Learning how to use a camera can be frustrating and time consuming, but if you understand how to work your camera using the manual settings you’ll find it much easier to take pictures when it’s on auto. When the camera is on auto it makes exposure settings according to how much light is coming into the lens, and even though cameras these days are very clever they can’t cope with every situation. You will often need to take control yourself, and with digital cameras you can tell whether your manual adjustment has made a difference.

You don’t always need to set your camera to ‘full manual setting’ to make changes to the camera auto settings, I’ll talk about this at the end of this piece but first I need to get the tech stuff out of they way.

Aperture Size.
The size of the aperture determines how much light passes through your lens, large apertures let more light pass through, small apertures let less light pass through.
Aperture settings are referred to as f-stops, or f-numbers, expressed as a fraction, such as f/22. However, to save space, f-numbers are often denoted by just their denominator, such as 22. Note, the larger the f-number, the smaller the relative aperture.
On a manual camera, f-numbers are usually adjusted with a ring outside your lens barrel. A typical sequence of f-numbers on a camera run, from largest to smallest aperture: 1.8, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22.
The difference between each f-number is twice the amount of light. So, aperture setting f/16 lets in twice as much light as f/22.
The aperture size determines the depth of field, or zone of sharp focus, that surounds your subject: whereas small apertures (high f-numbers) produce a long depth of field, large apertures (small f-numbers) produce a short depth of field. Therefore, if you’re taking a picture of a landscape, and you want both foreground and background to be in focus, use a small aperture such as f/16. On the other hand, if you’re taking a picture of a friend or family member, and you want to place more emphasis on them by blurring the background, use a large aperture such as f/4.    

Shutter Speed.
Release the shutter, you will see the aperture momentarily open for the length of time set by the shutter speed.
The shutter speed determines how long your film/digital sensor is exposed to light passing through the aperture: the slower the shutter speed, the longer the shutter remains open, the more light reaches your film/digital sensor. So, both aperture size and shutter speed determine the final exposure of your picture.
Like f-numbers, shutter speeds are expressed as a fraction, such as 1/60 second. However, to save space, shutter speeds are often denoted by just their denominator, such as 60. The larger the shutter speed number, the shorter the amount of time your film/digital sensor is exposed to light.
On manual cameras, the shutter speed is usually adjusted by a circular control knob on top of the camera. A typical sequence of shutter speeds on a camera run, from slowest to fastest: 1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 30, 60, 125, 250, 500, 1000.
The shutter speed determines the amount of motion blur a moving object will have in your final picture. Use a fast shutter speed (such as 1/500 sec) to freeze fast moving objects in their trajectory, or use a slow shutter speed (such as 1/2 sec) to illustrate movement by creating motion blur.
Like f-numbers, the difference between each shutter speed setting is twice the amount of light. For example, shutter speed 1/60 sec lets in twice as much light as 1/125 sec.
Due to the doubling/halving nature of both aperture and shutter settings, closing the aperture one stop (halving the light) while simultaneously decreasing the shutter speed by one setting (doubling the light) produces no effective change in the amount of light reaching your film/digital sensor. The same is true for closing the aperture two stops while decreasing the shutter speed by two settings. This means there are several aperture and shutter settings which produce the same overall exposure of your final picture. For example, the combination f/4 and 1/60 sec produces the same overall exposure as f/2.8 and 1/125 sec, or f/5.6 and 1/30 sec. This is not to say these settings will produce the same final picture since the combination you choose will determine the depth of field surrounding your subject (aperture size) and the amount of motion blur of moving objects (shutter speed).

Exposure Meter.
Most camera light meters estimate the exposure of your final snapshot by a “center-weighted” averaging algorithm, more sophisticated DSLR cameras can also meter ‘Spot” or very small parts of the subject, and ‘Evaluative’ which can cope with backlit subjects.
One condition that often “fools” the light meter is when a subject is backlit or the sun is shining behind your subject. You can tell if the meter has been fooled if your subject is underexposed.
For the same reason, a dark or black object occupying the center of the viewfinder will also “fool” the light meter. You can tell here if the meter has been fooled if your subject is overexposed.
Objects of average light intensity are grey stone, weathered wood, foliage or dark skin.

How to fix over or underexposure.
There are a number of techniques you can use to fix over or under exposure. There are two I use most often.
1. If you have your camera set to Av (aperture priority) or Tv (speed or time priority) you can take control yourself quickly by telling your camera to overexpose or underexpose by moving the exposure slider on your LCD panel to plus or minus. Normally one or two stops will fix your image. If your camera is set to Av you will adjust the shutter speed, if it is set to Tv you will adjust the aperture.

