How to Do Everything with Your Digital Camera

by Dave Johnson (Conducted by)

Overview

Publishing Rationale - Digital Camera use is clearly on the rise -sales of cameras have topped $1 Billion, and the digital category now makes up about 36% of the entire camera market, with 1.8 million units sold in 1999 (a 63% increase in 1999), according to market researcher NPD Intelect. - Digital Camera prices are dropping. There are lots of digital cameras on the market in a wide price range, but the introduction of sub-$300 cameras, and the increased sales coming from non-cameras specific retailers (Kmart, and chain drugstores, in addition to Circuit City and Fry's Electronics) means there's a huge spike in digital camera owners who have cameras but may not know what to do with them - or with the digital images they capture. - Osborne's How to Do Everything series is a strong seller, and the addition of new titles is sure to expand the success - especially for this hot topic

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780072127720
Publisher:	McGraw-Hill/Osborne Media
Publication date:	02/26/2001
Series:	How to Do Everything Series
Pages:	394
Product dimensions:	7.53(w) x 9.23(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Dave Johnson is an accomplished photographer in both analog and digital mediums, as well as an amateur musician and music fanatic. As Senior Editor at Planet IT, Dave covers topics like handheld computing, portables, wireless, and imaging technologies. Dave has written for magazines like Home Office Computing, Windows Magazine, Family PC, and Digital Camera, and his 14 books include How To Use Digital Video and the best-selling How to Do Everything with Your Palm Handheld (nearly 35,000 copies sold).

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 2
Understanding Exposure
How to…
· Tell the difference between analog and digital camera operation
· Distinguish between slide and negative photography
· Pick ISO settings for a digital and film camera
· Match aperture and shutter speed settings for correct exposure
· Use the Sunny 16 Rule
· Modify the Sunny 16 Rule based on ISO and lighting conditions
· Adjust exposure manually
· Tweak exposure with your camera's EV settings
· Choose metering modes for better pictures
· Use exposure lock to optimize exposure
· Tell when to ignore the camera and make your own exposure decisions

Some people think that photography is akin to magic. They turn on the camera, snap a picture, and a day or two later they've got a mystical re-creation of the scene they saw in the viewfinder. With a digicam, it's even more magical-the pictures are available instantly! How does it work? Who knows?

The problem with the Abe Simpson approach to photography (which I've so named based on an episode of The Simpsons in which someone took a picture of old Abe and he shouted feebly, "You stole my soul!") is that you can never really improve if you don't know what your camera does or why-and if you don't know how you can influence the camera yourself to improve your shots. This chapter, consequently, walks you through the exposure process. Here you'll learn what constitutes a proper exposure and how to get it yourself-even on cameras that are mostly automatic.

