There is a lot of talk about tips to improve your photography, however, for a professional photographer, the way you maintain and use your professional camera can also interfere with the results of your photos.
For this reason, the eMania blog has compiled 40 essential tips for your professional camera. All to improve your results and get great photos, stay tuned!
- There are few things worse than taking a good photo and thinking it’s a dazzling image.
- But then discovering that the saturation and ISO settings of the professional camera were not set up correctly and missed the big moment.
Avoid checking and resetting all your settings, if necessary, before you start taking new professional photos.
Format or delete photos on your professional camera’s memory card?I’m sure you’ve already asked this question, the answer is extremely simple. Memory card formatting deletes all photos and rewrites all relevant information for professional camera compatibility.
As for this, simply removing photos from the memory card does not bring the same result, so always format your memory cards to minimize the risk of any kind of data corruption.
Firmware is the internal software of your professional camera, which is used to process photos and set a number of settings, controlling even the resources you have.
Constantly check your camera manufacturer’s website to make sure the firmware is always up to date.
Believing that your professional camera’s battery is fully charged and really charged makes a big difference.
Avoid surprises when taking new photos by making sure the battery is 100% charged, so consider buying a spare battery if necessary.
Most of the time, you’ll want to shoot at the highest resolution your professional camera can offer, but is that correct?
Sometimes, the reduction in resolution may be more appropriate for you, not only will it retain more photos on your memory card, but it will also speed up the camera’s shooting speed; in other words, it means eliminating delays when your professional camera clears the buffer.
Before opting for one of these formats, you need to understand what are the main differences between them that are related to the type of treatment you plan to give to the final photo before printing or sharing it.
If you intend to do manipulations or retouching, shooting in RAW is the best solution, thanks to its greater depth, however, raw files are larger, which takes longer to be processed by the professional camera and requires post-processing.
JPEG files, on the other hand, are processed by the camera instantly, so you can print or share them immediately, and you will find that the shooting speed will also be much faster in this format.
However, when file speed and size are not important, you can shoot in both formats. Most professional cameras offer you this option and you can decide what you want to do when you are back on your computer. an additional memory card with you.
Photography is not an exact science, new techniques, equipment and accessories are constantly being discovered to improve results with your professional camera.
For this reason, testing your professional camera settings, new lenses, focus settings or ISO settings is a great way to get to know your equipment and take advantage of its strengths. Similarly, by doing this, you can discover new forms of photography with much more satisfying results.
A good tripod is worth its weight in gold, so don’t be tempted to buy the cheapest on the market. Despite the low cost, most of the time it won’t last long or work well.
Instead of buying the first tripod for your professional camera, worry about finding the best one for your housing and of the highest quality. Remember to always carry this accessory with you!
Taking a tripod everywhere, taking the time to set it up and adjusting your professional camera can take too long and miss the opportunity to take a good photo.
Similarly, some photographs may be impossible to take with hands-free. There is no specific rule on when to use a tripod in your photos. The best way to decide is to photograph these two shapes and see which one you can do better. Your experiencia. es what counts here!
If you don’t have a tripod handy or just don’t want to buy one, you can improvise to make your professional camera safer. Some of the most common examples are touching the professional camera against the wall or using an object under the equipment, such as a bag of rice or beans, for example.
When photographing landscapes, there is no excuse for not having a horizontal level. Even the slightest tilt of the camera can completely ruin your photo. This can be hard to touch alone in the eye, but there are many techniques and gadgets you can use. to guarantee this in your photos.
You can use a level to place on your professional camera, a virtual app inserted into your camera, or even grid lines.
This sounds obvious, but if you’re a traveling photographer, you’ll need to make sure all the equipment in your photography kit is at your fingertips when you need it. Make sure all your tools are in good condition and available at shooting time. Otherwise, your work can get complicated. Never forget that your professional camera doesn’t do all the work on your own!
It is very easy to become dependent on the autofocus of your professional camera, after all it is much easier, however, in some situations, manual focus is a better option.
Manual camera focus can be used to take photos at intervals, such as on a race track; In this example, autofocus can take a long time to adjust correctly and you miss the perfect opportunity for a good photo.
Professional cameras have a multitude of AF collimators, but for most photos, you’ll only use one, the center focus. To use it, press the shutter lightly to adjust the focus, and when set by the camera, take your photo.
