Tips for the beginners Digital Photography Chandre Gowda C A

The Correct Way to clean your Camera

Your camera and lenses can easily get covered in dirt and sand during the Outdoors, so theres no better time to give them a clean. Been on the beach or in a dusty location? Then give your bag a clean too, as loose sand or dust can quickly undo all your hard work.

In this image we are showing you step-by-step how to clean your camera in a safe and efficient manner. 01 Equipments and remove dust from overall camera Soft Brush, soft cloth, Air-blower, Lens cleaning liquid. When cleaning delicate photographic kit, its important to remove dirt or grit with a brush or air blower before using any sort of cloth or tissues. This will help to prevent dirt getting trapped in the cleaning cloth, which can potentially scratch the surface that youre trying to get clean.

02 Clean the body With a lens attached to avoid getting dust inside the camera, start by removing any dust or dirt from the outside of the camera and lens using a soft brush. Pay attention to the more inaccessible areas like memory card slots, where dirt is likely to accumulate. 03 Now the viewfinder: Now turn your attention to the viewfinder. If possible, remove the rubber eyecup, and again gently brush off any dust. You can now use a soft cloth or lens-cleaning tissue (not one you also use for lenses, though) and carefully clean the glass of the viewfinder itself. 04 Switch to the screen: Even with a screen protector, LCD screens can become covered in dust, while if youve left it uncovered youll also find that marks and fingerprints can make it tricky to view your images clearly on screen. Clean it using the same type of tissue or cloth as you used for the viewfinder. 05 Lens/filter tips: Use a blower or a brush to remove any dirt or grit, then use a small amount of lens cleaning fluid on a clean tissue or cloth designed to clean lenses and gently wipe the surface of the lens or filter. Use a dry area of the cloth (or a new tissue) to clean off any remaining residue.

Safety & Precautions: Always put cleaning solution on a cloth or tissue, rather than directly on a lens, and use it sparingly. This will prevent excess liquid from getting inside the camera cavity or lens, with potentially catastrophic results.

Many Shots with different settings

During the learning phase never afraid of taking multiple shots of same picture with different Composition, Focal Length and Lighting angles. Try different Focal Length (F stops) to play with Depth of Field (DOF) Try different Shutter Speed to capture the Motion of the object either to freeze the action or to blur the movement.

Exposure Compensation
For Dark Subject with dark background Reduce EV by 2 stops (-2EV) => As the camera assumes it is darker and increases internal brightness by 2 stops, so you need to reduce the EV. For Light Subject with light background Increase EV by 3 stops (+3EV) => Camera assumes the frame is filled with bright objects and reduces the brightness, so you need to increase the EV For White Subject Increase EV by 2 stops (+2EV) => Camera assumes the frame is filled with bright objects and reduces the brightness, so you need to increase the EV

1. Shoot close to sunrise and sunset to achieve more balanced exposures. Shooting during the harsh daylight produces very contrasty light and is difficult to capture details in both the shadow and highlight areas. If it's one thing you take away from this guide it should be this! 2. Compose an image to exclude more and include less; remove any element that does not add to the image. Simplicity is often the key! 3. Shoot in RAW format for maximum quality if any post production editing will be performed later. This is really a big deal! 4. Switch to manual focus and focus one-third of the way into a scene and do not use the smallest aperture of the lens (i.e. f/22). Instead use at least 2-3 stops up from the smallest opening in order to achieve sharper images 5. Use a remote cable release or the self timer in addition to a tripod to increase sharpness. This makes such a big different especially when long exposures are required! To increase sharpness even further, engage the camera's mirror lock-up feature if it comes with one 6. Use Live View in conjunction with full magnification to manually focus. Thank god for Live View! 7. Shoot waterfalls under overcast conditions in order to allow the shutter to remain open for longer in order to achieve that nice silky water movement that you see so often and wonder how it is done! Alternatively, shoot in shutter priority mode (Tv) and dial in a shutter speed of at least 1/15 seconds or better still use an ND filter to achieve the same effect! 8. To achieve turquoise blue water, shoot when the sun is directly positioned overhead; i.e. around midday 9. Compose a scene with naturally occurring lead-in lines within the foreground and use them to guide the viewer to the main subject. An interesting but not dominant foreground also give the image depth 10. Shoot at the lowest possible ISO (i.e. 100) to produce the best possible quality images. Using a tripod will be a big advantage!

Expose to the right. What does this mean using a digital camera's histogram; ensure that the range of tonnes is pushed as far as they can go to the right-hand side of the histogram graph without touching the right-side. Doing this will increase the amount of information recorded in the image and therefore quality! Don't just rely on a single capture to create an image. Taking two or three different exposures and blend them together later in Photoshop by combining the best elements of each. Yep - this is a big secret by the pros! Wherever possible, try to avoid using filters as filters typically soften images and therefore reduce sharpness. As an example, instead of using ND graduated filters capture one image exposed for the foreground and another for the sky and then blend them in Photoshop. If you need to use a filter to achieve an effect (i.e. using an ND filter to achieve a silky water affect) then take a separate image without the filter and another with the filter applied and blend in those are as containing all of the juicy detail that you're after! Always do your homework on a location in preparation for a shoot and if possible ensure that you have visited the location to pre-visualise the optimum composition. Pre-visualise also how the scene would appear under the optimum lighting conditions and then return well in advance of the optimum lighting arriving (i.e. sunset). Use the harsh daylight hours to perform your homework on a location Take multiple captures of water movement until the optimum water movement has been captured. If the water movement is to slow, increase the speed of the ISO and vice versa. Adjusting the ISO only ensures that not only the exposure is left intact but also the depth of field! Capture panoramic images by stitching multiple image captures together. Ensure that the camera is set to manual shooting mode, manual white balance, and manual focus, overlap each image segment by approx 30% and ensure the tripod is perfectly level. Positioning the camera in a portrait orientation will also give you more scope when it comes to cropping! In tricky lighting conditions, experiment using different metering modes rather than always rely on the Evaluative/Matrix metering mode to determine the correct exposure. For example, use the Centre Weighted or Spot metering mode To yield optimum depth of field, use hyper-focal focusing by identifying the hyper-focal distance using both the lens focal length and aperture and then focusing on the hyper-focal distance To further improve depth of field and sharpness and get images appearing tact sharp from the near foreground to the distant background, capture two separate images with the first focused on an element in the foreground and the second on an element in the background. Then blend the two images together later in Photoshop. Photoshop makes this easy by automatically selecting the sharpest sections of both images and combining them!