(1)How Cameras Take Pictures
The best place to start is often right at the beginning-how on earth does a camera take a picture, anyway?
All cameras, regardless of type, work more or less the same way - as depicted in the illustration below. They open their shutter for a brief time, allowing light to enter. That light then interacts with a sensitive photo-receptor (like film, or perhaps a computer chip), and an image is recorded. Let's start by looking at a traditional 35mm camera to give us a little perspective.
Illustration 1
(2)Inside a 35mm Camera
Traditional cameras rely on good old-fashioned film. But what is film, really? It's just a strip of plastic that has been coated with a light-sensitive chemical. The chemical soup on the film is loaded with grains of silver halide. When exposed to light, the silver halide reacts, and that is the essence of photography. The longer the film is exposed to light, the more the silver is affected.
There are two kinds of film in common use today: negative and slide film. They work a little differently, but the end result is similar. When you use color negative film, also referred to as reversal film, the film itself becomes a "negative" image of the scene you photographed. After processing-which includes letting the film sit in a chemical bath that coaxes the grains of silver to visually materialize on the film-the negative is used to create positive prints of the scene. It's a two-step process, and one that is highly subjective. When creating prints from negatives, photo-finishers often tweak the picture to improve its appearance. Of course, what the corner shop considers an "improvement" may not be what you were trying to achieve, and that explains why your pictures never seem to benefit from filters, exposure changes, or any of the other corrections you try to make when taking pictures.
But I digress. The other kind of film is simple slide film. This is a color positive development process-after fixing the slide film in its chemical bath, the film becomes slides that can be held up to the light to display images.
No matter what kind of film you have, it eventually needs to be exposed to light. When you take a picture, you obviously press the shutter release. The shutter release instructs the camera to open a diaphragm in the lens for a brief period of time and then close again. If all went well, that was just long enough to properly expose the film.
(s)The Moment of Exposure
Depending upon the kind of camera, the events at the moment of exposure can be quite complicated. In a modern 35mm SLR, for instance, microprocessor-controlled sensors determine the exact amount of light needed to expose a picture at the moment you press the shutter release. The lens automatically adjusts the size of its opening to admit the correct amount of light, the mirror mechanism that usually lets you look through the viewfinder flips up and out of the way, and the aperture opens for the programmed amount of time. Point and shoot cameras, in contrast, don't use mirror mechanisms to let you see through the lens before the shot, so there are fewer moving parts at the moment of exposure. Tip: If you want to shoot with 35mm film, scan the results, and then edit and print the results on your PC, you might want to work with slide film. Slides are more exacting-they require you to nail the exposure fairly precisely, as I explain in Chapter 11-but they'll better represent what you actually photographed instead of the local photo shop's vision of what you photographed.
(3)How and Why Film Varies
As you no doubt know by shopping for film, not all canisters of 35mm film are alike. Film is differentiated principally by its speed, or ISO number.
A film's ISO number refers to how sensitive it is to light. The lower the number is, the less sensitive-requiring long exposures or very bright scenes.
Note: ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization, and that's the group that helped establish how the number scheme works. Film around the world uses ISO numbers, so you can buy it anywhere, and it'll all work the same. In the United States, photographers used to call this system ASA, which stood for the American Standards Association. That term was essentially abandoned about 20 years ago, so if you want to be considered a gristled old geezer, you can refer to ISO numbers as "ASA."
