In House Digital Photography

By John Dowsett

I owe my love of photography to my father. Before I was a teenager my father taught me to shoot with his 35mm gear. I somehow grasped the difference between depth of field and depth of focus, as well as the ability to shoot without a light meter. "What is it now son?" he would ask, and I would tell him the f-stop and shutter speed. A cloud would shelter the sun, and he would quietly ask "Where are the shadows now?" I never thought it to be anything special, but I sure did love getting those pictures back from the lab. As with so many things in my life, it was many years later I realized the gift my father had given me.

Digital photography has automated many of the tasks that once had to be learned. When was the last time you adjusted the shutter speed - or for that matter used manual focus? This has allowed us to concentrate more on the critical elements of composition and lighting.

We are finding more clients producing professional images internally, without hiring a photographer. The aim of this article is to provide a few tips and tricks, as well as some basics of digital photography.

What Camera?

The BBC technology program Click sent a seasoned professional armed with a consumer ‘point and shoot' camera to capture African scenery. They also sent a novice with a top of the line digital SLR kit with the same task. The images were posted and voted on. The professional won. The message is simple. The output of even a simple point and shoot camera is able to produce technically brilliant images.

A simple guideline is that if a manufacturer has made great film cameras in the past, the odds are the digital offerings will be great as well. Try not to get caught up in the bells and whistles, or in the megapixel count. The best images come from the cameras with the best optics, not the highest megapixel count. A wonderfully unbiased site for putting cameras up against each other is www.dpreview.com.

File Formats

Dive into the settings of your digital camera, and you will find a myriad of settings. File format is the one that will make the most difference in output. Utilizing compressed formats, such as JPEG allow a massive quantity of shots to be stored on one card. Avoid JPEG at all costs, and move to an uncompressed format such as TIFF or RAW. JPEG is a lossy compression. JPEG not only throws out information when you shoot the picture, it loses more every time the file is saved.

Lighting

Lighting is the magic wand in photography. Not quite a black art - lighting is what makes professional photographers stand out from the crowd.

Our eyes really are magical, they have the ability to see a wider degree, or latitude of light than any camera ever made. Keep this in mind when shooting, and aim for even light on your subject with minimal shadows, and slightly less light on the foreground and background.

More light decreases digital noise, or artifacting in images. The downside of bright light include unwanted shadows and glare. We use dulling spray on products, and makeup on people to remove glare. In a pinch, hair spray will also hide the shiny spots on product.

Composition

There is one basic rule in composition, which is the rule of three. Try and visualize your shot with foreground, subject and background. In a perfect world, the subject will be perfectly exposed, with the foreground and background slightly under or over exposed. Split your horizontal composition in threes as well, putting your subject slightly to one side.

Shoot everything a little bit wider than you want the output. Cropping has never been easier, and you will be grateful for the flexibility later on.

Tweaking for Print

Photoshop is the tool of choice for preparing images for print. If you are not proficient with Photoshop leave it to the professionals as images can be destroyed with a few keystrokes. If you are familiar with Photoshop, make copies of your files before you start tweaking to ensure you have a safety to go back to square one with - much like a negative with film.

Simple adjustments commonly used include:

• Brightness and contrast
• Unsharp mask (to sharpen theimage)
• Despeckling (removal of digital noise)

Always print a proof on a good quality inkjet printer, or better yet take them to the lab to make prints. What looks great on the computer screen rarely looks the same in print. If your image is going to press, it will need to be converted to CMYK. This is a simple procedure in Photoshop. If you are unable to look after this, please let the next person to handle the images know that they have yet to be converted.

For my father's birthday I gave him a new digital camera. It feels somehow out of place that the roles have reversed, the son now helping his father with photography. He has forgotten more than I will ever know.

 

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