DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
"Top 10 Digital Camera Mistakes!"
Digital Photography Tips
1st Mistake. Not enough megapixels!
Hopefully this is not you. The other day I had an individual come into my studio and ask me if I could retouch his photos. He had brought them on a CD and opened them up on my computer and realized they weren't any bigger than 500 kilobytes each. He wanted to make an 8 x 10 photo. 500 KB would barely produce a 3 x 5 inch photo, any larger and it would become pixilated. The moral of the story is to buy as much megapixels as you need. The following guide will help you know what size of high quality print you can expect from each megapixel rating. You can print any image at any size, and in many cases it is very difficult to see a significant decrease in quality as you enlarge images. It's important to remember that these measurements are for professional quality prints. When printed at 4" x 6" you will hardly notice any difference in the prints. Printed at 8" x 10" and you will notice a slight difference in the quality of the 1 to 2 megapixel image.
..."In practice this means that the sizes listed here can probably be increased by about 50% or more without any trouble"...
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Accurately printed @ 300DPI to exact dimension.
3mp=1984 x 1488, 8.45mb 6.6” x 5“
4mp=2448 x 1632, 11.4mb 8.2” x 5.4”
5mp=2592 x 1944, 14.4mb 8.6” x 6.5”
7mp=3072 x 2304, 20.3mb 10.2” x 7.7”
11mp=4064 x 2704, 31.4mb 13.6” x 9”
16.6mp=4992 x 3328, 47.5mb 16.6” x 11” |
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(This maybe a little too much information, but for you techies it may be of interest!)
This cut down table gives an indication of how the pixel dimensions of an image convert to real world printed dimension, in both inches and pixels. The conversion assumes that the image is being printed at 300 dpi (dots per inch), which is standard resolution for glossy, quality print.
The human eye is very forgiving and you can print images at less than 300 dpi (I print at 240DPI) with little or no visible degradation. In practice this means that the sizes listed here can probably be increased by about 50% or more without any trouble. 300 pixels/inch roughly equals 120 pixels/cm.
The megapixel stats are true megapixels. For example, a camera that generates 2540 x 1932 pixels is really a 4.9 megapixel camera. The manufacturer may sell that camera as 5 megapixels, but it's really not. 2540 times 1932 equals 4907280. not 5000000.
The definition of DPI is: Dots per inch. A measure of the resolution of a printer, scanner, or monitor. It refers to the number of dots in a One inch line. The more dots per inch, the higher the resolution.
If you have taken the time to correctly shoot and image, making sure it's of the best possible focus, according to most labs a 1600 x 1200 pixels can be printed with pretty good results up to an 8 x 10 with very little loss of quality. This is a personal thing to some professional photographers this would be an outrage to print to large of a portrait with so little information (megapixels).
So that in mind, it is very important that when using a smaller megapixel camera that you get closer to your subject to maintain the best possible detail. The biggest problem is that when someone takes a picture they stand way too far back and capture the entire person in the image area, and then they want to crop in closer later because they can't see them very well. Then what happens is we end up seeing more of the square pixilation. So if you get a camera with a higher number of megapixels you'll be more flexible and you'll have better options in editing, cropping, and printing your images.
2nd Big Mistake. Sending large files through your email.
Now if you're one of those who went out and bought the bigger megapixel camera and you can't wait to start sharing your images with family and friends, one of the easiest ways is through email. Well, you're going to have a little bit of a problem unless you learn to do it the right way. Let me share a story with you. My brother just bought him a 10 megapixel camera. He was so excited to send me an image that he had just taken. He tried to load it and it took him 30 minutes to find out that he couldn't send it. Some internet providers limit you on how large an image can be sent, on average 2 megapixels.
There are a couple of solutions to this problem:
The easiest way is to just scale a copy of the image down to a more reasonable size that can fit on most computer screens. Always keep your original images in their original size. You can delete the scaled down copy after emailing them.
Windows XP users have a way built right into the operating system, and photo cataloging programs usually have a "send email" feature that resizes images automatically. There are several free programs you can use, like Photoscape 3.3, PhotoPlus, Paint.NET , Gimp 2.6. The other solution is scaling your photos down and posting them to a photo sharing site. My favorite is Google's Picasa web album. It is available through their email service, or post your photos to your own personal Website. I'm using Blogger.com and WordPress.com. Posting photos to the Web is a lot better solution if you have tons of photos to share, or when you want to share the same group of photos with many different people. These two photo sharing sites will automatically downsize large images or offer a choice of sizes to the viewer. If you already have personal Web space, you probably already know how to do this. If not, check with your ISP and you will find lots of free or inexpensive software to build a Web photo gallery for yourself.