A fairly typical ISO number for ordinary daylight photography is ISO 100. Increasing the ISO to 200 doubles the sensitivity of the film; dropping back to an ISO of 50 halves the sensitivity of the film.
This has a tangible effect on the mechanics of photography. To see why, look at Figure 2-1. This diagram shows a typical camera body as a picture is taken. The lens is equipped with a diaphragm-called an aperture-that has a certain diameter and consequently is designed to allow a specific amount of light through to the film. With ISO 100 film in specific lighting conditions (say, at midday) the shutter might need to open for a 250th of a second (1/250) to adequately expose the picture.
Figure 1: Every camera-no matter what it uses for film-controls light with some sort of aperture.
But what happens if we instead try to take the same picture with ISO 200 film? The film is exactly twice as sensitive to light as the previous roll of film. And that means, all other things being equal, that we only need to leave the shutter open for half as long (a 500th of a second, or 1/500) to take the same picture.
That's not all. Suppose you're trying to take a picture in late afternoon-when there isn't as much light available? You might need to leave the shutter open for 1/30 in that situation to gather enough light. That shutter speed is a bit on the slow side, though. Not only might you jiggle the camera as you're taking the picture (it's hard to hold a camera steady for 1/30), but your subject might move as well, causing a blurry picture. You can probably guess what the solution is-stepping up to ISO 200 film will enable you to grab that picture at a much more reasonable 1/60, and ISO 400 would halve the shutter speed yet again, to a crisp 1/250.
(3)The F/stop Ballet
So far so good-but there's one other aspect to consider, and that's the fact that camera lenses can change the diameter of their aperture, thus letting in more or less light as needed.
The size of a camera's aperture at any given moment is called the f/stop, or sometimes referred to as the f number of the lens. F/stops are represented by numbers that start with "f/"-like f/2, f/5.6, and f/11. The larger the number, the smaller the opening, so an f22 is very, very small (not much light gets through to the film), while a lens set to f/1.2 is a huge opening that literally floods the film with light. Every "whole" f/stop, such as from f/5.6 to f/8 or f/11 to f/16, increases or reduces the light by 100%. If you adjust a lens from f/8 to f/11, for instance, you've reduced the light by half. We'll talk about this in more detail in Chapter 3 (it's really important, yet really simple), but for the moment take a look at Figure 2-2. This diagram shows the relationship between f/stop and shutter speed. As you reduce the shutter speed, you need to increase the diameter of the aperture in order to have enough light to take a properly exposed picture. Figure 2: There's a relationship between a camera's shutter speed and aperture setting. callouts
f/4
1/1000
f/8
1/250
f/16
1/60
Of course, there's a link between aperture, shutter speed, and your film's ISO rating. Look at Figure 2-3. At a given film speed, you can take a picture with a specific aperture/shutter combination. If you double the film speed without changing the lighting conditions, though, you have to adjust the aperture and shutter speed so that you still get a properly exposed picture. And perhaps most importantly for us, suppose you are in the situation described here:
Figure 3: Film speed-known as ISO-also affects shutter speed and aperture. callouts
f/4
1/250
f/4
1/500
f/4
1/1000
You want to take a picture of frolicking lions at the zoo near dusk. The aperture is wide open at f/2-it won't open any farther. Nonetheless, your camera needs to use the relatively slow shutter speed of 1/15 second to take the shot. You know the image would be a blurry mess at that sluggish shutter speed, so what is there to do? Take a look at your film speed. It's ISO 100 film. Well, you might be in luck. If you're willing to pop the film out of your camera and put in film that's two f/stops (often, just called "stops") faster, you can keep the aperture at f/2 and change the shutter speed to 1/60. That's probably good enough to get the shot. Just do it quickly-it isn't getting any brighter out, and if you dally, you might find you need to increase the speed by three stops by the time you get the film loaded and ready to go.
