Many of the techniques used in traditional photography also apply to digital photography. The composition of the picture, use of light, line, shape, pattern, etc. also apply to digital photography. Three elements that are different in digital photography are white balance, picture resolution, and digital effects.
White Balance
In a traditional camera, film records and determines the colors of the scene captured in the photograph. As digital cameras have no film to interpret color, they use white balance settings for this purpose. These settings (called Kelvin temperature ratings) are represented by symbols for sun, indoor light, clouds and shade on most digital displays and can be manually selected. The Auto function, however, enables the camera to adjust the settings automatically. For most non-professional needs, this is quite satisfactory.
Some digital cameras contain a histogram function that will also help you adjust your light exposure.
Resolution
Digital cameras record images in pixels. If you expand a picture on your computer with graphic software by zooming in on the picture, you will eventually see the picture rendered as a series of colored dots. The more dots per inch in a picture, the higher the resolution. High-resolution photos have better image quality and bigger file sizes as well.
Many digital cameras on the market allow the user to select the low or high-resolution settings. Since resolution affects file size, more of the photos taken in low resolution can be stored in your camera at a time. High-resolution images may saved in BMP, TIFF, or RAW image formats. These are large file type images. High resolution settings vary with each camera. A low resolution setting on one camera is a high resolution setting on another. It all depends on the camera’s megapixel resolution that could be anywhere in the range of .1 megapixels to 9.1 megapixels.
Resolution is an important consideration when buying your digital camera. If you are only going to be using your images on the web, very high-resolution images will not be as mandatory for you (although high resolution graphics allow more manipulation of the graphic in graphics software programs). Web images are typically lower resolution images since file size is a consideration for the web. If you are going to be printing your images, however, high resolution is necessary for a quality print. To be able to expand an image for an 8x10 print is going to require a high-resolution graphic for a good quality photo.
Digital Effects
Many digital cameras also have built-in effects that can be used to change the presentation of your photos. Fisheye is an example of one such feature that will reshape an image giving it a totally different effect. Soft-focus, Portrait, Scene, Landscape, and Wide-angle are some of the focusing effect capabilities that your digital cameral may have. These are nice features to have fun with. If you have a graphics software program, your images can be further manipulated once you have downloaded your images to your computer.
How to choose a digital camera
With so much to choose from it seems impossible to decide on which camera to buy. There are a lot of variables between models but these shouldn’t be allowed to cloud the selection process.
For the average photographer, someone who needs the camera for everyday family snapshots and vacation photos, the best starting point is to decide what size camera is most comfortable.
This means that before worrying about mega-pixels and zoom lenses you should first decide between a tiny pocket camera or something bigger and, perhaps, easier to hold. Both have their perks. The pocket camera will be with you all the time as it takes up little room. On the other hand, the bigger cameras often have greater zooms, stronger flashes and extra features. As great as that sounds, the last thing you want is a camera that just sits around because you couldn’t be bothered to take such a cumbersome thing with you.
By this point you’ve actually managed to eliminate half the cameras available. Now I recommend looking at the different optical zoom capabilities available. The average zoom is 3X with some small cameras offering up to 5X and larger cameras offering up to 12X. Is more zoom better? To a certain degree, yes. For someone who likes to take pictures of their children playing sports or animals in the wild, a larger zoom will likely pay off. If “zooming in” is something you’ll rarely do, then find assurance in the fact that you can easily zoom into a digital picture after the fact no matter what type of lens you used.
There are still a lot of cameras out there to choose from but, by now, pricing things out will become easy. What other differences should you look at? For one thing, brand name. I always recommend sticking with a brand that has a photographic history you trust. Canon tends to be not only an innovator but also a market leader and they are joined at the top of the sales charts by Sony and Kodak. Nikon, Fuji, Pentax, Olympus and Samsung are other—but not the only—good manufacturers to look at.
The difference in quality between their end results is slim, especially from the point of view of a home photographer. Some use lenses that are technically superior, but the truth is that even a bad lens these days is still pretty good. Kodak and HP tend to boast the easiest cameras to use with Canon and Sony backing their cameras up with tons of extra features. Other cameras are waterproof, have larger screens and even allow you to connect to a computer wirelessly. Choosing between these perks is a personal thing as it won’t affect your photo’s quality.
I leave mega-pixels until last for a reason. Unless you plan on making poster sized prints, in which case you’d need a 6mp to 8mp, anything above 3mp will do a great job. If you can afford a little more after getting the other features you want then splurge on a higher mega-pixel; once in a while it’ll pay off. If not, don’t fret. Your photos will still look wonderfully crisp.
Article written by Rita
I am a housewife, and I also worked at one private company. My hobby of photography
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