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Copyright © 2009
Tom Jackson
When you start your own photography business, you will need certain equipment. A good digital camera is obvious. I suggest that if you do not already own a good DSLR, (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera, than you should look at the option to purchase one as soon as possible. These cameras give you the flexibility you need for taking photos under virtually any circumstance.
If you are not fully aware of the benefits of a DSLR let me do a quick summary. The first, and some believe the most important feature, is that you look through the viewfinder and you see exactly what the camera sees. In other words, the light from the subject enters the lens of the camera, and this is the image you see. At the moment of the exposure, when you take the photo, the camera re-directs this image onto the digital sensor, and captures the image. In normal daylight, this happens so quickly, it is barely noticeable. In dim light conditions, you will not be able to see through the camera until the exposure is finished.
As a result of being able to see the subject through the lens, just as the camera does, you can take advantage of other features if the camera manufacturer has built it into the camera body. One such feature is Depth of Field preview. When you look through the camera at the subject, you can clearly see the subject because the camera uses the maximum aperture available to see the subject, and therefore, you can see if the subject is in focus or not. In other words, the lens lets the maximum amount of light into the camera so you can see the subject clearly. However, if the camera has a Depth of Field preview, you can invoke this function and the lens will Stop Down to the aperture that the lens will be at when the photo is taken and recorded. By doing this, you will be able to see exactly what areas of the image, in front of and behind the subject, will also be in focus. The image may be a little more difficult to see as there will now be less light coming through the lens, but it is a great way to see what will be in focus when you take the photo.
When taking portraits though, you will usually not want the foreground or the background to be in focus, as this can result in an image where the subject is not clearly delineated from the background. To take a successful portrait, the usual method is to use the maximum aperture available, and adjust the shutter speed to get a correct exposure. If you are going to use a flash to provide fill light for the subject, then of course, the maximum shutter speed will be limited to the maximum flash synch speed, and you will have to use the required aperture to achieve a good exposure. These are the types of compromises one has to consider when taking photos.
Before you even take the first picture, you need to set the camera to the correct format and resolution. With compact, all in one cameras, you often do not have a lot of options. Most will allow you to take photos at low, medium or high resolution, but will not allow you to make little if any, other selections. On a DSLR camera, you will often have a large number of options available. However, in my experience, I believe there is really only one option, and that is to take every image in the RAW format and at the highest resolution available.
Memory cards are very inexpensive these days, so it is not hard to purchase several cards, and store all the images you take. Even though the RAW format at high resolution creates the largest files, the low cost of memory cards allows you to carry several with you at all times. And when you transfer these images to your computer, you can purchase inexpensive external hard drives to store all the images. External drives these days are getting very big, typically in the two to five hundred gigabyte sizes, for extremely low cost. Consider that today, you can buy one of these drives for less than $100. Back in 1990, I purchased a 300 Megabyte drive for $1200. If you do the comparison, a 500 Gigabyte drive today should cost around $2Million! Yikes. Thank goodness for technology.
In the next article, I will go into some more detail on why using the RAW format is so important. It really provides you with the most flexibility for manipulating the basic exposure information, once you start editing your photos. And after you take the photos and put them onto the hard drive, you will need to make some adjustments, sometimes just small ones, and for other images, you may need to make some fairly large adjustments. More in the next article.
Like many professionals, Tom Jackson began his career by shooting weddings. Tom has been a consultant to the graphic design, advertising and publishing industries, teaching digital technology. You can get more info on photography and see examples of his work here; For free tips visit Toms blog.
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