Note: You probably don't need to know this, but it might come in handy during a trivia game some day. Mathematically, f/stops are the ratio of the focal length of the lens divided by the diameter of the opening of the diaphragm. Thus, when you divide the focal length of the lens by a very small opening, you get a large number, while dividing the focal length by a comparatively large diameter gives you a smaller number.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xvii
	Introduction	xix
Part I	Your Camera
Chapter 1	Welcome to the Future	3
	A History Lesson	4
	A Slow Evolution	5
	The Future of Digital Cameras	6
	Features, Gadgets, and Goodies	8
	The Optical System	9
	Power Systems	10
	Memory Storage	12
	Camera Controls	13
	Choosing Your Own Digital Camera	15
	Resolution	15
	Optics	16
	Memory	17
	Flash	18
	Special Effects	18
	Transfer Mechanism	18
	Gear You Need	19
Chapter 2	Understanding Exposure	21
	How Cameras Take Pictures	22
	Inside a 35mm Camera	23
	The Moment of Exposure	23
	How Digicams Are Different	28
	Use ISO for Exposure Control	29
	Change the ISO Setting	29
	Perfecting Shots with Aperture and Shutter	30
	How Cameras Choose Aperture and Shutter Speed	30
	Adjusting Exposure Manually	32
	Use Shutter or Aperture Priority Adjustments	34
	Tricky Lighting Situations	35
	Using Exposure Compensation	35
	Switching Metering Modes	37
	Using Exposure Lock	39
	When to Take Control	41
Chapter 3	Composition Essentials	43
	Why Composition Is Important	44
	What We See	45
	Rules of Composition	45
	Isolate the Focal Point	46
	Use the Rule of Thirds	47
	Fill the Frame	48
	Move the Horizon	51
	Use Lines, Symmetry, and Patterns	52
	Use Foreground to Balance the Background	53
	Know When to Break the Rules	54
	Using Depth of Field	56
	Applying Depth of Field to Your Pictures	59
	Getting the Most Out of Your Zoom Lens	60
	Using Your Camera's Exposure Modes	64
	Choosing Exposure Modes and Lenses in Special Situations	65
	Nature and Landscapes	68
Chapter 4	Flash and Lighting	71
	Basics of Flash Photography	72
	Stay Within the Range of Your Flash	73
	Master Your Flash Modes	76
	Improve Your Outdoor Photographs	77
	Beware of the Sun	77
	Add Fill Flash	78
	Reflect Some Light	80
	Improve Your Indoor Photographs	82
	Use Window Light	82
	Avoid Red Eye	82
	Correct the Color Balance	83
	Correcting Images with White Balance	83
	Adjusting White Balance Presets	84
	Trying Your Hand at Night Photography	86
	CCDs and Noise	89
Chapter 5	Taking Close-Ups	91
	Capturing the Microscopic World	92
	Coaxing a Digital Camera to Take Close-Ups	93
	Close-Up Enemy No. 1: Parallax	95
	Using Add-On Lenses	98
	Close-Up Techniques	101
	A Steady Base	102
	Keep the Subject Sharp	104
	Mind the Background	105
	Beware of the Flash	106
	Shooting Through Glass	108
	Your Own Macro Studio	109
Chapter 6	Pushing Your Camera to Its Limits	113
	Get Creative	114
	The Old-Fashioned Look	115
	Make a Panorama	115
	Get the Right Overlap	118
	Adding Lenses for Different Perspectives	119
	Choosing Lenses	121
	Add-on Lens Precautions	122
	Infrared Photography	125
	Connecting Your Camera to a Telescope	126
	Taking Time-Lapse Photos	127
	Making Movies	130
	Taking Care of Batteries	130
	Rechargeable Versus Alkaline	131
	Get the Most out of Your Batteries	131
	Using Batteries in the Cold	132
Part II	Transferring Images
Chapter 7	Conquering File Formats	137
	What Are File Formats and Why Do I Care?	138
	The Most Common File Formats	139
	Using File Formats	143
	On the Camera	143
	On the PC	145
Chapter 8	Working with Digital Film	151
	Storing Your Images	152
	Internal Memory	152
	SmartMedia	153
	CompactFlash	154
	Memory Stick	154
	Secure Digital (SD)	155
	Floppy Disk	155
	Choosing a Memory Card Format	156
	Transferring Images to the PC	158
	Transferring Images with a Serial Cable	159
	Transferring Images with a USB Port	162
	Transfer Shortcuts: Using Memory Adapters	164
	Caring for Your Memory Cards	166
Chapter 9	Keeping Images on the PC	169
	Managing Your Digital Pictures	170
	Organizing Your Images	171
	Renaming Images	174
	Locating and Cataloging Images	177
	Using Asset Management Software	180
	Estimating File Size	181
	Calculating TIFs	182
	Calculating JPGs	182
	Archiving Images	183
