Taking better photos: SLR camera
How to take better photos with a single lens reflex camera.
With an SLR camera, you can adjust the light, the depth of field--even the blurriness or lack of it in your pictures. If you want to be able to do all those things and much more, the first thing you need to know is a little bit about how an SLR camera works.First of all a single lens reflex camera has, as you can garner from the name, a single lens. It has a shutter located just in front of the film (usually 35 mm film), which opens a little bit or a lot depending upon where you set your camera’s exposure time. This ability, along with the focusing ring (which adjusts the distance of the lens from the film) and aperture ring (which changes the size of the iris diaphragm inside the lens) allows you to take fast action shots--or lazy, hazy romantic ones. It sounds complicated--and it is, a little. But that shouldn’t stop you from taking great photos with your SLR camera.
Let’s start with shutter speed. This speed is listed on your camera in increments of percents of a second. Usually, shutter speed settings on SLR cameras run from 1 sec to 1/1000 sec. The faster the speed, the more precise and sharp an action shot will be. So, if you want to freeze a clear shot of a parachutist in mid jump before he opens his chute, set your camera closer to the 1/1000 sec speed.
But shutter isn’t the only thing which will affect your photograph. To help adjust the brightness of the light getting to your film, use your camera’s aperture settings. Aperture settings are listed on your camera in f-stops--f-1 is the widest opening, and f-32 or f-45 is the smallest. By opening your aperture setting to a higher f-number, the depth of field on a picture is increased. This means that the higher your f-stop number, the more of your picture remains in focus.
So, if you want to photograph a wide panoramic view in which you want everything in focus, use a number closer to f-1. But, if you want to get the effect of a single object or person in focus with everything in front of and everything behind him slightly blurry, set your aperture to a higher f-stop number.
If you want to get even fancier with your photos, you can buy lens attachments to distort, color or even “fracture” pictures. A popular one is a polarizing attachment which works much like polarized sun glasses to cut down on reflections. Prism lenses can multiply the focal image on a photograph to get special effects. And soft-focus lenses can add glimmer and soften your images. You can even get colored lens attachments to “tint” your end product, too.
But the best thing you can do with your SLR camera is to use it. Play around with the different settings. If you want a particular shot, and you don’t know how to achieve it, do what the professionals do. Bracket it. Take one picture at one setting, and then change the setting by one stop and take the same picture again. Do it one more time at the next setting. Then, when your film is developed, compare the photos to see what setting got what effect.
Film is relatively inexpensive when you compare it to the lasting keepsake photographs you can obtain using an SLR camera. The only way to become a better photographer is to practice. And you may get a lot of great shots that you’ll want to keep forever.
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