Learning Photography – 3 mistakes beginners make using a new DSLR camera
1. Shooting only Auto Mode
If you switch your DSLR camera to Auto Mode do you know that you are only using about 20% of its functionality? That’s like having a zippy sports car and keeping it parked in your driveway (as one of my students rightfully stated!) Why spend all that money on a wonderful piece of photography equipment to do that? When you shoot in auto mode, the camera takes over all of the control of your camera settings. It decides on exposure, ISO, WB and whether or not you need flash amongst other things.
While you think this might be a good thing when you are just starting out, when you are learning photography you must challenge yourself a wee bit more.If you want to improve you need to move out of auto mode learn to shoot in the Creative Zone.
Using the P, Tv (S), Av(A) and M modes correctly by controlling the settings, will bring your photography to the next level. Although every shot may not necessarily be a winner (Hey! everyone’s gotta start somewhere) you’ll be a step closer to improving your photography. Remember; we all learn by our mistakes, so don’t be afraid to make ’em.
2. Using Flash Inside
Using Flash inside is something that most people think is a necessity. In many cases this is true as the light is just too poor or your subject is a wiggly 2 year old. There are many times however that it is possible to shoot without flash indoors:
- If you have lots of natural light
- Your shooting under very strong artificial lights
- When you want to capture the lights or ambience in your picture.
These lighting conditions work well without flash especially if your subject is not moving, for example if you are shooting ingredients for a recipe.
So to shoot with out flash inside you simply need to turn it off. However, if you are shooting in Auto Mode you will have no control over when your flash turns on and pops up.
This is always the great giveaway as to when a photographer is using Auto. I’ve seen countless students who initially think the only way to keep that flash off is to press down against the pop-up action of the flash unit … eh…great way to break your camera by the way.
Go ahead and turn the camera to P and simply don’t turn on your flash.
In P Mode the flash will only pop up if you tell it to do so. The camera will make adjustments so that it will compensate for the lack of flash and you should get a correctly exposed shot. Shooting in low light can of course be improved by using better lenses and changing some other settings such as ISO but by just doing turning off the flash in P Mode you will have a good jumping off point to see which settings you can further tweak to improve shooting indoors with no flash.
If you’ve been following my blog for a while you’ve probably already taken my free mini-course on taking Better Photos where we cover all of this stuff. You can still sign up to get access to it here.
3. No specific Focus Point
When your photograph lacks a focal point the viewer of your image doesn’t know where to look in the picture and ultimately their eye leaves the image. Having a definitive focal point ensures that your photo is engaging and the viewer of the image gets what it is that they are supposed to be looking at.
Usually the Focal Point of the Image is where your FOCUS POINT is.
Your FOCUS Points of your camera are highlighted within the viewfinder as red spots (or squares) when your press your finger on the shutter button. Always make sure that your focus points are over the area of the image that you want to be in focus.
If they are not, then you can reframe your image so that this is the case or you can manually set the focus point by accessing the focus point selection function of your camera. Personally I always like to have my focus point set to the middle point. I can then use Focus Lock method to reframe my image exactly how I like it. This ensures I always know where my focus point and hence my focal point is in the image and helps to make my photos more visually stronger.
Happy Snapping
