verybody has photographic memory...

...ome people are simply out of film! - Unknown

Introduction

This

is a collection of tips and web sites for those who are new to photography or those amateurs, wishing to improve their skills. Feel free to use any tips given here and pass them along to others, but use them carefully and at your own risk. Most of these hints are for guidelines only. They will aid you to take a better picture. But keep in mind that you can not start breaking the rules of photography to create those original pictures without first knowing those rules. However, we do wish you best of luck and hope that everything works out well. If you enjoyed this site and found any information here useful as we intended, please tell your friends about us.

Well

now that we have everything in check, let's move on to the fun part.

Choosing Film

Before

you take any picture you need to load your camera with film. A good way to save some money on the film is to buy close to expiration or just expired film, and freeze it(which prevents deterrioration). Don't forget to let it warm up to room temperature before loading into camera.

From the

manufacturers chose the brand names. If you can afford it and your local photo store carries it, buy Agfa film. The color rendition and the sharpness are great. It's a well known, proven film. I use Kodak films. In particular Royal Gold, Gold MAX, TMAX, and Black&White+(C-41 process).
There are many considerations to chosing the film, and while at this point price will be an issue for you, quality images simply can not be taken with third-grade film. Consider brightness and vividness of colors called color saturation. Also sharpness of the image and presence of many small dots that form the image, called grain. Last, but not least, look at the contrast (difference between brightest and darkest tones). If you are shooting in conditions with strong contrast, such as a a bright sunny day at the beach, you may want to soften that contrast a bit with a low-contrast film. Kodak's Gold series film will have better colors in few very rare cases, but Royal Gold of same specifications will always be sharper, less grainy and will have a wider lattitude. Film lattitude is simply a fancy name for how much detail remains in extreme shaddow or highlights, just like photo exposure, it is usually measured in amount of light that reashes film, design - f/stops. Gold MAX film is a film with much finer grain than the average for its rated speed. It has the sensitivity of 400 and grain of almost a 200 ISO film. Fuji makes some good film too, but I find most Fuji films too "realistic" in color, and much too contrasty for my taste. I am satisfied with Kodak enough not to want to switch. I usually buy my film in large packages, which can save a substancial amount of money. Kodak makes packages from a single 12-exposure roll to 20 rolls of 36-exposure films. While this applies to most common films like ISO 200 Gold, 400 GoldMAX, 100 RoyalGold, and 100 TMAX. There are some exceptions. Kodak packages their film Portra in packages of 5. Portra is something to look at, if you are getting ready to take some family portraits or help your friend take some pictures at a wedding. It is a soft, low-contrast film, with an excellent rendition of skin tones, detail in highlights, and overall lattitude.

As far as film speeds,

this you need to chose based on your subject. For a slow, set-up shot use the slowest ISO you can find. Kodak Royal Gold 100 is readily available or you can buy a four-pack of regular Gold 100. If you can find 64 or 50 ISO film, go for it. I usually carry a few rolls of Kodak RoyalGold 25 in my bag just in case. The resolution and clarity of your portraits will be noticeable on even the 4x6 proof, but especially on enlargements, so chose carefully. If you will have a mixed setting, like an outside party, choose a general purpose film like 200 Gold or 400 Gold MAX. It fits for most situations and produces good results.

If you

will be shooting in the dark or low light or really fast action like sports or children at play, go with something that will need less light to expose. Kodak RoyalGold 400 or 800 GoldMAX both do a great job for me. Remember that any time you increase film speed, you automatically lose photo quality. The grain is larger and the resolution suffers. Kodak "Select Series" offer some high resolution fast films, and usually a local camera shop will carry 800, 1000, and upto 3200 ISO films. I have never had a poorly exposed picture on the RoyalGold400 just because the film couldn't handle it. It could be because I chose my films carefully, but this is one versatile roll of film! Even when the flash doesn't have time to fully recycle and will not go off, Royal400 captures enough information to bring back the contrast and to correct exposure during development. It is indespensible when shooting in clubs or any animated low-light settings. Fast enough to capture the movement, slow enough to retain the quality in a shot.

You may

ask why I went into so much detail about the films, but contrary to the belief of many beginners, your materials play a crucial role in what the result will look like. Take some time to get to know your film and its characteristics. Make sure you know at least 3-4 types of film. RoyalGold, TMAX, Kodachrome, and Black&White+ would be some good names to keep in mind. For you Fuji lovers, look at Sensia, Velvia, and Reala. Make sure you can effectively use 2-3 common speed of each of these films, like 100,400, and 800. Believe me, time spent getting to know your film, is a time well spent.