2. Set your camera to manual. Now you have control over both aperture and shutter speed. The camera’s light meter will still tell you what it thinks the ideal exposure should be, and as you adjust both the speed and the aperture the camera will tell you whether you are over or underexposing. When you first try this out it’s a good idea to put your camera on a tripod as there are so many things to think about, and if the camera is not moving around you’ll see how your adjustments are affecting your image.

Practice makes perfect and as usual my advice is to take lots and lots of pictures, be adventurous, and don’t worry if you find it confusing to begin with.

For some time now compact cameras have come fitted with zoom lenses, and zoom lenses are often bundled with SLR cameras. Because of the technology involved modern zoom lenses in digital cameras are often even stronger.

So when and why should you use the zoom lens on your camera?
One of the most important rules with portrait photography is “get close”. Unfortunately, for most family snaps, that rule is rarely applied. Uncluttered, closely cropped shots make the best family snaps and natural portrait photographs, and a zoom lens is the ideal way to get close in and get the cropping right.

What does using a zoom do for your photograph?
A zoom lens will get you physically closer to the action, and the content of your photograph will be much stronger if you are be able to isolate parts of the action.
Depth of field can also be used to your advantage when using a zoom lens particularly in portraits. Keep the aperture at around f5.6 and focus on the subject, when the lens is wide open you’ll get the subject in focus and the foreground and background out of focus giving you much stronger emphasis on the subject.
A mid range zoom lens is also ideal for travelling. My wife has banned me from taking a tripod and sets of lenses on holiday so I take a 24mm-105mm lens which can deal with most situations. If you can get away with taking another zoom with you take a 70mm-200mm or something up to 300mm or 400mm. Photographing the locals without attracting attention to yourself is much easier with a longer zoom lens.

Optical Zoom and Digital Zoom?
If you are about to buy a camera, perhaps even step into the world of digital, buy a camera with the strongest optical zoom you can afford. Some of the digital cameras available today have zoom lenses that are 10x or even stronger! The higher the number represented in the optical zoom the closer you can get to the action and the more dynamic your pictures can be. 
As for digital zoom, well…that is another thing altogether. Digital zooms are available in many digital cameras and work on a similar principle to cropping in on a negative. Digital zoom crops in on the digital image and uses only the central pixels in the picture. Then, using inbuilt software, the image is enhanced and built into a file that can be printed. However, the sharpness of your pictures suffers and should only be used if your desperate, if at all. Don’t factor the digital zoom into your purchasing decision.

The Great All-Rounders
Advancements in lens technologies have made some lenses possible today that just couldn’t have been considered twenty years ago. Today, you can buy one lens that lets you take wide angle landscapes and then zoom in to a person in that landscape. What’s more, these lenses are incredibly sharp! Lenses like the Tamron 18-250mm for digital SLR cameras are fantastic and you could travel the world with only this lens and hardly ever miss a shot. In fact, Tamron are packaging their 11-18mm and their 18-250mm lenses together now so that you are covered from superwide to supertelephoto in only two lenses. Most high end lenses also have an image stabilisation capability which can really help with blurred photographs resulting from camera shake.
Compact digital cameras are also including lenses that do much the same thing. The Ricoh R7 has a 7x zoom. The Canon PowerShot is similar. The SX100 IS has a 10x zoom. And there are many others like these. Included with these kinds of cameras are vibration reduction and anti shake modes that prevent your telephoto pictures from being blurred from camera shake.

How Close is ‘Close’?
If you don’t know just how close to get, try this. Compose your picture as you normally would and take it. Then, zoom in. Then, zoom in some more. Keep zooming, or moving closer until you actually begin to see only what you need to see and no more. Take another picture and compare the two. Almost invariably, your second picture will be the more interesting and dynamic of the two. 

After what seems to have been the wettest November on record the cold weather is set to arrive this week. After banging on recently about autumn being my favourite season for photography, Winter comes a close second.
Winter photography can be extremely rewarding as long as you follow a few simple guidelines to keep your equipment working, and modify your techniques to compliment the change in outdoor conditions. While photography in winter is different than other times of the year, a bit of understanding can make your efforts produce more dramatic and in many ways more memorable photos than the typical summer shots. Here are just a few tips to remember:

1. Carry fresh or freshly charged batteries – Cold climates are rough on batteries. The first thing to do is make sure your batteries are fresh or freshly charged, and if possible, carry spares. Your camera and especially the camera’s batteries will not work as well as in the milder months of the year. Remember that winter photography means dealing with an outdoor environment that’s cold and harsh. If your camera is small, of the point and shoot variety, consider carrying it in an inside pocket if you’re going to be outside for any length of time. If the camera is a larger, SLR type camera, think about carrying the batteries in an inside pocket until needed. For either type of camera, if you’re shooting consistently, rotate spare batteries in and out of your inside pocket to keep them warm.

