Tell us about your camera and how you use it. What’s the one thing you like the most about your camera? Are you using a cameraphone? They are great for shooting when you come across an unexpected spectacular moment. Some of the excellent moments have been captured on cameraphones. Or are you using a DSLR? Tell us what you’d like to know more about your camera. We are coming up with some great posts for the camera owners so have your say before we start.
We have been covering a lot of basic and technical topics on the photography front in the last one month. We’d like to know you better and collect your suggestions. We want to make sure we know you and your camera so that the information is relevant, is usable and valuable. So what are you waiting for? Come on say something 
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Congrats on your new purchase. You’d want to put a “UV” filter or a “Clear” filter at least. The intention is to protect your camera’s lens. Later as your photography gets refined you’ll know which filters you’d require. I’d strongly recommend you to suscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get the latest photography tips and techniques.
When I buy a new lens I always buy a basic UV Or SkyLight filter at the same time. This goes on to the new lens before it goes out of the shop.
With digital cameras and the likes of Photoshop, etc. the only other filter you should seriously condiser is a polarising filter. This filter reduces glare and make colours more saturated, very much the same as a pair of polarising sunglasses do for your eyes. It can also cut out a lot of reflection off glass and water. The polarising filters affect is one thing Photoshop can’t recreate – OK there is no doubt some people who will boast that they can do it. Just use the filter, its so much easier.
I like my Nikon D80 and have had it for almost two years. Although I currently use the kit lenses, and will purchase the 18-200 lens soon, all my family and friends are amazed at my photographs. I recently took one sunset with a streak of clouds through the picture and shot several pictures of it using different white balance settings and results were very dramatic. I posted these on my myspace account and got rave reviews. Thanks for the nice site — David
I own an Olympus FE-26, 12 mega pixels, 3x optimal zoom, and it seems to have alot of gadgets on it I have not found yet. I also own a Kodak Easy Share CX7330, 3.1 mega pixels, 3x optical zoom. I change between the camera depending on what Im doing. If I want one for outdoors I use the Kodak (its older and I dont mind if it gets wet a bit). They both are Point and Shoot cameras. i am looking forward to one day owning an SR camera.
I love to take pictures, mostly of my 2and 1/2 year old son, but I do get caught up in moments like snowstorms or fireworks. I also love trying to take pictures of the waves crashing on the rocks, sunsets, sunrises, etc.
Hi I’m very new in photography, But I did lots of experiments to learn more. But most of the time my photographs are not so sharp as i expect. I own Canon Eos 40D and the lens 17-85 mm with UV filter.
Hello Arafath! Welcome to the wonderful world of digital photography. The 40D was my first foray into digital SLR imagery and I think it is a great camera. When I fist started out with the system, I was puzzled for a bit as I expected sharper images as well. Coming from a film background, I had to realize that there are some controls in the digital that help a lot. Think through the way the camera takes the picture –
First, light through the lens, lens to sensor, in camera computer processing, post processing on PC/Mac or whatever. Not trying to make small any previous experience you have covering something so basic, so bear with me. It pans out in the end.
You need to find the stop that your lens works best with. I am not familiar with the 17-85, but I would suspect that between 6.4 and 11 you will find that the lens produces sharper images than when wide open or stopped down all the way. My “kit” lens was the 28-135 and at f/8 it produced wonderfully sharp images, but open it was kind of soft. Experimenting is the only way to find it, but that is the joy of the format!
Lens to sensor is moot if you are shooting off hand. From a tripod, you can lock the mirror up and take out the slight vibration that snapping the shot causes to the camera. I never had that shake cause any problems for me until I started shooting lunar images. It is another thing to consider though, depending on your subject.
In camera processing is a key that I did not consider for a long time. I found that the camera’s processor does a wonderful job sharpening images as they are written to the card. It is quick, taking less than a few milliseconds. Bump it up to 4 or 5 and I think you will start to see the camera come into its own. Resist the urge to take it too far (6 or 7) as it will start to “over sharpen” and you will get “hard” images. Again, experiment as it is cheap and part of the allure of these great cameras.
Post processing is a world unto itself, but the Canon software does a pretty good job I find. Play around with it and I think you will start to see images that will really like. It is all about finding the right settings and then developing a system where all of it is taken into account before each shutter click. The main thing, enjoy! Sorry so long guys and gals -
Hi Arafath, welcome to the wonderful photography.
First off I would suggest you investigate your local high schools for night classes on photography. You can learn a wealth of information from these sorts of classes as well as interact with other keen photographers at a similar stage.
