Taken in beautiful Bright at a friend's home using a Pentax K10

Personally, I love using a digital SLR as it just enables those few extra options which enhance the subject and add to the fact that digitial photography is such a wonderful hobby. The setting used in this photograph was using moderate aperture which in turn creates a shallow depth of field and an out of focus effect in the foreground and background. Experiment yourself using the different settings mentioned in the last post, and you create a great professional looking digital photograph.

If you’re feeling creative, then you can experiment and try some special effects. Most people are aware that this can be done quite easily within a wide range of editing software. As well, there is generally an option to create these different effects on your camera, in particular with digital SLR’s . You can select a mode for black and white or sepia or even for special filter effects. For instance, you can have color-toned pictures in green, yellow, purple or red. One tip is to take the photo you want as is, and then one of the filtered shots as one can’t re-create the original picture once the color information has been removed. This is how the effects work on a digital camera. All the color information from the photo is removed and you’re left with the color effect that you wanted.

In the days of 35mm cameras, the keen photographer would use filters. Today, this is all built-in to your digital camera or you can be very inventive with your editing software program.

As always, I suggest that you experiment with your digital camera. There is definitely no better teacher than failure and success. In the meanwhile just enjoy!

Well, for most who just want to ’snap’ a photo with their digital camera will often choose the Auto setting. The only changes that you would make if you choose this setting would be exposure levels, flash mode, self-timer, close-up and digital zoom, or image resolution. For instance, if you wanted enough quality for some form of presentation, then you would choose 300 dpi resolution ( dpi stands for dots per inch). Digital photography gives you all of these options to have the opportunity to produce the best photo for the purpose for which you need to use it.

If you have an SLR digital camera then you can have the ability to control more of the settings on your camera.
The following shows some of these various modes:
*Aperure priority mode (A) This allows you to manually set the aperture priority while your digital camera changes the setting depending on the lighting and preset sensitivity. By the way, it is interesting to note that aperture priority is often used for portraits as it allows you to cause your subject to be really noticeable without having a distracting background.

* Shutter priority mode (S or TV). This is when you set the shutter speed and your camera decides the lens aperture to match it. This is very handy if you want to take action shots and want to create a blurred background.

* Manual mode (M). This gives you full control over both aperture and shutter speed and possibly manual focus. If you use this, then you want full control over depth of field, exposure levels and focusing.

This is a general outline to show you some of the options you have to enhance the digital photos that you take. As always, I suggest that experimentation is a great teacher. Allow yourself experimentation time and you will really produce some great photos. Good luck!

*

You’ve just managed to take this great shot with your digital camera, but alas when printed the faces come up with that annoying red-eye. After all, doesn’t digital photography provide red-eye reduction? Well, yes, but it is just that red-eye REDUCTION and under certain conditions red-eye will be evident in the best framed photo. Red-eye occurs because the light emitted from the flash (which is close to the camera lens) passes through the wide-open pupil of the eye, and illuminates the red color retina at the back of the eye. A couple of ways of avoiding this are:

1. Use a the pre-flash function on the camera (red-eye reduction). This has the effect of reducing the pupil size if the subject is less than two metres away.

2. Don’t photograph blue-eyed blondes (they tend to have larger pupils in low light situations than brown-eyed people. (use of a photo editor would actually be a wiser choice here)

3. Change the image to black and white or sepia.

4. Use a photo editor to fix the problem. Special dye pens remove red-eye from photographic prints.

By the way, there was no such problem when flash guns were attached to a camera, and were too far away from the camera lens to illuminate the retina of the eye.

Many imaging programs, including those in photographic stores have features that enable you to edit out the red-eye and replacing it with black.

Continue to have a great time enjoying your digital photography. The best teacher is experimenting yourself, remembering what features you used, and making note of the effect and presentation of your final photo.
Until next time, Cheers, Deb.