Digital photography has come a long way in producing high quality pictures, but contrary to popular belief, this cannot be achieved simply by pointing the camera at an object and clicking. Understanding certain concepts is necessary in order to achieve exceptional picture quality e.g. automatic flash, no flash, forced flash, twilight mode, natural light and red-eye reduction. The following should help in clarifying certain misconceptions.

Automatic Flash

Most digital cameras offer an automatic flash setting, which simply means that the camera will automatically gauge whether the use of flash is necessary. Once this calculation is complete the flash will go off if needed. In many cases this is the best option to choose, but there are exceptions.

Forced Flash

This feature should be used in cases where very bright light exists behind the object being photographed. This background light will cause a shadow to be cast over the subject. If your camera is set to automatic flash, this shadow will cause the flash to go off, creating an inappropriate effect. Use of the forced flash setting would, on the other hand, eliminate the shadow.

No Flash

This option is ideal in situations where the existing light is dim and the subject is too far away for the flash to have an effect, when photographing a bright object with a dark background (use of flash will erase lights in the picture), or in settings where flash photography is prohibited. The one thing to keep in mind when using this option is that the camera must be kept very steady.

Natural Light

In most cases, if used correctly, natural light is really the best option for producing vibrant pictures. If sunlight is available, snapping the picture at just the right angle is necessary to avoid glare. Squinting, although is still a common problem when using bright light. As far as natural lighting goes, cloudy days are best. Not only is shadowing not a problem but the picture itself has an additional softness to it.

Twilight mode

The twilight mode setting is best when your subject is surrounded by darkness. This option will clearly light your subject, maintaining the dark backdrop, as long as the object is within flash range.

Red-Eye Reduction

This seldom desired effect is the result of the flash reflecting off the eyes’ retina. The red-eye reduction feature instructs the camera to set off multiple flashes in order to eliminate the effect. Once again the subject must be within range of the flash as well as looking directly at the camera.

It is not to say that without the above information you will never achieve a decent picture, but committing these tips to memory will surely improve the quality of your photography as well as bring memories to life more accurately.

This digital photography tip article is brought to you by award-winning professional photographer Warren Lynch. Exciting articles gives both beginners and advance digital camera enthusiast the leg up. With cutting-edge digital photography blogs, forum and review resources.

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In any digital photography session, whether it be portrait photography or photography at a birthday party it takes prior knowledge to getting “perfect people” digital photos.

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Digital photography represents nothing less than a revolution in the way we take and manipulate images. Even so, the basic fundamentals of film photography apply with digital. Both require a lens to focus light and a shutter to let that light pass into the camera. The principal difference between digital and film photography is how the image is captured.

Traditionally, you needed to have your film developed in a darkroom using various chemicals (none of which were very environmentally friendly). The process of developing the film produces “negatives” that needed to be further processed and printed before any usable image was produced. Needless to say, the moment that the shutter was originally snapped is long gone by the time you actually see the product of your image making. With digital, the image is captured using an electronic sensor. This sensor is made up of millions of individual “pixels”, or picture elements, that convert light into a zero or one (binary code). Thus, instead of waiting days or weeks (at best, hours) to see your image, with a digital camera, you see it almost instantaneously.

The quality of the image with a digital camera depends in large part to the number of pixels it has. This is commonly referred to as the “resolution” of the digital camera, and can be expressed as a dimension (800 x 600), or the number of pixels per inch. 800 x 600 is a common resolution for computer screens. A screen with this resolution will display 800 pixels from side to side, and 600 from top to bottom, totaling 480,000 pixels. Modern digital photography normally uses a much higher resolution than your average computer screen, going up into the millions of pixels, or megapixels. Thus, a camera with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 represents 3.1 megapixels.

We know that each pixel is represented by a number. The color scale of that pixel is determined by the size of the number. Black and white images can be produced by pixels a mere 8 bits in length. A quick refresher in binary arithmetic tells us that an 8 bit number represents a decimal number between 0 and 256. Therefore, and black and white image can have 255 shades of gray, plus black, 0, and white, 256.

For color, we need more bits. At 16 bits per pixel, we can have a color scale with 65,536 different shades. 24 bits brings that into the millions. Most digital cameras nowadays use 24 bits, with some professional equipment utilizing all of 48 bits for a whopping 280 billion shades. That’s a lot of color!

Several factors affect the quality of a digital camera. Pixel resolution is normally considered the most important one. To choose and adequate pixel resolution, you should take into consideration the size of images you wish to print - or if you are going to print your images at all. The number of pixels in an image doesn’t change, so larger images will have fewer pixels per inch, resulting in a loss of detail that will continually degrade the larger the picture gets.

Most photo labs print images at 300 pixels per inch. Use this as a base to calculate the megapixel resolution for your digital camera. A two megapixel camera at 300 pixels per inch will produce a maximum print size of 5.8″ x 3.8″, less than the standard 4″x8″. Considering a four megapixel camera will produce a print, at 300 pixels per inch, of 8.2′ x 5.4″.

There is nothing stopping you from printing larger pictures, of course. These are just guidelines. A 200-pixel-per-inch image isn’t as sharp as the standard 300 pixels per inch, but for many purposes can still be quite acceptable. At this resolution, you can bet images up to 8.7″ x 5.8″ with a two megapixel camera, all the way up to a 12.2″ x 8.2″ image from a four megapixel camera.

Now that we have pixels and megapixels swimming in your head, it’s time to step back and just enjoy all the advantages offered by modern digital photography.

Tom Schueneman is a freelance travel writer and photographer, web publisher, sound engineer, and general gadget hound.
He publishes a digital photography resource site at http://www.digital-photography-central.com
You can see some of his travel photos at http://www.touristtravel.com/travel_photo_gallery.htm

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