	Adding Extra Hard Drives	183
Chapter 10	Turning Prints into Digital Images	187
	Understanding Scanners	188
	Shopping for a Scanner	190
	Resolution	190
	Color Depth	191
	Dynamic Range	191
	Other Features	193
	Scanning and Correcting Your Images	194
	Determining the Right Resolution	194
	Tweaking Your Images	197
	Slides, Negatives, or Prints?	200
Part III	Editing Images
Chapter 11	Quick Changes for Your Images	203
	How Much PC You Need	204
	Choose an Image Editor	205
	Change the File Format	209
	Shrink Your Images	209
	Change the Color Depth of an Image	212
	Save Images in Different File Formats	214
	Improve Your Composition	216
	Crop Your Image	216
	Rotate Your Perspective	226
	Level a Crooked Picture	227
	Improve the Color and Brightness in Your Image	228
	Brighten Gloomy Shots	228
	Add Snap to Your Colors	233
	Correct the Color Balance	235
Chapter 12	Cleaning Up Your Images	237
	Sharpening Blurry Pictures	238
	Using the Sharpen Filter to Enhance Your Picture	239
	Blur to Sharpen	240
	Painting on Your Pictures	242
	Choosing Colors	242
	Applying the Paint	245
	Painting More Accurately	248
	Repairing the Evil Eye	251
	Using Automatic Red Eye Removal	252
	Removing Red Eye the Old-Fashioned Way	254
	Airbrushing Away Distractions	255
	Clean Up Old and Damaged Pictures	257
	Remove Picture Scratches	258
	Remove Dust, Dirt, and Digital Noise	258
	Make a Panoramic Photo	258
	The Resolution Advantage	260
	Stitching Photos Together by Hand	261
	Improving Your Sky	265
	Multiply Your Sky	266
	Replace the Sky	268
	Let Someone Else Do the Work	269
Chapter 13	Creating Special Effects	271
	Using a Hollywood-Style Blue Screen	272
	Make a Weather Map	273
	Blue Screen Without a Screen	274
	Shake Hands with Elvis	281
	Shoot a Sci-Fi Firefight	284
	The Disintegrating Subject	285
	The Laser Blast	289
	Put Your Kid in a Jar	290
	Make a Double Exposure	293
	Paint Like Van Gogh	295
	Decolorizing Your Pictures	296
	Colorizing an Image	300
	Another Kind of Colorizing	302
Chapter 14	Working with Text and Creating Projects	303
	Adding Text to Pictures	304
	Special Effects with Text	307
	Create Gradient-Filled Text	308
	Create Picture-Filled Text	310
	Add a Drop Shadow	312
	Combine Image and Drop Shadow	314
	Projects for Your Digital Images	316
	Using Digital Images as Wallpaper	316
	Adding an Image to Letterhead	318
	Create Your Own Greeting Cards	320
	Create a Newsletter	324
Part IV	Using Your Images
Chapter 15	Printing Your Pictures	329
	Using the Right Printer	330
	Choosing a Printer	331
	What to Look For	334
	Printing Your Images	337
	The Right Resolution	337
	Working with Paper	340
	Other Specialty Papers	343
	Making Your Prints	344
	Which Side Is the Right Side?	348
	Caring for Your Prints	348
	Working with Printing Services	349
Chapter 16	Sharing Your Pictures	351
	Sending Images via Email	352
	Shrinking Images for Email	354
	Attaching Pictures in Email	356
	Distributing Images on Floppy Disks	356
	Strategies for Sharing Lots of Images	360
	Creating Your Own Web Pages	361
	Choosing an Image Size and File Format for the Web	362
	Sharing Images on the Web Without Designing a Web Site	364
	Which Is Best?	364
	Showing Off Images on a Palm	366
	Showing Off Images in a Digital Picture Frame	369
	Showing Pictures on TV	370
	Creating a Slide Show on Videotape	370
	If Your Camera Has No Video Output	373
	Index	375

Editorial Reviews

Although the title is a little overstated, this book does offer a fairly comprehensive introduction to digital photography. Johnson opens by discussing virtually all of the technical essentials of working with one's camera to make correct exposures and then proceeds to address questions about working with digital film and formats and transferring files. He further explains how to compose and edit photographs on one's computer, showing how to improve sharpness and contrast, clean up images, use special effects, and blend text with images. The book concludes with helpful chapters on printing one's photographs and sharing images through e-mail, web pages, and disks. Anyone who works with digital photographs will find this book quite thorough and useful. Recommended for all photography collections in public and academic libraries. Raymond Bial, Parkland Coll. Lib., Champaign, IL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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