2. Take advantage of the sun’s lower angle in the winter – Most fine art photographers will tell you that they prefer to shoot either early in the morning or late in the afternoon. There are two reasons for this preference. First, the colors are more “dramatic”. What they mean is that the colors are more toward the yellow end of the spectrum, which is considered “warmer”. Second – and this is the relevance to winter photography – when pictures are shot early and late in the day, the sun is lower, which creates more dramatic shadows. In winter, shadows are more pronounced for longer periods of the day. Even when the sun is higher in the sky and the colors appear to be more normal, the shadow angles will be larger, producing more dramatic effects. Try to make your shots with the sun situated across the subject rather than in front of or behind. This will increase the detail, especially in snow or ice scenes, and will lend depth to the picture.

3. Use fill flash when shooting people – Rather than place the subject in total front or back light, use a fill flash. While ‘cross lighting’ I mentioned above is a great technique for scenes, it’s not particularly flattering for people. Some cross lighting is flattering of course, but using it as the principal light is not the way to get compliments from your subjects. Almost all point and shoot cameras have a small flash built-in, and they’re great for exactly this kind of situation. Instead of the fully automatic camera mode, most of these little digital wonders have a mode that forces the flash to operate. If you use a SLR, put your flash on the camera and use it. The exposure should still be primarily from available light, but use the fill to just remove the harsh shadows caused by the natural cross lighting.

4. Keep your portrait subjects moving – If it’s cold your subjects will not be as patient standing still waiting for their photographs to be taken as they would be be on a nice warm summers day. Either capture them while they’re moving using a fast shutter speed (over 100th of a second) with a large aperture (f5.6 or below), or work out your camera and flash settings before lining them up for their picture. If your subjects are cold and bored no amount of post production in photoshop will make them look any different.

5. Compensate your exposure for snow and ice in a scene - If your camera has the ability to set the exposure, set it to OVEREXPOSE by one stop (which means one “f” stop) when a scene is primarily snow, ice, or otherwise white. Camera exposure meters try to make things 18% grey. This means is that every exposure by a camera’s meter tries to set the scene at what the industry has determined to be the color gray, at a reflectance of 18%. For most normal photography, this works quite well, but for snow and ice – where the scene is predominately white – the scenes tend to be a bit underexposed. The snow looks a little “dirty”. This will allow the camera to make the white features brighter than the usual 18% gray reflectance, and produce more white in the image.

6. In Winter, shoot a scene as soon as you see it - When you discover a shot, don’t try to come back later because there’s a good chance that it will have changed. Shoot it now. Winter scenes are dynamic. What exists now may not be there when you come back later. An overnight ice storm can bring unimaginable beauty in the morning, but be gone and muddy by noon.

7. Don’t unnecessarily stress the wildlife - When you stop along the road to photograph an animal and that animal gives you more than a passing glance, you’re probably too close for comfort. When winter comes the food source for most animals gets more scarce, don’t add more aggravation to what is already a stressful life.

8. Use the rule of two thirds- Try and divide your frame into thirds. If you’re shooting in landscape try and fill the frame with one third sky and two thirds subject rather than half sky and half subject. The same applies when shooting on portrait. Once you’ve mastered that, try and use the vertical thirds across the frame as well as the horizontal.

It’s difficult enough buying presents for people you know well, let alone entire families and people whose tastes you haven’t yet pinned down or don’t share in their taste in art or photography.

At my stall in Northcote Road we see the agonising over ‘what to get you know who’ first hand. It might have been decided that a framed or mounted photograph is the ideal present for ‘you know who’ but will ‘you know who’ like the image you’ve chosen.
The relief is palpable sometimes when a gift voucher may be the answer. OK, its not the ideal solution as you would much prefer to give ‘you know who’ something to unwrap rather than a voucher but ultimately ‘you know who’ will get exactly what they want rather than a near miss.

We can send you your gift voucher through the mail or by email. You can see the selection by going to the following page;
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/vouchers.php

You can use the voucher to purchase or put towards any of the framed and mounted prints we have on offer as well as any of the services we offer.
Below is a list of links to the relevant pages. To buy a voucher just go back to the voucher link above.