3rd Mistake. Not backing up images.
You can save film negatives for years and years, but when you make the switch to digital, you may never even consider the idea of making a second, third, or fourth backup copy of your images. You are backing up your images, aren't you?
Please understand that any digital storage that is available on the market is susceptible to failure. You never can predict the day of the failure, but you can be prepared for it. Please get in the habit of making backups of your digital images by making not only a second copy, but a third and fourth copy. Archiving two different copies of photo images to CD's and/or DVD's, and throwing in a couple of external hard drives is the absolute smartest way of doing it, costs of which are getting lower and lower.
Something to think about: When purchasing hard drives, larger hard drives are not always the best idea. Consider losing a 1000GB (terabyte) hard drive of images as opposed to maybe only one of two 500GB hard drives. Even further, consider four 250GB hard drives instead. This is only an idea in helping you to spread out the possibilities of hard drive failures. When one 250GB hard drive is filled up, duplicate it on another hard drive and disconnect and put them on two different shelves in two different locations, as well as for the two copies of CDs and or DVD's. If you lose your images, you also have DVD's and/or CD's of these images stored away as well. This may sound extreme, but you're sure glad when your internal computer hard drive crashes with all your photos on it and you have two 250 GB hard drives and DVDs and CDs with all of your images on them. Trust me, this has happened to me on two occasions and it was very devastating for me. But I had CDs and DVDs of every one of those images stored away. One time while I was transferring images to another hard drive, the hard drive I was transferring from crashed, and they didn't get to the second hard drive. I sent the hard drive to California to a company that could retrieve them. They wanted a minimum of $1700.00 to retrieve them but they couldn't guarantee that price. It could have gone up from there. If I'm scaring you, then good! I hope it will cause you to take action.
Another good thing to do: Get a copy to a family member, or put it in a fireproof safety deposit box. Just remember all those photographic records and memories will not be lost.
For convenience, you can keep copies of your most recent and best photos on your hard drives. And then every night you can have your HP MediaSmart Server automatically backup and duplicate them.
Your best photos can be uploaded to an online photo sharing site such as Picasa Web Albums or Photoshop Express. If you choose to rely on an online storage site for backups, be sure to choose a company that does not resize or re-compress your pictures, and one that you feel confident will not go out of business.
4th Mistake. Do not use the evil digital zoom.
As far as I'm concerned, digital zoom is just a marketing ploy to get you to buy their camera because it zooms up so much closer than the other camera, NOT! Do not use it! Zooming up on a subject should only be done through an optical glass lens. Go to your camera right now and find the zoom feature and switch it off, now! Don't ever use digital zoom... Ever, ever, ever! All digital zoom does is use interpolation to make a small area seem larger by adding extra pixels (the same method that photo editing software does when you re-sample your image). Your camera has no ability to artfully add pixels. All it can do is create the illusion of increased detail, but it has no detail there that can be logically created.
Another thing I want you to be aware of, is that when you use a digital zoom to zoom up close to your subject, the harder it could be to focus on that subject and to get correct exposures. Also trying to hold the camera still because of the extended zoom is almost impossible. So image capture is the worst it could be while using the digital zoom. You can either trust me, or try it yourself and see what you come up with.
Using photo editing software to re-sample your images gives you a variety of methods on re-sampling your images. One method may work better than another depending upon the characteristic of your image. Go to Wikipedia on increasing image resolution.
Your larger megapixel camera will give you more information to crop and still have good quality images. If you like closeup shots, invest in higher optical zoom or a telephoto removable lens.
5th Mistake. Do not use in-camera JPEG compression.
Your camera JPEG compression converts your images to a smaller image so you can fit more on your storage card. But too much compression can damage them beyond repair. Choose the best image allowable by your camera.
What is this JPEG compression? Instead of spending a lot of time here explaining it, those who would like to, go to Wikipedia and JPEG format. I personally use the JPEG format for all of my old scanned photos but I never usually go down below an 11 compression. The higher numbers generally relate to the lowest compressions, higher quality and larger files; where a 5 or a 6, would be considered a higher compression creating lower quality and smaller files. Please set your camera to the lowest file compression available (10-12 depending on your camera). Avoid the temptation to save space on your card. Go buy another card, they're cheap compared to the value of your images. You can always compress a copy of your original file if you need to but always keep the original image safely archived in their original full size file. (back to top)
6th Mistake. Do not use low resolution to save memory.
