.
Here are some other daytime shooting pointers:
The passage of the sun results in a series of dramatic changes in color and shadow. Keep on the move, experimenting with different angles and shots.
Use fill flash to eliminate harsh facial shadows. Fill flash is a feature included on most cameras, and provides enough flash to fill in areas of a picture that would otherwise be too dark. Another way to soften shadows is by using a sheet of white paper held below the subject's face, angled up but out of view. This can also compensate for bright backlighting, evening out the front and rear.
Lens filters can really help with outdoor shooting. A skylight filter will give you richer, bluer sky tones, a polarizing filter reduces reflected light, and a graduated neutral density filter can help on sunny days by allowing less light in.
For varied light conditions outdoors, use you camera's specific Beach, Snow, or Sunset modes to compensate for abundant light.
Shade your lens with your free hand or lens hood to avoid lens glare.
Never point camera directly at sun. Not only is it bad for your eyes (remember what your mom always said?), but direct sunlight can damage light sensing chips.
Nighttime shooting
When the sun sets, your opportunities for taking striking photographs are just beginning. Here are three things to remember when photographing at night:
Disable your flash. Instead, draw out details using long exposure (start with about two seconds) and a tripod to avoid blurring. Use your timer to avoid moving the camera when pressing the trigger.
Set your ISO low (50-100) for finer details at night. Also, without a flash, shutter speed must be slower to gather enough light. Select the Tv (shutter priority) or M (manual) shooting mode to adjust shutter speed.
Early evening and morning hours provide some light in the sky, allowing faster shutter speeds and reducing the chance of blur. Late evening provides stronger contrasts, requiring longer exposure times. City scenes, though, often produce plenty of light, allowing for faster shutter speeds. Still, for best results use a tripod if possible.
Digital photography has a lot of advantages over film photography in many areas, but one of the most useful is the final output of the image itself. With film cameras you had to rely on the processing lab to make any general adjustments needed to your photos to make them appear their best, but with digital photos you as the photographer have all the tools you need to enhance and edit your own photos right at home.
Of course, how much editing you do to your photos before printing is entirely up to you and there are all kinds of preferences on photo editing from those that do almost no editing at all, to those who like to make major adjustments to almost every photo that they take. And there is plenty of middle ground in between those two extremes as well.
Quite often, many basic editing tasks can be done in the camera itself after the picture is taken including some simple cropping, removing red eye from flash photos, and rotation from landscape to portrait and vice versa. For many people, this is about all that they require anyway before printing out their snapshots, and this keeps things very easy and simple.
But to start to realize the potential that digital photography puts in the hands of the average person, a photo editing software program will be needed where you upload your photos from the camera to your computer and then open them in the program. You can then begin to perform all kinds of editing tasks including more advanced cropping, change the file size or format, adjust color saturation, contrast and brightness, and apply special effects.
There are several good free digital photo editing software programs available for download that can fit the bill for most common photo editing needs. All you have to do is perform a search for "free photo editing software" and you should have plenty of results to choose from.
But there are two programs for sale that seem to meet the needs of most average photographers whether novices or even serious hobbyists, and they are Adobe Photoshop Elements and Corel Paint Shop Pro 9. Both of these programs are very highly rated in most independent and consumer reviews as being very easy to learn and use, while also handling most any editing task that the average photographer could need.
For even more high end photo editing the full Adobe PhotoShop program will provide enough editing power to meet the needs and expectations of even the most discriminating photographers, but expect to pay quite a bit more for the added power and capability.
It should be clear then that regardless of the amount and scope of photo editing that you intend to do, there is a program that will let you do exactly what you want.
Both Dale Basye & Jim Johnson are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Dale Basye has sinced written about articles on various topics from Digital Camera, Digital Photography and Digital Camera. Dale Basye, part of the Curiosity Group (www.curiositygroup.com) in Portland, Oregon, writes frequently about digital photography.Discover great resources for learning about. Dale Basye's top article generates over 1300 views. to your Favourites.