An incorrect lens will always be a faulty lens, no matter what professional camera you’re wearing, so before you decide to buy a new DSLR camera, ask yourself if a new lens might be a better choice.
Some additional pixels and smarter features may seem appealing, but faster aperture and higher optical quality can help you take better photos with the camera you already own.
There are thousands of old lenses that can still be used today, their low cost justifies investment, it is still a great way to expand your repertoire of photographic lenses, but there is a disadvantage.
All of these goals don’t work well and the only way to know which one works is to test them. In addition, your professional camera’s automatic settings may not work properly.
That said, there are manual focus photo lenses that can beat these old lenses and adjust your photos.
Large aperture lenses give the impression of increasing the distance between near and distant elements, while focal lengths seem to compress this perspective. Consider this when framing an object in your image and using the focal length that best suits the image, rather than simply choosing a lens with a focal length that fits everything.
If you want to maximize depth of field with your professional camera, set manual focus to hyperfocal distance, the point where everything from half the hyperfocal distance to infinity is clear.
Most optical sights don’t provide 100% coverage, so it’s easy for unwanted elements to appear unintentionally in your photo. The only way to be sure what will come out of the image is to check the LCD screen of your professional camera. of the final photo If there is something unpleasant in the frame, simply adjust your composition and take the photo again.
Even with static objects, consider taking a burst of photos using continuous shooting from your professional camera. Some subtle variations of light, such as moving clouds over a landscape or altering the expression of the main character in the portrait, can be captured with this.
These are examples of a “perfect moment“, it could be wasted if you took just one photo, okay? Then use continuous shooting and select the best photo later.
Conservative photographers disapprove, but the predefined exposure modes of their professional camera should not be completely ignored.
Landscape mode usually adjusts a small aperture and increases saturation, while “portrait” combines great aperture with softer colors. Both can be used in addition to their purpose, you only need to understand what the default settings are and how best to explore them.
Approximately underestimated, your professional camera menu effectively provides aperture and shutter speed in a semi-automatic package. If you want a wide aperture, a simple option in the camera menu can get it. Do you want slower speed? Just change another option in the menu and everything will be solved.
Simply put, aperture controls depth of field in an image and shutter speed controls when recording motion. Don’t know which one to choose? Decide which of these two things you want to have the most control over and prioritize your photography.
If you don’t know the dynamic range of your sensor, you won’t know when a scene will overcome it and you’ll lose the details of the highlights or shadows. There are countless ways to measure dynamic range, but since DxO Labs has tested many professional cameras, you can always use your numbers as a guide. Visit www. dxomark. com to see your equipment specifications.
You may be able to adjust the exposure of an image in your editing software, but this can cause digital noise, and if the photo is too exposed, it may not be possible to retrieve it. The way to avoid this is to set the exposure bracketing correctly.
How much does the live view of your professional camera provide a beautiful panorama of the look of the photo, in different environments this perspective can be distorted?In general, when you look at the LCD in a very bright environment, the image may appear a little too dark, while in a dark place, it may seem too light. This, to some extent, does not represent the true condition of the image. His eye can be deceived!
Histogram is the only way to accurately evaluate exposure in a professional camera, and the main thing to avoid when shooting is to deflect the highlights and, less seriously, the shadows. If the histogram reaches the right edge of the scale, consider reducing exposure and restarting the shot.
It’s much easier to retrieve details in shadow areas than to hide burnt reflections, so when the contrast is high, adjust the exposure to preserve the details of the photos.
While the standard measurement mode of your professional camera (also known as the Matrix or Dot Matrix) handles most scenes, a partial or point measurement model can also be invaluable when photographing in mainly bright or very dark situations.
You can use it to read in a nearby half tone, such as a sidewalk or lawn.
In addition to allowing you to have a more accurate reading, you can use your professional camera’s advanced indicator to determine contrast in a scene. Take one reading for the brightest area of the photo and another for the deepest shadow to determine how many stop separating the two readings.
If it’s greater than your camera’s dynamic range, you’ll need to accept a cut in shadows, lights, or both, or consider taking footage for a high dynamic range (HDR) photo.
To determine the exposure range of an HDR image, make point readings of the high lights and shadows of the scene, with the priority of opening the professional camera. Go to manual mode, adjust the aperture and use your exact readings as the start and endpoints of your HDR stream.