With the same concept as JPEG images, you can use less memory by using lower resolution. Remember detail is the most important thing to any image, the more lifelike it will look and the better you will enjoy it. Please use your camera's highest resolution settings to preserve that detail. 50 years from now, it would be great if you could still see that odd looking mole on Uncle Ernie's neck. Any information that is tossed away by compression or low resolution can never be reclaimed in the digital image. It must be there from the beginning. Go buy yourself a bunch of large digital memory cards. You may think it not so important at this moment considering the costs of everything you just put into your camera, but future generations will be wishing you had used that little bit more resolution.
7th Mistake. Considering software that came with your camera.
The software that is provided with your camera or scanner may only be for basic tasks. You should consider upgrading to a more powerful photo editor. Depending upon your camera, you may end up getting a watered-down version of some of the very powerful programs on the market which they give you in order for you to, at some point later, buy their larger version. I started out using PhotoPaint from Corel, very powerful, but later was introduced to Photoshop. I'm currently using version CS3. They came out with a CS4 version but it didn't seem to have too much more for the portrait photographer then what CS3 had. It seems to me that it leaned more towards designers and illustrators. I'm sure that CS5 will have more improved and advanced features for portrait photographers and the like. Something to consider is that Photoshop, being a mainstream photo editing software, will give you more access to learning resources. Checkout Photoshop on YouTube. There are loads of active online communities and forums. These are just a few of many.
8th Not a mistake, just good practice. File names (Mac):
I find that by putting the four numeral year (2009) at the beginning of every file of the year it was taken, a space, the two digit month (06), and finally the day of the month, last two digit form (15) example: 2009 06 15, next add the main surname of the photo with the name of the individual/s following, event (if necessary), and the physical location, example:"2009 06 15 Hancock Scott John Dale 4th of July, Salt Lake City Utah.jpg". Now there's a place in Photoshop's Bridge where you can access the metadata, and you can put all kinds of information in there, but if you're not familiar with this, listing it all in the file name works just as well, and it will automatically, chronologically keep all your files in order. Name even your file folders with the year first and they will keep them in chronological order as well.
9th Big mistake. Not actually saving your images!
After you transfer your digital images from your media card to your laptop or computer, make sure the photos open up and are saved off of the camera's card before you delete the files. Don't accidentally delete the images without saving them elsewhere and making sure they are really there first. That can be a bummer, especially with wedding photos or other important 1-time occasions where you can't do re-takes.
10nd Big mistake. Not opening up your manuals!
You probably just spent more money than you would ever spend on a camera and some accessories. As soon as you got it home, you pulled it out of the box, hooked it all up and started shooting tons of images, never even thinking about using those little books that were so carefully written and assembled just for you so that you could use their camera the way it was designed. They always offer all the information you need on how to use all the little gadgets built right into the camera. I probably use only 10% of all of the gadgets in my camera, but a little bit of knowledge goes a long way when needed. They also share a little bit of general photography knowledge that really helps in a pinch. The really cool thing about a digital camera, is that you can do a lot of practicing and experimentation with hardly any additional costs. Now go have a lot of fun. I do, I made it my living. Enjoy!
Bonus Tip: "Red Eye & Other Digital Photography Tips"
Red Eye is a common problem with image capturing because of on-camera flash. To avoid it, move your flash off-axis and choose a connecting cord and flash bracket. Then simply bounce the flash off of something like a wall or ceiling. An alternative is to use a remote flash trigger to keep the flash off the camera. If you do not have a removable flash, you will want to learn how to remove red eye in your photo editing software.
Always carry along extra batteries, your re-charger and adapter, equipment instructions and an extra media card or two. You never know where you might need your supplies, and don’t want to miss great shots.
If you want to use photos that have people in them for stock/publicity/commercial use, plan ahead and find simple permission forms to print out and stash in your photo bag. To locate forms, search online for “permission for photos form” and customize one for your own company or private brand. Check in local library photography books for a quick one to print out, too, or at a local professional photo shop for other sources.
Try to get something to compare size with in your photos. For example, instead of just taking a shot of a flower, place your hand in the background as if you’re gently holding or caressing it in the palm of your hand – only without actually touching it.
These are just a handful of digital photography tips to help you take better pictures. For more in-depth information, and a great digital photography guide, I recommend “Digital Photography Mastery,” a complete ebook packed full of helpful information, downloadable immediately upon payment at: "Digital Photography Success"
To your success, Scott Hancock