Portrait photography;
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/porgallery.php

Event photography;
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/eapgallery.php

Wedding photography;
http://www.weddingphotographerslondon.uk.com/portfolio/

London photographs, Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

London Photographs, Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

London Panoramic photographs
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

New York photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

New York photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Paris Photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Paris photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Prague Photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Prague photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Sydney Photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Sydney photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

New Zealand Photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

New Zealand Photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Direct eye contact can be as engaging in a picture as it is in real life. When taking a picture of someone, hold the camera at the person’s eye level to unleash the power of those magnetic gazes and mesmerizing smiles. For children, that means stooping to their level. And your subject need not always stare at the camera. All by itself that eye level angle will create a personal and inviting feeling that pulls you into the picture.

My Top 10 Photography tips for holiday snaps

1. Look Your Subject in the eye

Direct eye contact can be as engaging in a picture as it is in real life. When taking a picture of someone, hold the camera at the person’s eye level to unleash the power of those magnetic gazes and mesmerizing smiles. For children, that means stooping to their level. And your subject need not always stare at the camera. All by itself that eye level angle will create a personal and inviting feeling that pulls you into the picture.

2. Use a Plain Background

A plain background shows off the subject you are photographing. When you look through the camera viewfinder, force yourself to study the area surrounding your subject. Make sure no poles grow from the head of your favorite niece and that no cars seem to dangle from her ears.

3. Use Flash Outdoors

Bright sun can create unattractive deep facial shadows. Eliminate the shadows by using your flash to lighten the face. When taking people pictures on sunny days, turn your flash on. You may have a choice of fill-flash mode or full-flash mode. If the person is within five feet, use the fill-flash mode; beyond five feet, the full-power mode may be required. With a digital camera, use the picture display panel to review the results.

The flash will brighten up people’s faces and make them stand out. Also take a picture without the flash, because the soft light of overcast days sometimes gives quite pleasing results by itself.

4. Move in Close

If your subject is smaller than a car, take a step or two closer before taking the picture and zoom in on your subject. Your goal is to fill the picture area with the subject you are photographing. Up close you can reveal telling details, like a sprinkle of freckles or an arched eyebrow.

But don’t get too close or your pictures will be blurry. The closest focusing distance for most cameras is about three feet, or about one step away from your camera. If you get closer than the closest focusing distance of your camera (see your manual to be sure), your pictures will be blurry.

5. Move it from the middle

It’s tempting to place your subject in the middle of the frame. However, the middle of your picture is not the best place for your subject. Bring your picture to life by simply moving your subject away from the middle of your picture. Start by dividing the frame into 9 equal rectangles. Now place your important subject at one of the intersections of lines.

You’ll need to lock the focus if you have an auto-focus camera because most of them focus on whatever is in the center of the viewfinder.

6. Take Some Vertical pictures

Is your camera vertically challenged? It is if you never turn it sideways to take a vertical picture. All sorts of things look better in a vertical picture. From a lighthouse near a cliff to the Eiffel Tower to your four-year-old niece jumping in a puddle. So next time out, make a conscious effort to turn your camera sideways and take some vertical pictures.

7. Be a Picture Director

Take control of your picture-taking and watch your pictures dramatically improve. Become a picture director, not just a passive picture-taker. A picture director takes charge. A picture director picks the location: “Everybody go outside to the backyard.” A picture director adds props: “Girls, put on your pink sunglasses.” A picture director arranges people: “Now move in close, and lean toward the camera.”

Most pictures won’t be that involved, but you get the idea: Take charge of your pictures

8. Take Candid Pictures

Ignore the impulse to force your subjects to always pose staring at the camera. Variety is important. Take candid pictures to show them working, playing, chatting, or relaxing.

9. Include Objects in the Foreground

When taking pictures of landscapes, include an object, such as a tree or boulder, in the foreground. Elements in the foreground add a sense of depth to the picture. A person in the foreground helps establish a sense of scale.

Sometimes you can use the foreground elements to “frame” your subject. Overhanging tree branches, a doorway, or an arch can give a picture the depth it needs to make it more than just another snapshot.

10. Lock the Focus

If your subject is not in the centre of the picture, you need to lock the focus to create a sharp picture. Most auto-focus cameras focus on whatever is in the centre of the picture. But to improve pictures, you will often want to move the subject away from the centre of the picture. If you don’t want a blurred picture, you’ll need to first lock the focus with the subject in the middle and then recompose the picture so the subject is away from the middle.

Usually you can lock the focus in three steps. First, center the subject and press and hold the shutter button halfway down. Second, reposition your camera (while still holding the shutter button) so the subject is away from the center. And third, finish by pressing the shutter button all the way down to take the picture.