What exactly is Digital Cameras, come across all you need

The technology of the digital camera is very sophisticated and although that usually means high image quality it also means the higher sensitivity of the device. In order for a user to take appropriate safety measures, some for the most common enemies will need to be identified.

Curiously enough, the first on the list are insect repellent and sunscreen. When you use this on your hands, it can reach the more sensitive parts of your camera and it is therefore recommendable to wash or clean your hands before you use your digicam. The containers with these liquids should also be stored separately from the camera. If these liquids come in contact to you camera, they need to be wiped off as quickly as possible so that further damage would be prevented.

Another thing that can further damage your camera is sand since it can get inside the mechanism. It can also damage and scratch the surface and to make sure that you camera is away from the sand, keeping it the sealable bag is the perfect solution. The same applies to salt and dust. Although dust is not sharp and hard enough to damage the superficial layer of the camera, it can still damage its inner parts and accumulate on the sensor. Salt on the other hand can induce corrosion and keeping the camera clean and away from the places where it can be exposed to filth will prolong your digicam’s life. It is also suggested to use brushes instead of cloths when wiping the camera from sand and salt, since this way you can make sure that remaining grains and particles will not scratch the camera.

Moisture is possibly the most dangerous thing as it can ruin the camera in the matter of seconds. Possibly the condensation will need more time to damaging your camera, but eventually, it will be just as effective as other predators. Sealed bags and silica gel packs inside the bag where your digital camera is stored can usually do the trick as they will definitely keep the moist away from you camera while you are moving around and shifting between the temperatures.

Proper storage of the camera and the quality gear can without a doubt save your camera from many perils, including the damage that can be caused by physical impact. Some of the modern cameras have the shock proof casings; however, most of them will have to be stored inside the padded cases designed especially for their protection. All of these are fairly available and investing some extra money in you gear can actually prove to be cost effective and save you from unexpected cost of buying the new digital camera.

Although digital techonolgy has greatly improved the clarity and the image quality, there are still some further tricks that you can use in order to enhance the performances of your digital camera.

There are several reasons that can challenge the sharper and clearer image and make the photo blurry. The first cause can be poor focus, in which case the sharpness is unsatisfactory since you have accidentally shifted the focus on the wrong part of the picture. It can also mean that you were located too close to the subject that you have tried to photograph, that you have selected the aperture that produces a narrow field depth or that the picture was taken too quickly and that the focus was not checked.

The image will more likely be blurred if the subject is moving and you have selected a slower shutter speed. Not being able to remain still will also generate the movement and affect the picture clarity.

In order to avoid that, there are 10 basic things that you need to consider before taking your picture:

The way you hold the camera-although this may appear easy, holding your camera wrong is the most frequents mistake and the number one reason for decreased sharpness. When the camera is shaking, the picture will naturally lack sharpness. Since it is not always possible to carry the tripod around, practice and experience is the key of proper camera handling.

Tripods can at times not be avoided, especially if professional photos are being taken. The impractical side of carrying the tripods around can be disregarded when you have in mind how much a simple thing like that can improve the picture quality.

Aperture influences the field depth and by decreasing it, you will increase the field depth. The zone that is to be captured will that way include more distant objects. When the aperture is small, the shutter speed is decreased too, and that means that the moving object will be more difficult to capture without the blurs.

Choosing a larger ISO will directly affect the noisiness of the shot and enable you to use higher shutter speed, which is the best insurance against the low sharpness.

A number of cameras nowadays have some form of image stabilisation which cannot completely freeze the image but can definitely reduce the consequences of the shake. Properly focusing (some people are ordinarily using auto focusing) and checking the display for precision will prevent the low quality results.

Investing some extra money and buying the high quality lenses can provide you with permanent solution, since that is what frequently causes the problem.

There are situations where all you need to do is simply check how clean you equipment is or alternatively find the “sweet spot” of your lens. They all have spots that are more sharps and they are usually based around the maximum aperture. Therefore, a simple adjusting of the lens and pulling it back from where the opening is the widest can affect the sharpness and the shot clarity.

If you are a digital camera user, you are likely to have heard about White Balance. It is one feature of photography that most of the amateur users of digital cameras do not use or fully grasp, but taking the time to familiarise to this particular aspect of your digicam can completely change the way you approach photography.

If we are after the highest quality that our digital camera can provide, than the need to use White Balance cannot be disregarded. The main reason we change and adjust this feature is to ensure that the colours of the image are as precise as they can possibly be.