Set the shutter speed over time until you have covered the exposure range. Exposures can be combined into software such as Photomatix.
You can banish the characteristics of your landscape photography using a graduated ND filter lens (neutral density) to balance exposure between heaven and earth. It’s best to have a set of ND graduates with different transitions so you’re ready for a variety of conditions.
Alternatively, make two exposures, one for the sky and one for the foreground, then mix them into your photo editing software.
A solid ND filter for your professional camera is good for increasing shutter speed, but can also be used to control aperture. A three-diaphragm ND filter allows you to open the aperture (in three) for depth of field, even in the brightest conditions.
The effect of a polarizing lens filter is impossible to recreate digitally, making it the number one choice for outdoor photographers, especially to reduce glare or intensify the blue sky. Don’t lose the price, or you’ll regret the low quality.
Unless you know you want to print black and white images from the memory card, it’s better to take color photos and then convert them to mono in your image editing software, which will give you much more control than your device. Photography.
However, if you decide to take JPEG images in black and white, remember: red, orange, and yellow filters can add drama to an opaque sky, while an orange filter will reduce the appearance of freckles and imperfections in portraits.
As they are processed in the camera, you will want to get the correct color for JPEG files at the time of shooting. Therefore, use the predefined options of the professional camera (daylight, shadow, tungsten, etc. ) instead of relying on the automatic option.
Although automatic white balance is often considered a bit basic, if you save RAW files, there’s no reason to choose anything else, you can set the white balance to process your images.
Deliberately adjusting a poor white balance can add a general color hue to your images, from blue if you take pictures in daylight with a white balance with tungsten and a warm orange if you are photographing with tungsten lighting with a white daylight balance. professional camera that uses the predefined cloud, designed to heat cool scenes.
The flash built into your professional camera is ideal for casting shadows, but can also be used to create very spectacular images. Use your camera’s flash to compensate for exposure and reduce overall exposure to 1/2, then increase the flash exposure compensation to 1/2 to balance exposure.
Some cameras allow you to adjust exposure to ambient light without affecting flash exposure, in which case you won’t need to dial 1/2 for the flash. The result is an amazing photograph, where your main character is well lit against a slightly darkened light. Background.
Having an external flash with your professional camera will transform your portraits, especially if you use a dedicated flash that can be wirelessly controlled by the camera, and reflectors to reduce shadows.
Professional DSLR video cameras that use a CMOS sensor use a rolling shutter, which can cause particular artifacts when recording a video. Video conversion exposes each individual image in a line sequence, starting at the top and working down, as a scanner scans a document.
If the camera doesn’t move while it’s happening, no problem, but what if it takes panoramic images, particularly horizontally?Single-image lines can be distorted.
Holding the camera and using telephoto lenses can exacerbate the effect, so use a tripod and / or a long lens. Cameras with a CCD sensor are not affected because they use a “global shutter”, which shows each painting in its entirety, as well as in photographs.
Most professional cameras that allow you to record videos offer an image frequency. The TV standard is usually PAL, which works at 25 frames per second (fps). Is that the speed you should consider? For your video if you intend to show it on a TV.
However, you can also take photos at 50 ips to create a slow motion effect, when reading at a speed of 25 ips, it will actually look at ‘half speed’, so one second of the recorded images will be displayed in two seconds. on the screen.
The other frequency of images to consider is 24 ips, the normal frequency for cinema (unlike video). Although a single frame per second difference doesn’t seem like much, just give your hardware one?Do you watch movies? It is favored by many professional filmmakers and video creators.
Much has been said about the small dust particles that can land on the camera sensor and cause points in the images, which many photographers are paranoid about changing lenses from their professional camera, however, the ability to easily change lhies is one of the main attractions. DSLR cameras However, there are some simple precautions to consider.
Always turn off the camera when changing light, as this removes any static charges from the sensor that may attract dust particles. Protect the camera from the wind and make sure the replacement lens is ready to be placed. Finally, keep the lens opening. directed down during the exchange, to minimize the risk of something falling on it.
See also our feature: 24 parts of the camera that any novice photographer should know
Have we forgotten any tips for your professional camera or do we have a question? Leave your opinion in the comment field below.