Digital Photography Basics

What are the basics of digital photography? I grabbed my digital camera ($200 bought at Best Buy) and my laptop to figure it out. First, I did a little research online. I read several pages of information. Most pages talked about shutter speed, aperture, digital sensors and such. I thought to myself wow, this is going to be complicated. So I pulled my camera out of its case to see where in the world all these settings are located at. Guess what? I have no settings like that on my camera. So I figure since I am probably an average user like most of you out there reading this article, your camera is probably similar to mine. So I am not going to bore you with technical mumbo jumbo. We are going to keep it simple here.

I am sure you know to put batteries in the camera, power it on and then point and click to take your picture. I would definitely recommend before you take any pictures to look over your user manual and check out the features you have on your camera. For example, I have a night, landscape, sport, and portrait setting for taking pictures. If I want to take a picture of my cute dogs snuggling together on the couch, I put it on the portrait setting and snap away. If I want to take an action shot of my son skate boarding down the road, I put it on the sport setting. You also need to set the quality of the shots on your camera. The higher quality the picture, the more memory it takes, so less pictures can be stored in your camera. And of course vice versa, the lower the quality more can be stored. I personally don't see a problem with high quality shots. If you download them regularly to your pc, you won't have a storage problem.

Don't forget about holding the camera correctly and making sure the optics are clean. Digital cameras are getting smaller by the day. You don't want to take shots of your cousins wedding and then realize you have several pictures of your finger. Make sure you keep your fingers away from the lens with your index finger on the shutter button and your thumb on the back to hold the camera steady. Also, it is really easy to get finger prints on your camera lens. This makes your pictures come out fuzzy. Make sure you clean your lens regularly with the correct cloth and solution.