for beginners

My tips for beginners with Digital Cameras

No, I'm no pro and have a lot to learn. Hopefully, that will happen. Meanwhile, I love practicing with my digital camera. If you have not yet taken the step to move to digital, there may be a few useful tips for you here. Some of my pictures live at http://www.sticksite.com/photos/

In June 2005 I added a CANON EOS-20D D-SLR camera, 8.2 Megapixels. It did not work for me; it is an SLR camera and the shutter makes so much noise it frightened the deer. So, in July I got the Panasonic DMC-FZ20 (5Mp) which I am beginning to like more and more. With a 1Gb SD card it will hold about 400 hi-res pictures. In 2007, I added the Canon S5IS and teleconverter lens.

1. Reasons for a Digital Camera:

• you can take a LOT of pictures, depending on the size of your camera's memory card or stick¹
• you can see the pictures immediately and delete the ones you don't like and then re-take them
• no waiting for film to be full before you can take it in for processing
• no processing cost; no film cost
• with your pictures digitized you can "fix" them and apply all sorts of "effects" to them (EXAMPLE HERE)
• digitized pictures can be shared with zero cost and put onto websites for the world to see²
• you can put copies of your pictures on CDs and make all the backups you need³
• with digitized pictures you can make slideshows on CD and share them⁴
• Hewlett-Packard has a set of websites with lots of good information about digital photography at http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/cache/886-0-0-39-121.aspx
• I use mine a great deal for taking picturs of Diamond Willow sticks which I sell worldwide.
• Here is one more VERY nice way a digital camera can be of great help. I built a VERY NICE picnic table and took pictures of every step of the process. I then emailed the pictures and text to a magazine and they published it, paying me handsomely for it. Then I decide to GIVE the plans to the whole world, pictures and all. The result is one of my most popular websites, at http://www.sticksite.com/picnic/index.html

2. What to look for when buying a digital camera:

• get a camera with a "Spot Meter"⁵
• get a camera with 3.2 MegaPixels or more⁶
• get a camera with 128 Megabytes of memory or more⁶
• make sure that you can view the pictures on the LCD on the back of the camera and can enlarge them there too⁷
• try to get one with a Carl Zeiss lens if possible; they are about the best, and a lens is CRITICAL to good pix
• it will probably be wise to get at least one extra battery and more memory
• if you are going to photograph wildlife, you will want a high "optical zoom" and a strong telephoto lens (ignore the digital zoom)⁸
• "movie mode" may disappoint you; the picture may be much smaller than you expected
• check to see that the camera does not make too much (shutter) noise
• check out Steve's Digicams at http://www.steves-digicams.com/

3. A few TIPS for taking good digital pictures and using them:

• RULE #1: Take Lots; Delete Most
• the more sunlight the better
• use your spot meter⁵
• look at your pictures carefully to make sure you have good pictures before you move on⁷
• taking a pic of something visible for only a split second, hold the shutter part-way in until the object is where you want it⁹
• back up your important pictures and store the backup away from the camera and computer
• do NOT attach a FULL-size picture to e-mails; the recipient may be very unhappy¹⁰
• you can get a free screen-saver program that will show YOUR own pictures as an "all day slideshow"¹¹
• when taking a picture, try to "compose" it so as to make it pleasing to the eye
• keep a plastic bag in your camera bag for on cold mornings¹²
• keep your operator's manual in your camera bag as well
• consider making a website for your pictures and telling "everyone" where they can go to view them, RATHER than emailing them pictures¹³
• be sure to keep your lens clean; never touch it with a finger
• watch your "depth of field" when taking pictures¹⁴
• use the "series" method of numbering your pictures as you take them, rather than the "normal" method if the camera allows it¹⁵
• don't use a high (more than 80) ISO setting unless you must due to very low light

4. About your OLD pictures and slides; taken on FILM:

• scanners are very cheap; you can scan them, thereby digitizing them so you can keep them in your computer or on CD
• see below on fixing pictures; scanned pictures often need some fixing

5. How you can "fix" your pictures:

• Once you realize all the neat things you can do with digitized pictures, you should start "building a toolbox of photo tools"¹⁶
• the most common "effects" that I apply to pictures are:
• crop them
• lighten or darken them
• fix scratches and remove "noise" caused by dust on scanned photos and slides
• add text to them
• add picture frames to them
• rotate them
• remove red-eye
• resize them
• all kinds of other neat things, limited only by your own imagination!