Portrait Tips

• Know your capabilities! The photo on the left was made with a cheap SLR camera, single flash, mounted on it, a $20 Lumiquest reflector, and against a white wall. Not the best "studio" portrait, true, but it is something you can easily do yourself at home.
• Chose a low contrast film with a good rendition of skin tones like Kodak Portra.
• Step further away, and zoom in! Longer focal lengths produce a narrow DOF(depth-of-field) making the background REALLY blur out. Shorter focal lenghts, especially those below 70mm tend to exaggerate perspective and make your subjects look distorted.
• Never take a shot straight into the face or with shoulders parallel to the film plane. Last thing you want to do is make a portrait look flat like a cardboard cutout. Especially if your flash is on the camera, you are likely to createa flat, overexposed, unattractive picture full of harsh shaddows and with a pair of "lovely" red eyes.
• Take time to compose your shot. Make sure there is more blank space on the side which the person is facing, and a bit of space left on the other side and top too, but not too much. Fill the frame with your main subject - person's face. Do NOT try to center the face in the picture. Particularly on full length shots many people tend to center the face in the frame. Believe me, when you see the final picture, you'd much more prefer to see more detail in the person which fills the frame than all the monotonous sky or room's ceiling above their head if the face was centered.
• When the time comes, take the shot. Great expressions are rare. It is better to have a poorly composed shot, than not to have one at all. DO NOT HESITATE!
• Use spot color. Our eyes are often attracted to bright spots of color. A yellow window light on a dark picture of a cold blue winter night, a bright red bow in a playing girl's head, or a bright flower among plain green grass. Use it to attract attention to important features like the face, or to hide unwanted details like a disturbing background(bring a spot color closer to your main subject and the background will seem to fade away)
• If possible, separate your subject from the background. Much too often your friends and family come out no bigger than size of an ant in your pictures because you took a picture of them next to a palm tree, and you just had to get the entire palm tree in the shot. Nothing is wrong with palm trees being in the shot, but your subject should not be the tree, but your friends. Make them come closer to the camera, and close down the aperture to widen the DOF (on consumer cameras the apertures are usually narrow enough to make everything relatively sharp).
• Take natural shots. Once the shutter has gone off, most people relax, knowing that the picture is already taken. Take another shot right away! Relaxed look suits most people.It's much more natural.
• Same reasoning... Compose your shot, and back off from the viewfinder. Talk to the person. Get them to laugh, smile, wonder, or think, and take a shot when they are not aware of it by depressing the shutter. If you are dealing with children, involve them in an activity. Shots of occupied people look more natural, and almost always better. CAUTION: Many AF cameras will refocus if the shutter is released and touched again. If you do not have an AF Lock and your object is off-center, keep your hand on the shutter.
• Use indirect light. Whether you are shooting in a studio or outside for fun, your light must seem ambient and natural. If you must use a flash - bounce it off a larage bright surface like a white ceiling. If you have an on camera flash that only fires straight, diffuse it. A piece of used softener paper like Bounce or Bounty(ask your local laundry for a piece if you can't get it) works well and diffuses quite a bit. If you have a weak flash that needs less diffusion try clear fingernail polish, a piece of stretched old white stocking, etc. Be creative. I've seen people use a plastic cup as a reflector for a flash. This will also illiminate harsh shaddows on the walls.
• Use make up when possible. Flashes and sharpness of lenses will pick up many unwanted features on the skin, and usually(especially in yellow inside lighting) will intensify the rednesses on faces. It's generally a good idea to back off focus just a bit to take everything slightly blurred. Result? Softer, more diffused and dream like portraits.

