Adjusting Your Digital Camera’s Light Sensitivity by Changing Its ISO Setting

Many digital cameras offer a choice of ISO settings, which indicate the light sensitivity of the camera’s imaging sensor. The higher the ISO number, the more quickly the camera reacts to light. A high ISO setting increases light sensitivity, but it can also add noise to the picture.
This figure shows four images taken with a different ISO setting for each shot: 200, 400, 800, and 1600.

For some shooting scenarios, you may be forced to use a higher ISO. For example, if you’re trying to capture a moving subject, you may need to raise the ISO so that you can use the fast shutter speed necessary to freeze the action.

Experiment with ISO settings if your camera offers them. But, for best picture quality, keep the ISO at its lowest or next-to-lowest setting.

How to Take Black-and-White Landscape Photos

Ansel Adams captured wonderful landscapes using black-and-white film. Your camera captures color images, but that doesn’t mean you can’t follow in Ansel’s footsteps and create black-and-white photos. The only difference is that you have to convert your photos to black and white in your digital darkroom.

In Photoshop Elements, you can convert an image to grayscale, but you don’t have the control needed to get the rich blacks like those seen in Ansel Adams's photographs. You can get closer using an application like Aperture, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, or Adobe Photoshop. You also can use third-party plug-ins to convert your color images to black and white. Here are two of them:

• Alien Skin has a plug-in called Exposure 3 that you use to emulate color and black-and-white film. Exposure 3 works in conjunction with Photoshop Elements 7 and later, Photoshop CS3 and later, and Lightroom 2 and later.
• Nik Software has a plug-in called Silver Efex Pro 2 that works with Apple Aperture 2.14 and later, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.6 and later, Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 and later, and Adobe Photoshop CS3 and later. Silver Efex Pro 2 has U Point technology that enables you to make localized adjustments to control brightness, contrast, and structure.

If you want to follow in the footsteps of Ansel Adams and create compelling black-and-white photos when you process your images, keep the following in mind:

• Photograph scenes with lots of contrast. A landscape with a blue sky and billowing thunderheads is ideal for conversion to black and white.
• Place the horizon line in the lower third of the image when photographing a scene with a beautiful cloudscape.
• Use a polarizing filter with the camera facing 90 degrees from the sun. This maximizes the darkening effect of the filter. Rotate the outer ring of the filter until the sky is a deep blue and the clouds pop out in contrast.
• Underexpose the image by 1/3 EV. This will give you an image with darker shadows, which look great when converted to black and white.

Tips for Composing Better Photos

Before working with Photoshop Elements 10, you need to take photographs that are interesting and well composed. Some of these tips overlap and contain common concepts, but they’re all free; they don’t require any extra money or equipment.

Find a focal point for your photos

One of the most important tools for properly composing a photo is establishing a focal point — a main point of interest. The eye wants to be drawn to a subject.

Keep these tips in mind to help find your focal point:

• Pick your subject and then get close to it.
• Include something of interest in scenic shots.
• When it’s appropriate, try to include an element in the foreground middle ground, or background to add depth and a sense of scale.

Use the rule of thirds when taking pictures

When you’re composing your shot, mentally divide your frame into vertical and horizontal thirds and position your most important visual element at any intersecting point. When you’re shooting landscapes, remember that a low horizon creates a dreamy and spacious feeling and that a high horizon gives an earthy and intimate feeling. For close-up portraits, try putting the face or eyes of a person at one of those points.

 

If you have an autofocus camera, you need to lock the focus when you’re moving from center.

Cut the clutter in your photos

Here are some ways you can cut the clutter from your background:

• Try to fill the frame with your subject.
• Shoot at a different angle.
• Move around your subject.
• Move your subject.
• Use background elements to enhance.
• Use space around a subject to evoke a certain mood.
• If you’re stuck with a distracting background, use a wider aperture (such as f/4).

Frame your shots when taking pictures

When it’s appropriate, use foreground elements to frame your subject. Frames lead you into a photograph. You can use tree branches, windows, archways, and doorways. Your framing elements don’t always have to be sharply focused. Sometimes, if they’re too sharp, they distract from the focal point.

Employ contrast when taking pictures

Just remember, “Light on dark, dark on light.”

A light subject has more impact and emphasis if it’s shot against a dark background, and vice versa. Keep in mind, however, that contrast needs to be used carefully. Sometimes, it can be distracting, especially if the high-contrast elements aren’t your main point of interest.

 

Use leading lines when taking pictures

Leading lines are lines that lead the eye into the picture and, hopefully, to a point of interest. The best leading lines enter the image from the lower-left corner. Roads, walls, fences, rivers, shadows, skyscrapers, and bridges provide natural leading lines, especially in scenic or landscape photos. The photo shown of the Great Wall of China is an example of curved leading lines.

Experiment with viewpoints while taking pictures

Not much in the world looks fascinating photographed from a height of 5 to 6 feet off the ground. Try to break out of this common mode by taking photos from another vantage point. Experiment with taking a photo from above the subject (bird’s-eye view) or below it (worm’s-eye view). A different angle may provide a more interesting image.