6. Some ideas for subjects for your pictures:

clouds, waterfalls, (fall) colors, snow/ice, sunsets and sunrises, (family) activities, birds, animals, insects, flowers, rocks, buildings, mushrooms, roads, spiderwebs, fields with crops, lightning, fire etc. etc.

1. for example, my 1Gb SD Card will hold about 400 pictures, each 2560x1920 pixels

2. sharing your pictures: the more you share them with friends and family, the less danger of losing them in case of a disaster such as a house fire. AND who does not like to receive a CD with a slide show?

3. A computer can crash and if all your pictures are only on your computer, you can lose everything. You should put at least your more important ones on CDs and store these so that if your computer was stolen or crashed, or if you house burned down, your pictures would be safe someplace else.

4. you can even make an "automatic starting" slide show that will run on any computer

5. the Spot Meter: This is something I'd never go without. When you aim your camera at, for example, a baseball player on the field and the sky behind him is very bright, the camera will say, "Hey, this is a very bright situation, I'll use a small aperture and a fast shutter on this one." Result: a picture of a nice - looking sky with a pitch-black ball player. No way to recognize him. A Spot Meter allows you to avoid this. Turn it on and you'll see a small "+" in the middle of your viewfinder. Set the + on the ball player and the camera will say, "Hey, I have to set my shutter and aperture so that the ball player is exposed properly and just ignore everything else." Result: ball player is recognizable but the sky is over-exposed. I hope to show the result of such a situation here:

Here I put the + of the spot meter on the plywood wall; the result is that the wood is properly exposed at the expense of the outside being grossly over-exposed.	Here I put the + on the open window with the result that the outside is properly exposed but the inside walls are grossly under-exposed.	Here I did not use the spot meter at all; outside is over-exposed and inside is under-exposed

6. There is a lot of hype about the more megapixels the better. Bottom line is that if you want to print out enlarged photos, more is better. See also footnote 1.

7. when I set my camera to "Play" and a picture is displayed, I can use the "zoom / wide-angle" slider to enlarge the picture and the main menu button to move the picture around so I can see it all. This is very handy for making sure a picture you just took is clear.

8. The "digital zoom" in a camera is garbage. The quality is so bad you'll never use it. Trust me.

9. pushing the shutter button partway down: Using my own experience, I wish I'd learned this sooner. I was trying to take pictures of beavers for my beaver site at http://www.sticksite.com/beavers/index.html and wanted a picture of a beaver slapping his big, flat tail on the water and diving. Every time I looked at the resulting picture, all I got was a bit of wave action. The picture was taken later than when I pushed the button down. THEN I learned and now here is what I do: aim the camera at the beaver as it is swimming and press the shutter button half-way down. I follow the beaver and the moment he slaps his tail, I press the button the rest of the way down. No more problem. Here is one resulting picture:

10. for more information of the proper way to use e-mail see http://www.sticksite.com/email.html

11. You can get a FREE slideshow program called gPhotoShow from http://www.bottin.com and it can use your own photos and your own music. Note that the latest version of the free one is 1.5.0 as of October 16, 2004. Speaking of this, here is an idea: if you have an elder member in your family, and you also happen to have (or can buy) an old computer, put all your (family) pictures and this screen saver into that computer and put that into the family member's apartment for an all day slide show.

12. The idea of the plastic bag is simly this: If you use your camera outside in a cold place and then bring it indoors where it is warm and where the relative humidity is higher, moisture may condense inside and on the outside of the camera. Avoid this by putting the camera into the plastic bag when moving back into the warmer, more moist area.

13. If you are into taking a lot of pictures and sharing them, you might consider a "BLOG" site; my son does this; he travels a lot and updates his blog constantly, no matter where he is in the world. You can see his excellent pictures at http://www.pixelpuddle.com/blog and he would probably appreciate any comments you might wish to leave there for him.

