How to make better and sharper pictures.

Hey peeps! 

Here is some tips for beginners! To help you make better and sharper pictures:

1) Hand-holding rule: If you have a zoom lens that goes beyond 100mm, apply the general hand-holding “rule”, which states that the shutter speed should be equivalent to the distance in mm of the lens.

2) Aperture: Shoot in Aperture-Priority mode and set aperture to the lowest value when you shoot in low light. In aperture-priority mode, you tell the camera what the lens aperture should be (the “f” number, for example f/3.5), while the camera automatically meters and guesses what the shutter speed should be to properly expose the image. So, set your camera to aperture-priority mode and lower the aperture to the lowest possible number.

3) Metering Mode: Set the metering mode provided in your camera, so that the whole scene is assessed to estimate the correct shutter speed. When photographing people or animals, always focus on the closest eye to you. This is very important, especially when dealing with large apertures between f/1.4 and f/2.8. As long as the eye of the subject is sharp, the image will most likely be acceptable.

4) Shutter Speed: After you set the right metering mode and your lens to aperture priority, point it to the subject that you want to photograph and half-press the shutter. Doing so should show you the shutter speed on the bottom of the viewfinder. If the shutter speed is showing 1/100 or more, you should be good to go. Snap an image or two and see if you are getting any blur in your image. If you are indoors, opening up windows to let some light in or turning the lights on will help to increase your shutter speed.

5) No blurry images: If you are still getting blurry images, try increasing the “Minimum Shutter Speed” value to a higher number in your “Auto-ISO” settings. While hand-holding your camera, there is a direct correlation between the camera shutter speed and blurry images. The lower the shutter speed (below 1/250 of a second), the blurrier the images. Because while hand-holding a camera, factors such as your stance, breathing, camera hand-holding technique all play a huge role in stabilizing the camera and producing shake-free images.

6) Focus: Learn how to focus correctly and deal with focusing issues. This one is very important, as your camera focus directly impacts image sharpness. The first thing you need to learn is how to differentiate between a camera shake/motion blur and a focus problem. When a subject in your image is soft or out of focus, while something else in the foreground or background is perfectly in focus and sharp, it is a focus issue. If the whole image is blurry and nothing is sharp, it is most likely a slow shutter speed or improper camera holding technique that is the issue. Make sure there is plenty of light for your camera to properly focus. The center focus point is generally the most accurate in cameras.

7) Freeze! : Make your subject freeze. If you are photographing a person, have them freeze and not move while you take their picture. When you work with slow shutter speeds, even if you do everything right, your images might still come out blurry just because your subject moved while the shutter was open. This is called motion blur.

8) Clean your lenses : A dirty and a greasy front element of the lens is a guarantee to inaccurate camera focusing and poor image contrast. Put a drop or two of the solution on the microfiber cloth and gently wipe the front of the lens element starting from the center of the lens to the edges, in clockwise movements. Do it multiple times until the front element looks very clean.