This can affect the quality and the precision of the photo and you probably noticed that in some cases the colours on the captured image differ from the ones that we saw on the display before actually taking the picture. The way your picture will look depends on the temperature and our eyes are imperceptible to such changes since they adjust themselves automatically. We can only notice the changes when the light temperature is extreme, however, the camera will register the difference. This is why we need to communicate to the camera how to treat the light.

The White Balance adjustments can executed in different ways, according to the specific camera that you are using. Although in some cases you will need to turn to your manual, most of the cameras have modes that can help you with this.

The general White settings that you will be able to find on digicams are auto, cloudy, tungsten, flash, daylight or sunny, shade and fluorescent.

Auto is when you let the camera decide what would work for every specific situation. In most cases, there will be no need to change this setting.

With cloudy, you can expect the camera to warm the light up and it is similar to daylight mode.

Tungsten is usually marked with a little bulb and it is specially designed for indoor shooting under artificial, bulb light. It makes the colours on the photo look cooler.

Fluorescent will warm the photos up as well as the flash mode and shade option.

The results after using the above mentioned settings will usually be satisfactory, but there are cameras that offer additional, manual adjustment which means that you can combine different features. The ways of adjusting the balance will in most cases depend on the camera model, but usually it is done by telling the camera how white colour should look. This can be achieved by using a white or a gray card specially designed for these purposes, or you can simply use some available object that has the colour you need.

The usual procedure is to take a picture and see what the colours look like. After that you can use some object as a reference and place it in from of the camera. A simple sheet of blank paper will show the camera what white looks like and the other picture taken will appear more natural. Once you figure out the basics, further adjustments will pretty much be self explanatory.

One of the most common problems when using the continuous shooting mode is that the number of pictures taken can be much higher than you have originally wanted. When you place your finger onto the shutter button, the result can be extremely frustrating since you end up with a heap on unwanted picture that you need to delete. Nevertheless, it is still a small price to pay for this extremely convenient and practical technique.

The answer on how to avoid this unwanted picture accumulation will probably not be what most of us would like to hear, but unfortunately, practice is the key to gain the control of the shutter button and limit the number of images. This particular problem can not only be frustrating, but it can turn out to be very expensive if you are using older SLR – for instance, you can go through the entire exposure role sooner than expected which can increase you costs. With digital cameras however, this is made easier since you can practice as you go along.

After some time, you will be able to feel how much pressure it takes to take one pictures and how much pressure you will need to apply for every additional ones. In order to be able to fully control the pressure, it is important not to jab the button, but to simply hold your finger on the surface and slightly increase the intensity of the pressure when necessary.

Some say that the principle of controlled camera shooting is the same as shooting with the gun – instead of constantly pulling at the trigger, all you need to do is squeeze it gently once. The results of achieving the ability to successfully use the shutter release technique will also affect the stability of the camera and you will kill two birds with one stones.  This may require some additional practice and the best way to achieve the perfect control of the pressure you are applying and to actually feel the intensity at which you are pressing the button is to make sure that you are controlling your breathing as well. If you stop your breathing for just a few seconds, your body will be still enough and no involuntary movement will be made. That way you can be sure that the pressure is as intense as necessary.

In some cases, simply changing the finger that you are using to apply the pressure may be crucial and different position of you arms and fingers can help you achieve exactly what you need. Trying out various methods will help you discover what works for you and how to achieve the optimal position.

One more thing should be added – the shutter should not be pressed with your finger tip, but rather the flat part of the finger. That means that the finger should be in almost horizontal position when the shutter is released. It will add to the overall control.

Although it can sound strange, the first thing that a person needs to know about digital cameras is how to properly hold them. This is the starting point of taking a better quality pictures, but unfortunately the most commonly disregarded feature.

The first problem which can arise as a consequence of improper camera manipulation is blurry and unclear image, most likely to occur when the shutter speed is low and even the slightest of movements can in that case affect the sharpness of the image. The most common way of dealing with this problem is using a tripod, but in most situations the circumstances will not allow you to carry it around, which is why you will need to learn a few tricks that can help keep the camera still for a longer period of time.

The position that will most likely make the camera shake (although it is often used because it enables the user to frame the picture) is holding the camera with one hand and away from the body. To avoid the instability, the best way to hold the camera is to hold it with both hands.

The most popular way is to hold the right end of the camera with your right hand and your forefinger above the shutter. The right thumb should be at the back of the camera. There are cameras designed so that the user can actually see where to place the fingers and how to properly hold it. The grip should be firm and stable. How your left hand is positioned will be determined by the camera, but it should be positioned so that it supports the weight of the camera (underneath or around the lens).