Photographing Babies Tips

• While all common sense things apply to babies, much like portrait pictures, there are some special considerations. First and primary consideration is your baby's health. Babies are much more sensitive to things that seem normal to us. Warm room temperature is a must! No direct light onto eye retinas. Sight damage, temporary or even permanent loss may occur. NO PICTURE IS WORTH A LIFE OR WELLFARE OF A CHILD! If you see "red eye" effect when your get your pictures back, you are sure to be hurting their eyes. Think of another way to light up your precious.
• Use soft light. While the sunlight can create some interesting light patterns, the really interesting baby pictures are those with the "baby soft" effect. Use even soft light from a bounced flash, umbrella, or a reflector. Pay extra attention to lighting the eyes. Use a concentrated light source("snoot") across the eyes to add more light if necessary. Do not shine it straight on.
• Use humor, if possible. The age of traditional baby pictures is ending. Candid and humoristic shots take more preference. Use a wide angle lens to alter the perspective and emphasize the face. Make sure the baby is smiling and has an interest in you(looking at the lens or close to it). Try photographing with a wide variety of lenses though. 28/2.8, 35/2.8, 50/1.4, 80/2.8, 105/2.8, 135/2.8, 200/4, 300/4. Of course these are, for the most part, expensive lenses. You can easily go by with a 28-105/2.8-4, 70-200/4-5.6, 80-200/2.8, 70-300/4-5.6.
  Of course you should take the kind of pictures you like, can afford, and take them even if the baby is not looking. But experiment whenever possible.
• Use wider apertures. What a better way to emphasize the fine detail in the baby's face, than to remove and blur not only the background, but even the further parts of the baby.
• Shoot natural poses. No 3-month old is going to sit and pose for you. They sleep - let them, take a picture anyway. Don't use a flash though. They cry - take a picture. They are on the stomach - click that shutter release. On the back? You know what to do. One of my favorite pictures was a wide angle picture of a baby, REALLY interested in a butterfly. The buttefly was on the left of the frame, and the baby in shear amazement with a huge smile on the face was lying on the stomach on the right of the picture and staring at the butterfly. The wide angle really underlined the size of the butterfly and the face. That was a winner in some competition. Why can't your picture be the next winner?
• Use the rule of thirds. Most baby shots include a lot of detail, so the main subject should be at the "interest point". Don't place your baby in the center. Instead, in your mind, cut the pucture in 9 parts like a tic-tac-toe board, and place your baby(baby's face) into one of the intersections of the imaginary lines (interest points). You will find that this rule applies when taking almost any picture.
• Though you should use better film whenever possible, with babies do NOT use any film past ISO 200. The grain of the film will make baby's skin unnaturally rough, and you will lose that lovely "baby soft" effect. Make sure your film is designed for better skin tones. Fuji Astia slide film is warm toned for very good skin results. Kodak Portra 160NC is a VERY good color negative film.
• Best light pattern is natural light, with a heavily diffused fill flash and one or two reflectors(use one or both gold reflectors for warmer tones). The "snoot" device is optional and often unnecessary.

Landscape Tips

• Use a tripod! You can never go wrong with it. Most important things about landscapes are color and clarity. Using a tripod makes your camera steady and pictures sharper. If you need extra ballance, hang a camera bag under the tripod. Do not settle for a cheap tripod. Expect to spend as much on a good tripod as a midrange lens. It really is one of your best investments in sharpness and low-light photography. Besides it will give you a chance to leave the camera and be the subject of your own shots or use your hands for something much more useful like arranging the shot.
• Make sure you have 3 interest zones in a shot. You need a light background, a colorful and descriptive middle (eye-grabber), and finaly the closer object (spacer). A background gives a feeling and sense of location to the scene, a spacer in the front of the scene will allow us to visually judge the distances in the picture. After all, all the awe and amazement of the Grand Canyon will just be a dirt spot on the picture if you have nothing to compare its tremendous size to. For example in this picture wild turkeys and the light, shining through the trees, serve as the background. Bright trees on the right serve as the eye catching element, and sharper road up front and dried leaves on the left create the necessary illusion of depth.
• Pay attention to your DOF. If you shoot nature and landscapes, you would like to have every intricate detail in your picture. Set a small apperture. It's hard to go wrong past f/10 or f/11. On the other hand if you have an animal or a human in the front, people will always look at those objects first, and sharp surroundings WILL distract them. Set an aperture that will show your main subject but won't blur the background to a clear color. f/5.6 or f/6.4 will likely do the trick.
• Follow a pattern. If you take a photograph of a horizon or tree tops, make the imaginary line parallel or perpendicular to another subject in the picture. If it's a fallen tree, choose an angle that will best show it's fallen position. Make it stands out in your pictures by making it the only object under that angle. Of course breaking this rule is an open invitation to interesting compositions too. Experiment!
• Do not underestimate the importance of filters. Two filters that are a must are a polarizer for bluer skies, light control, and contrast, and a UV filter for better tones and protecting your lens from dust and dirt. Use both in a combination if you want, but when using multiple filters always remember that a filter is another optical element between the scene and the film (lens is one, air is another, and even the curvature and emultion thinkness of the film), so the more filters you use the larger is the effect on the color, contrast, and sharpness. It will not matter for anything up to 8x10 print though. And likely you won't see the difference at all, but it is something to keep in mind. Use better filters if in doubt. Cokin and Tiffen are among most popular, but not necessarily the best quality filters. Nikon, Hoya, and B+W filters are very highly acclaimed for their build and optical quality.
• If shooting a sunset, remember that you are shooting for the details and colors of the sky and clouds. That's really what makes those sunset pictures so attractive. Meter off of the brightest subject in the scene - sun or it's setting point(if it is already gone). Use spot metering if you have it, and then use the metered value for the entire scene. Most importantly, it is VERY rare that you see the same beautiful sunset twice, so bracket, bracket, and bracket again. Also keep in mind that during the sunset, what you see is going to stay the same for no longer than several seconds. Do not waste time, if you see it - shoot it. Going inside for a tripod may mean missing it all together. Be prepared, but if you are not - shoot anyway.
• If you can take a better picture by ignoring any or all of these tips - ignore them. The only 3 rules of photography are: Learn the rules, Invent your own rules, Break all the rules.

