The beginner digital camera has indeed come a long way in the last few years. They are fast, take high quality images, and have an army of features to help you shoot. However, a beginner digital camera is not a magic wand. Ultimately it is the photographer who frames or composes the shot, chooses the decisive moment to shoot, and must own up to the outcome. The best way to shoot great photographs is to know what your beginner digital camera can do, and what it cannot. Once you are familiar with the features and their implications, the camera becomes an extension of your hand – freeing your mind for the aesthetic and artistic aspects of photography.

Read Your Manual!

This is so patently self-evident that I am sure you are wondering why I even brought it up in my discussion, let alone at the top. Of course, how would you know how your beginner digital camera works if you don’t read the instruction literature? You will be surprised just how many people get hold of a brand new beginner digital camera and start snapping photographs right away, without bothering to look at the camera manual.

Listen to the guys who created the beginner digital camera. They might have a lot to tell you about and help you take better pictures. I know, many of the beginner digital camera user manuals say the same thing, but there is always that special something you could miss out on if you do not read the manual.

So read it thoroughly at least once, and keep it close by in case something comes up that you’d like to clarify.

See what you’ve shot!

Your beginner digital camera has an LCD display where you can review the picture immediately after you shoot it. That’s the major USP of digital cameras as far as I am concerned. Most people don’t even begin to appreciate what a stupendous amount of difference that makes. Take it from me – now that digital photography is here, you don’t have to live through the worries of shooting on film as people did in the past. “Did the subject blink when the shutter was pressed?” “Would the studio develop the film right?”

Once you shoot a picture, don’t forget to check it. If you’re hard pressed for time, review after you have taken the emergency shots. If you don’t like what you see, make the necessary adjustments in your beginner digital camera – be it composition, exposure, lighting or whatever – and take another snap. After all, it’s digital photography; you are not wasting film or money when you take extra photos!  You should worry only about missing a great picture.

In digital cameras you have got a good thing going; use it to reshoot for the perfect shot.

Autofocus / Auto-exposure Lock

A beginner digital camera invariably has the AF/AE Lock feature. Pressing down the shutter halfway will activate AF/AE Lock and the camera doesn’t change its focus or exposure settings thereafter – whichever direction you point it. You can now move your camera and frame the shot any way you want. Once you feel you’ve got the perfect composition, shoot!

This option is very convenient for off center composing – when the subject is anywhere but bang in the middle of the frame. That makes compositional sense as well. 

Exposure of a picture, that is, how bright or dark it is, depends on the amount of light on the subject. Point your beginner digital camera at a bright subject and the image on your LCD will immediately darken, and pointing at something dark will brighten it. Subjects in the middle of a frame are given more importance by most cameras – especially the beginner digital camera. So shifting the lens even a little bit might change the exposure a great deal if the change brings something darker to the centre of the frame.

Playing around with the AF/AE Lock on your beginner digital camera also help you get very interesting lighting effects. One thing to remember here is that there can be more than one proper exposure for a single shot – it all depends on the effect you want. If you are shooting a portrait with strong highlights and shadows, pointing the lens at the shadows will show that part of the face in greater detail, but “burn out” (overexpose or make too bright) the portion where light falls. If you exposed for the highlights, the shadow portion would be too dark while the highlights would be properly exposed. Both may be acceptable, depending on the mood you want to capture in the portrait. 

A couple of points would be pertinent here.

1. Half pressing the shutter release button to activate the AF/AE Lock also locks the focus. So if you want to retain focus, the subject’s distance from the camera should not change when you recompose the shot. 

2. When you activate the AF/AE Lock your camera will do all the hard work – calculating the exposure and focus, that is. So when you finally press the shutter, the picture is shot immediately. That redresses “shutter lag”, a common complaint with the beginner digital camera and even some advanced ones. 

