making photos with compact digital camera

[Paul&John]

Hi there!

So i got a compact digital camera (nikon coolpix, 7.1mpx) and i don't know if I suck or this machine, but only 1-2 photos out of 20 are good...
Talking about making regular family photos (outdoors, indoors), not content
Anyone has a good tutorial how to make good pics with a compact camera?

Thanks!

[thebes]

I don't know what the capabilities of your camera are, but generally I am under-impressed with point-and-shoots. They have a smaller sensor, so they get more noise, more of certain kinds of artifacts, and the depth-of-field is generally very deep except in extreme circumstances. Megapixels really aren't all that when you compare pixel quality and sensor size and quality.They are slow to operate, often taking only a picture ever 10 seconds or so. Also, normally they lack any means of syncing an external flash.... you will rarely get good pictures with direct flash.

Learn how to use natural light and maybe a reflector (try aluminum foil taped to some cardboard - cheep and functional).

Also learn composition techniques, like leading lines, the rule of thirds, symmetrical and asymmetrical composition, spot of vivid color, etc. Google some of this stuff.

Another good, general, bit of advice which I learned from a former National Geographic photojournalist and editor- "If its not good enough, you're not close enough". Get INTO the picture, see how lines and forms interact.

Shoot a lot. When I shot film for a couple of newspapers I would shoot 2 or 3 rolls for 1 picture that was published. I would shoot 5-10 rolls for a 3-5 picture photo story. Now with adult I shoot around 3x the number of images I intend to end up in the final set, much more if the content is just for ads. There are different styles of shooting, slow and contemplative with a 4x5 field camera gets you 5 good pictures a day (out of 5-10), but shooting fast is better for most situations.

Lastly, get a real camera when you can make some decent pictures. A dslr seems really expensive. They are much cheaper than film cameras ever were, if you use them... even a d300 will pay for itself vs a free film slr after about 120 rolls of film, which is nothing over a couple years.

[Paul&John]

Thanks for the infos.. i'm not planning to buy a new camera because i make pictures only every 3 months or so.. really just when going on vacation
And i know that with automated compact cameras there aren't many options but still

[paul7]

Yeah these small cameras suck indoor cause of the lasck of light. Outdoor you can make super photos with them but indoor they a little suck. You must set it to indoor option or choose a faster shutter time.

[Paul&John]

And what do i set with the setting: Exp. +/- ? From -2.0 to 2.0 are there options..

[thebes]

Exposure compensation makes your captured image brighter or darker overall. You would want to use +1.5 to +2 if your subject was strongly backlit, like a person inside with mostly a bright window behind them. You would want to use -1.5 or so if your image had mostly black background, like flowers on a black tablecloth. Your camera's metering will try to make the scene it sees a flat neutral grey, on average, and you can normally use a "gray card" to set your metering in tricky situations. Some cameras have matrix type metering which uses a database of exposures taking multiple light readings to compensate for tricky lighting conditions. Play around with exposure compensation and take a few pix of the same thing with different settings, then look at them and a histogram in your photo editing program... you will find that underexposed images become noisy when you make them brighter with software, and overexposed highlights become pasty and odd looking when you make the image dark enough to look good with editing software.

btw, you can use a program like photomatix or photoshop to combine images shot with different exposures to create an image which appears to show a larger dynamic range. This is called HDR. You normally want a tripod to do this and you take an image each at -2, 0, and +2 of a non-moving subject. There are probably some free HDR solutions, but normally most people like photomatix for this, photoshop cs2 and later have HDR tools built in but they are less powerful... google is your friend.

[Paul&John]

Thanks for the explanation. will play around a little on the weekend