Vacations and Architecture Tips

• Best advice anyone can give you is take MORE pictures. Different angles, different exposures, different times of day. You name it. Pictures can come out wrong, an important detail may be missing, or, frankly, you will want to remember something later that you didn't take a picture of now. So shoot!
• If shooting in the evening, use a tripod or some support for camera whenever possible. Any exposure of 1/20 or shorter is a subject to [substantial] blur from your hand movement. If you are taking a picture from a window, push the camera lens or lens hood against the glass. CAUTION: Many AF lenses have front element focusing. Focus first, then push the lens against the glass to take a picture.
• Do not let the rain stop you from taking pictures. Pictures taken when the weather changes look best. Use an umbrella, clamped to a tripod, or have someone hold it, just make sure it doesn't cover the flash or lense angle. In bad weather look for reflections in the water, ray of light shining through the clouds, or human emotions(a child running in the rain, an old upset woman with an umbrella). You will probably get enough soft ambient light from the clouds. Use flash sparingly only as a very underexposed fill.
• If you are planning to fly, pack your film in a transparent plastic bag if possible, and keep it in stacks of 20 rolls or so. You may be asked to have it inspected. You do have a right for a hand inspection, ask for it. NEW X-RAY SCANNERS CAN DAMAGE YOUR FILM!
• On vacations, your surroundings are as important part of your trip as what you do there. Photograph your hotel, outside pool, anything that catches your eye like an interesting tree or an old antiques-shop on the corner. Take pictures during different times of the day. If your pictures include ground or road, try to include people into the pictures. Even if they are not related to you, they will make your picture seem more alive.
• If you are taking a picture of people, let them do what they do: sunbathing, swimming, or talking on the phone. Make sure to catch their faces. I once had a "proud father" showing me pictures of a diver, getting ready to jump into the pool. he was standing behind her and had pretty good shots of the pool and the board, but for the life of me, I could barely see there was a diver. I could not even see her face. No one knows that it's your daughter who just made that wonderful jump from a high board if you shoot her back.
• When taking a picture of a building, make sure to avoid flat pictures. Include two sides by shooting from a corner, or include an object closer to the camera, to provide the distance and perspective.

Links

Kodak has some great tutorials for amateurs and pros alike. Find out what those different names of film and ISO speeds mean, and how to use them effectively.

Agfa has a very interesting, and rather helpful set of tips on their web site, that covers everything from bad weather photography to studio portraiture and more. Highly recommended for beginners.

Moose Peterson's Web Site is like a golden mine for any photographer - amateur and pro alike. Moose specializes in wildlife, and wrote many books on the subject as well as equipment reviews and some of the well known "Magic Lantern" series books. His Web Site contains information on how to understand and use your flash better, camera reviews and tricks, and some outstanding photography.

Karen Simmons Web Site has some incredible advice for amateur wedding photographers. Anyone can benefit from looking at her work and reading what she has to say. I strongly recommend that you apprentice with a professional and take photo classes before attempting to shoot a wedding on your own. But we all have to start somewhere, and this is a wonderful collection of tips and answers to common questions to get you started.

World Photo Gallery, this is a great site. One of the few places on the internet to show your work and get comments and advice. Some useful and professional tips. Many photographers from all over the world.

Photo Critique, like World Photo Gallery, is a place on the internet to demo your pictures and get comments, advice, and critique. A lot of informative info and many useful tips too. Links to other useful Sites

Photoshopper Forum is a great place to look for answers to your simplest and most complicated questions. Everything from general 35mm photography to specific types of photography, darkrooms, and lighting. If they can't answer your question, you don't know what you are talking about. And even then they'll try to answer it.

Ebay Auction is perhaps my most important tip for you. You can find nearly everything there, and the bargains are unbelievable. A $60 tripod for only $10 or a $250 lens for $175. I like my money right where it is - in my pocket.

Tamron has some good tips for every beginner and those who do not concern themselves with technical photography, just take pictures as memories for a photo alboum.

The Camera Shop has some good advice for unusual situations as well as some important pointers. Look them up.

Hyperzine offers some very useful tips for what to look for in a photograph or a composition, and how to make a better picture.

Well... Enough for now. Browse around on the Internet if you want more tips pages. In my humble opinion the only way to better pictures is taking them. The more you pictures take - the better you become.

As I have more time and learn more I will post more tips for your viewing pleasure.



Copyright © 1999, Greg Klopper.
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