14. your picture's "depth of field": SOMEtimes it is good to have the main subject of your picture close to the camera and in focus and have the background blurry so as not to distract from the main subject. Other times you want everything clear and sharp, whether close to the camera or far away. You can control this by manually setting the aperture: the size of the hole that lets in the light: The smaller the hole, the greater the depth of field. F11 means the aperture hole is very small; F2.8 means it is open much larger. If you set the aperture (hole) to a small size, the camera will automatically adjust so that the picture will not be too dark; it will leave the shutter open a bit longer.

Here is an example; on this "Natural Totem Pole" I wanted, in the first picture, to show as much of the pole as possible, clear and sharp so I manually set the camera to use a very small aperture opening: F11. The camera decided to set the shutter to be open for 1/30 of a second.

In the second picture, I wanted to show only a short distance of the pole to be clear and sharp so I set the aperture at F2.8. This is quite a large opening, letting in a lot of light in a hurry, so the camera decided to leave the shutter open for only 1/500 of a second.

15. Use the "series" method of numbering: Your camera may number your pictures automatically with file names such as "DSC00082.JPG." Then you download your pictures into your computer and clear the camera's memory and start over. Next day you go to download the day's pictures into the computer (same folder) again and you have a problem: that folder ALREADY has pictures with those file names. You might be able to overcome this problem if you can set your camera to number them "in series" instead. If you do that, it will remember the last number used and next time, start at the next sequential number. Then you can download pictures every day into the same folder.

Speaking of this, I like to rename my pictures to use "lower case" only; no capital letters. This is because some webhosts cannot handle upper case file names and uploading them to a website there will cause problems. Plus, I like to stick with the old "8.3" file length again because some places cannot handle the newer, longer file names. For some wonderful FREE software to rename files, get Jan Falke's "RenameFiles version 2.41 at http://it-falke.com/us_index.php. It is wonderful.

16. there is lots of FREE computer software available on the internet for doing all sorts of neat things with/to your pictures; here is my toolbox:

• IRFANVIEW; my all-time favorite. See my notes about it at http://tinyurl.com/6cjm
• PaintShop Pro (NOT free) from http://www.jasc.com has an incredible feature for fixing photos instantly. Strongly recommended. I played with it a bit and made some notes which live at http://www.sticksite.com/ps/ps.html
• PhotoShop: very expensive but you get what you pay for. LOTS of learning to do......... be warned
• JPEG Cleaner: a tool to remove all "Non-Picture information" in a picture file. A photo saved as a JPG has a lot of information saved with/in that file besides only the picture. This free tool can remove it or part of it. With a test picture, the original picture was 273,311 bytes and after running it through this program, it was reduced by 58,409 bytes. This extra information about the picture is called the "EXIF data." This free tool comes from http://www.rainbow-software.org/ To see what EXIF data is saved with your pictures, get the free program from http://home.pacbell.net/michal_k/
• Rejpeg: This is a "Must Have." Free from http://sergeweb.free.fr/utilitaires.htm and written by Ryan Rubley. I realize this website is in French; the program is not so you'll have no difficulty with it. What it does is amazing. It will reduce the size of the picture file to whatever level of compression suits you. Frequently you can cut the file size by 50% or more. BUT; KEEP your originals too! Compressing a picture file is very important if you want to put the picture on a website. The larger the file size, the longer it takes to download.
• Another neat (FREE) photo-tool is DCE or Digital Photo Enhancer from http://www.mediachance.com/digicam/enhancer.htm.
• I'm told that Picasa, free from Google, is excellent. http://picasa.google.com/

The Paintshop Pro "instant fix" tool for photos is virtually a "requirement" for anyone using a digital camera; even pictures which you thought were perfect, can probably be improved. Here is an example:

For MORE information:

You may have heard Kim Komando on radio or seen her on TV or you might be receiving her electronic newsletters. She wrote about her book: "The title is The 50 Greatest Secrets of Digital Photography. You'll find it in my e-store at: http://www.komando.com/estore/comersus_dynamicIndex.asp"

Another place with "tons" of information lives at http://dpfwiw.com/#page_index

ken@sticksite.com