Five Common Digital Photography Blunders

Digital photography is incredibly easy, in theory. You point the camera, line up the image where you want it, and then push the button. Not only are they able to operate on automatic and do so far better than even the most modern film equivalents, but they show the result immediately so people can tell if they should shoot again or not. Nonetheless people still manage to get it wrong now and then. From taking the picture to printing them at home, here are some of the most common digital photography blunders.

Pushing the button:

This really hasn’t changed at all since the days of film cameras, but the issue has been more obvious with digital cameras and therefore has caused more problems. With any standard autofocus camera the shutter button needs to be pushed halfway down to focus and then the rest of the way to take a shot. Partially because digital cameras have more to process and partially because people just notice the lag more because of the screen, many people just can’t seem to figure out why it doesn’t work when they just squeeze the shutter really fast.

Getting the flash right:

This also happened in analog photo days a lot but it’s more apparent in digital photography because people are taking more pictures, they are seeing the error right away, and there are generally a lot more flash options to mess up. The problem is that people don’t always realize automatic flashes aren’t perfect. Sometimes the flash wants to fire even though the situation doesn’t call for it. A perfect example is at a stadium. A typical flash is effective at a roughly twelve foot radius, so using it when shooting a picture of a sports team a hundred feet away will only hurt the photo.

Megapixels vs compression:

A lot of consumer cameras have made this a lot simpler by getting rid of the options altogether. It used to be that most cameras had an option for selecting the image size and a different option for selecting compression. Many cameras still gives those options and people don’t understand what the difference is and in turn they hurt their digital photography by compressing the photos to a small size that loses a lot of the wonderful colour information. Frankly, in most any case, low compression is better than high megapixels.

Using digital zoom:

If you have the option on your digital camera, turn the digital zoom off. All a digital zoom does is crop a photo before it’s taken. While it’s occasionally handy for framing a subject properly by getting in as close as you actually want it, it’s almost always unnecessary. The same result can be attained after the fact by cropping with a home computer. Wait until then otherwise all you do is cut down on your options.

Not backing them up:

Analog photography was automatically backed up. When you had prints you also had negatives. With digital photography that isn’t the case because people don’t always make prints. One of the biggest blunders you can make is to assume your digital files are safe. Always back them up onto CDs, external hard drives or the internet.