Use light in your photos

Here are a few tips about light:

• The best light is in early morning and later afternoon.
• Avoid taking portraits at midday.
• Overcast days can be great for photographing, especially portraits.
• Backlighting can produce dramatic results.
   
• Ensure that the brightest light source isn’t directed into the lens to avoid lens flare.
• Use a flash in low light.
• Get creative.

Give direction in your photos

Don’t be afraid to play photo stylist:

• Get someone to help direct.
• Give directions about where you want people to stand, and so on.
• Designate the location.
• Arrange people around props, such as trees or cars.
• Use a variety of poses.
• Try to get people to relax. 
  

Consider direction of movement when taking photos

When the subject is capable of movement, such as a car, person, or animal, make sure that you leave more space in front of the subject than behind it. Likewise, if a person is looking out onto a vista, make sure that you include that vista.

Using Focus Lock on Your Autofocus Camera

Autofocus point-and-shoot cameras produce terrifically sharp pictures when you use them properly. But getting sharp results sometimes requires telling them where to focus.
A common focusing problem occurs when you deliberately place a subject off-center in the viewfinder frame. Say you want to compose the shot of your friends and the mountains this way. You ask your friends to stand to the right so that they block less of the background, giving the mountains center stage in your composition. You point and shoot. But the camera focuses on the mountains because that's where your composition has landed the focus point and your friends end up unsharp in the print. Call it tunnel focus.

Unintentional focusing on the background is, along with unwanted camera movement, the main cause of unsharp point-and-shoot pictures. And here's a simple way to avoid it — a photographic one-two punch called locking the focus.

Locking the focus

Lock the focus any time your composition does not place the viewfinder's focus point on the most important part of the scene you're shooting. Locking the focus means that you deliberately make your camera focus on some object in the scene — a person, or something interesting in the foreground — and keep the focus locked at that exact distance until you take the picture. Here's how you lock the focus:

1. Look through the viewfinder and position its focus point on the most important part of the scene — your main subject.

In effect, you center that subject.

2. Press the shutter button halfway down, until the green focus-OK lamp in the viewfinder eyepiece glows steadily.

See the next section, "Making sure your focus is locked," for more on the focus-OK lamp.

3. Holding the shutter button halfway down, reorient the camera so that your desired composition appears in the viewfinder.

4. Press the shutter button all the way down to take the picture.

Back to those friends and the mountains, you lock the focus by aiming the focus point at your friends (which temporarily puts them in the center of the viewfinder) and pressing the shutter button halfway. Then, keeping the shutter button halfway down, you swing the camera to place your friends off-center (see Figure 1). Now press the shutter button the rest of the way to take the picture.

 

Figure 1: Lock the focus to prevent your point-and-shoot from focusing on the background with an off-center subject.

You may need to use this technique with vertical composition, too. Say you're standing on a rock to shoot a vertical picture in which your friends are at the bottom of the viewfinder and the mountains in the background are at the top. To maintain the focus of your friends, first aim the camera down to place the focus point over one their faces and press the shutter button halfway. Hold the shutter button halfway down and swing the camera back up to include the mountains and reestablish your desired composition. Press the shutter button the rest of the way to take the picture.

Regardless of your composition — centered or off-center —always keep your eye on where the focus point lands. Even if your two friends are smack in the middle of the viewfinder fame, between them is a little gap and the viewfinder's focus point falls neatly into it. First "aim" the focus point so that it's on one friend's face, then reorient the camera to center your friends.

Particularly if you're a landscape fan, you may be wondering what happens to distant objects when you lock the focus on closer objects. "If I focus on my friends in front of the mountains, instead of the mountains," you ask, "then won't the mountains be out of focus?" Not necessarily.

With most scenes in which you photograph a relatively close object in front of a distant background, if you focus on the close object, the background will be reasonably sharp in the print. But the reverse is not true. Focus on the background — those mountains — and the close object simply won't be sharp.

Making sure your focus is locked

When you lock your focus, you can't actually see the subject getting sharp in the viewfinder. However, you can verify that your point-and-shoot has autofocused on something by looking at its focus-OK lamp (see Figure 2).

 

Figure 2: The viewfinder's green focus-OK lamp glows steadily to confirm the focus.

The focus-OK lamp lights up whenever you press the shutter button halfway. If it glows steadily, it's telling you that the camera has successfully focused. If the focus-OK lamp blinks, or doesn't light, or lights briefly but then goes out or starts blinking, it's telling you that the camera can't focus.
More often than not, your camera can't focus because you're too close to the subject. Fix the problem by easing up on the shutter button, stepping back a foot or two, and then pressing the shutter button again.

If you move, the focus doesn't

Locking the focus is vitally important to getting consistently sharp pictures. But remember that when you have that shutter button pressed halfway, the focus doesn't budge. If you ask your subject to move closer or farther away, or you move closer or farther from it to adjust your composition, your subject's no longer in focus. If the distance to the subject changes after you've locked the focus, let up on the shutter button and repeat the focus-locking procedure.

Zoom before you lock the focus. With most point-and-shoot cameras, locking the focus also prevents you from adjusting the zoom. If you want to zoom in or out after locking the focus, let up on the shutter button, adjust the zoom, and then lock the focus again.