Use the Flash

The built in flash in a beginner digital camera does not pack a lot of punch. It can nevertheless be a really versatile feature to have. Some cameras have a separate flash button with a lightning symbol, while others provide it in the menu. Check out the flash options to see what the camera has to offer. Most will have a default auto flash setting, a flash off mode, a flash on or forced flash mode, and a slow shutter sync mode. Here are some of the issues connected with flash photography with a beginner digital camera:

1. Using the default auto flash will leave it to the camera to decide when to use the flash. It is generally a safe bet for many lighting situations, but I’d rather keep the flash off. The built in flash throws a flat, unflattering and harsh light when the subject is up close, and throws a hard shadow if the background is near the subject. Natural light is always better for most scenes.

2. But there are times when the flash on your beginner digital camera is necessary. The light can be too low, for example, or there can be uneven light on the subject that you want to fill out. The subject may be in the shadow while the background is bright and well lit. Under such circumstances I would like to switch to the flash on mode. The puny flash on a beginner digital camera is excellent as a “fill flash” – something that fills out the shadows on a subject nearby while the ambient light is not affected too much.

3. With the slow sync mode, the camera uses a “long exposure” or slow shutter speed to allow in some of the existing light, while the subject is captured sharply with the flash. If the camera is not held steady in such a situation, the background will blur – which can be a curse or a boon depending on the way you look at it or the kind of effect you want!

Fast Action

A beginner digital camera user may often find it hard to capture moving subjects with their camera. Fast action photography can be tough for advanced users and pros as well, so there is nothing to be frustrated about. Such situations can include moving objects like cars, animals, sports action, and even kids who can be really quick and unpredictable in their movement! Here are some ways to get a good action shot:

1. Planning the shot beforehand and anticipating the point when you want to freeze action will help a lot. Then you can half press the shutter to activate the AF/AE lock and reduce shutter lag.

2. Panning the camera, that is following the subject with it, reduces the relative speed of a moving object and makes the picture sharper. An optical viewfinder is better than the LCD for this purpose. Following through smoothly after you have pressed the shutter also helps keep the picture sharp.

3. Compensate the shutter lag of your beginner digital camera by shooting it before your intended moment.

4. Using a flash also helps freeze action.

5. You can opt for the Sports or Action scene mode in your camera.

 

Advanced Exposure Control

Exposure Compensation

A great many beginner digital camera is likely to have the exposure compensation feature. It has a simple +/- scale and you can go either way usually in multiples of 0.5 or 1/3. Setting the plus, say +0.5 indicates brightening of the picture (overexposure) while minus e.g. -1.0 indicates darkening of the picture (underexposure) that you are going to shoot. Used with the exposure lock option, you can get considerable creative control in your photographs.

Manual Exposure and Scene Modes

Your beginner digital camera can give you even more creative control if it has scene shooting modes and aperture-priority, shutter-priority, or even full manual exposure options. The last three features are usually available in the high end models, or more advanced “prosumers” and digital SLRs.

Scene modes come in all varieties. Some of the more common ones are –

Automatic

Portrait

Macro / Close up

Landscape

Night

Sports / Action

Snow scene

Children

Seaside

Birthday

Building

There can be many other scene modes on a beginner digital camera, with some models going up to twenty or more.

 

The Graph Doesn’t Lie

Many beginner digital camera have a feature known as a “histogram”. It shows the tones in an image in terms of a graph, from the highlights to the mid-tones to the shadows. The histogram can display live in the LCD in some cameras. This is a particularly useful feature because the LCD often fails to give a true indication of the brightness or darkness of a picture – but the histogram always does. A good way to go about using it is to take a few preliminary shots in a particular situation and check the histogram after each. You can then adjust the exposure settings and start the real shooting.

The Last Word

Double check

This is worth reiterating. No matter how few photo-opportunities you get, shoot a lot of pictures and check what you have shot. This is what a beginner digital camera is all about – you get to see the results immediately. Invest in a spare battery set and a large memory card, a missed shot can be much more expensive!  

Start shooting

Trust me when I say this: anyone can learn how to shoot great photographs with a beginner digital camera. The only requirements are learning its strengths and limitations. Surely you don’t expect your camera to jump up, set exposure, compose and shoot a masterpiece! That, my friend, is what you have to do.

And let me also remind you that nobody ever learnt photography by just reading about it. So get out there and learn as you shoot with your beginner digital camera!