Knowing how your digital camera meters light is critical for achieving consistent and accurate exposures. Metering is the brains behind how your camera determines the shutter speed and aperture, based on lighting conditions and ISO speed. Metering options often include partial, evaluative zone or matrix, center-weighted and spot metering. Each of these have subject lighting conditions for which they excel-- and for which they fail. Understanding these can improve one's photographic intuition for how a camera measures light.

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A digital camera uses a sensor array of millions of tiny pixels in order to produce the final image. When you press your camera's shutter button and the exposure begins, each of these pixels has a "photosite" which is uncovered to collect and store photons in a cavity. Once the exposure finishes, the camera closes each of these photosites, and then tries to assess how many photons fell into each. The relative quantity of photons in each cavity are then sorted into various intensity levels, whose precision is determined by bit depth (0 - 255 for an 8-bit image).

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Pictures don't just come out looking right. If you look at some of the pictures you especially like, you will notice that the way the picture was composed probably has a lot to do with it. What we mean by composition is how you place your subject(s) on the blank canvas that's your 4x6 (or 5x7 or 8x10).

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You'd be surprised how many photographers do not know the basics -- and wonder why their pictures always seem to have something wrong with them. These basic pointers are so common sense that we should not have to say them -- but we will anyway, because they are important. They might be simple, but not simplistic.

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Most digital cameras provide exposure compensation. What is exposure compensation -- and how do we use it to obtain better exposed pictures? This tutorial makes it all clear.

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Night photography has an attraction all its own. There's something about scintillating lights from office windows hanging in the dark of the night -- a modern version of the starry skies -- that appeal to us. Whether it's a city skyline, lamp posts on a dark and deserted street, or the front of your house all decked out with holiday lights, the challenge of capturing the mood of a night scene depends on whether your digital camera is capable of night photography and on a couple of simple techniques.

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What is depth of field, what affects depth of field, and how can we use an understanding of depth of field to take better pictures? This tutorial will make everything clear from near to far.

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When you take a picture in JPEG file format with your digital camera, a couple of things happen before the image is even saved to memory card...Let's take a look and see them!

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If you come from the world of films, you may remember using filters to correct for incandescent or fluorescent lighting. Most people don't bother and their indoors pictures invariably come out with a yellow/orange or bluish cast. In the digital world, these correction filters are no longer necessary, replaced by a feature found in most -- even the entry-level -- digital cameras called, "White Balance."

submitted: 5 years and 3714 days ago

ISO sensitivity expresses the speed of photographic negative materials (formerly expressed as ASA).

submitted: 5 years and 3714 days ago