OK, so your images are not as sharp as you hope or expect. Matt Matchura raised an excellent point about the apature of the lens. Lenses tend to have a ‘Sweet Spot” where the lens is at its optimum, this is usually around f8 – f11. This is where most lenses will produce their best result.
HOWEVER digital cameras, including SLRs will not create a sharp image. The cameras will try to apply some average sharpening of the image, but not always the best. If you want to get better results use Photoshop, (or whatever you’re using) and apply “Unsharp”. Ironically this will sharpen the image. Do not just whack it up to full or you will over sharpen the image and distort the result.
There are other basic things you can do to clean up the image with out chopping it up. I wont go in to these here. Night classes can help you here and so can various articles on this site and many others.
Big suggestion – some people take a view of, ‘Who cares, I’ll fix it later in photoshop”. Not a great attitude to develop. There is only so much you can fix with a poor photo.
Try and get the best image you can when you take it. This will improve you skills with photography and increase your chance of getting great images.
An extra 5 min taking a shot can save hours of agony behind the keyboard and an uncertain result.
Good luck and good shooting,
Paul P
Great suggestions. Additionally I wanted to mention that digital cameras are not as sharp as film cameras. One reason is Bayer Interpolation. Use the in-camera sharpening set to moderate or auto (turning it off may be fine if you are shooting RAW and want to process the capture sharpening later). There’s no workaround for sharpening photos during post-processing (with certain exceptions).
Additionally, it could be otherwise and there’s some fault in the equipment itself, so do compare your lens/camera with others of the same make before concluding anything.
I just ordered a Canon XS Rebel. I am so excited to use it! In Christmas of ‘08, I bought my first digital camera- A Canon Powershot SD 1100 IS in pink (hey, I was only 10 at the time!) and I absolutely love Canon. I read up on the Rebel and it looks like a wonderful camera. I was looking for a Rebel that was on the low end, since I’m a kid and don’t want to invest in something that my brothers or I might break. So that looked like the perfect choice, and I am looking forward to receiving it in the mail. Could anyone give me any advice on how to use the 18-55mm lens? I’m new to the adjustable lens realm of photography, and any help or guidance on that topic would be appreciated. Thanks so much- This is a great website!
Pink, purple of pea green – who cares about the colour. You bought a camera, went out and used it. That is the important thing. Sometimes you will bump into camera snobs. These are the sort of people who look down upon you because you don’t have the fancy camera gear. I have seen fantastic images taken on very cheap and rough cameras. I have also seen rubbish pictures taken on camera worth thousand.
Adjustable lenses or zoom lenses are extremely useful things to use, but like everything in life, “There is no such thing as a free lunch”. Zooms are invariably a compromise of versatility vs. quality. The convenience of being able to change the focal length is balanced by a lack of image quality. Sure you can buy top of the line zoom lenses that give fantastic images – for fantastic $$.
An 18-55mm zoom will be very useful for landscape, architecture and a good all round general purpose lens. I believe due to the size of the CMOS sensor the camera has a lens multiplier of 1.6. This makes the zoom effectively a 28-88mm lenses.
A good guide for zoom is using the lens at the 18mm and the 55mm ends will produce the worst images. The best place to use a zoom lens is about the middle of the lenses focal range, which will be about 35mm for your lens. I am not saying don’t zoom in or out, just be aware that the best image quality is in the middle. If possible use the good old fashion manual zoom function and either walk closer or further away to the subject.
Like most lenses they also have an optimum point for their Aperture. Once again it is usually about the middle. For most lenses its around the f8 – f11 point. If you are not worried about the depth of field and the lighting is good try to stay close to f8 or f11.
You will hear some people tell you they can fix any image in Photoshop so don’t worry about things. Sure Photoshop can fix a lot of mistakes, but why not get your image as good as you can when you take it. Having Photoshop CS ‘whatever’ is no substitute for developing good photography skills and using them.
Suggestion – The first thing you should consider is put a filter on your lens. Either a “Daylight” or “UV” filter. These will have little effect on the images you shoot, BUT they will help protect the lens from dust and finger prints. They may also help save you lens from minor knocks. Better to replace a $30-$50 filter that became scratched than a $200-$500 lens. Try to avoid removing this filter if you can.
My last bit of advice is joining a camera/photography club if you have not already done so. You can learn a lot about photography here and they will encourage you to push your self in different directions and styles of photography.
Good luck and good shooting,
Paul
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