When you take pictures using view finder, the camera is usually close to you body which will add up to the stability and stillness of the camera. In other cases (when you are using LCD for example) be sure that the distance between the camera and your body is not excessive. That can be achieved by holding your elbows close to you body, tucked into sides and leaning the camera positioning the camera around 30 cm from your face.

There is one extra trick that you can use to ensure the stability; if that is possible, you should try leaning into a firm object (a wall of a building for example, or a tree). If there is nothing to lean on, keep your legs apart at a shoulder with and that will make you body still and stable.

One further technique for achieving stability is breathing. Inhaling and then holding your breath while you are taking the picture will keep you body still for the amount of time necessary to get a clean shot. The opposite method also works: exhaling and not inhaling until the picture is taken. Once you become more aware of your posture, you will be able to control the camera in a more effective manner and quality of your photos will improve significantly.

Most of the times, histogram option that you see on your digital camera is disregarded due to its complicated appearance.

A histogram is actually a graphical display of the image data and it allows the user to get acquainted with the tonal range of the picture. The tones of the image are graphed from black to white and the higher the graph at a given point, the more pixels (smallest element on the screen) of that particular tone the picture will have. That means that histogram that has plenty of dark pixels will be located on the left, while the one with light tones will be placed on the right.

The best part of this tool is that it offers you the possibility to check the light exposure before you actually take the picture which means that you can make the necessary changes and modifying the settings in advance.

The adjusting and modification of histograms will of course depend mostly of your taste and preferences. Perfect histogram does not exist and you can perform various experiments to find out what works for you. If you situate your mode to automatic, it will choose the most optimal histogram setting and you can start from there and change it accordingly.

When you are ready to actually take a picture a glance at the histogram position is always recommended and if the spikes are extreme and positioned towards the end of either side, it means that the picture will have little details and be overly (or not sufficiently) exposed.

It was already explained that the histogram is a graphical representation of the image tones. Because of the appearance, the histograms look more difficult to read than they actually are.

The horizontal axis shows the tonal variants while vertical axis displays the number of pixels a specific tone has. That means that left side of the picture represents dark tones, middle side represents grey areas and the closer you go to the right the tones will be brighter. The vertical line shows the size of the area captured in every zone (dark, medium and light). It means that the histogram of a darker picture will have most of the data distributed on the left and closer to the centre. Bright pictures on the other hand will have the data closer to the right side, while regular pictures with no visible contrasts will have their data almost equally distributed.

Apart from being available before taking a picture, histogram info can be attained while editing an existing photo, which is how new potential of old photos can be discovered. This is also a very convenient solution since it allows you to see other possible options and make several versions of a single photo. Pretty much every digital camera has histogram option and once you actually manage to “decode” it, you will be able to get the full potential from your digicam with minimal effort.

If you use your camera for standard purposes only, you are not likely to ever leave he automatic mode. On the other hand, a situation that requires some extra knowledge regarding other performances of your camera is likely to occur sooner or later, and having some extra insight in the full potential of your digicam can mean a difference between a good and a poor image quality.

Shutter and Aperture priority modes can be viewed as the priority modes and they are partially manual. With the aperture mode, you are actually setting the aperture that you want to use while the camera is making the selection about the most suitable shutter speed.

The main effect that this mode will have on the end result of the image is the quality of the background focus. Opting for larger aperture allows the user to shift the attention to a specific part of the scene, leaving everything else blurred and out of focus. Smaller aperture on the other hand will place everything in the scene in focus.

Since the shutter speed is decreased, it is recommended to use tripod in this mode so that the camera would remain still.

With shutter priority mode, the procedure is the opposite from the one described above – the user chooses the shutter speed and the camera selects the aperture that will achieve the best exposure under the circumstances.

Different shutter speeds will decide how exactly the movement is captured in the images. For instance, if the object of the image is to be a speeding car that needs to be captured without the trace of the movement (visible blur), fast shutter speed has to be selected. At that point the camera will select the most suitable aperture according to how much light is available.

If you want the movement to be visible as well, slower shutter speed will need to be selected and the camera will automatically decrease the aperture. This will also affect the depth of field and faster shutter together with higher aperture will mean a narrow DOF.

In order for these to modes to be used effectively, a little bit of practice is a must. For example, although the camera makes the necessary adjustments when you choose the mode, these adjustments are still subject to further modifications. In some cases, taking extra shoots from different angles (if the circumstances allow that) will get you more familiarized with what is the best way to approach these modes and increase your chances of getting at least one satisfactory shot.

You can also switch to large aperture when using aperture priority mode and see how it blurs the picture and then compare it with the results of the smallest aperture shots. In Shutter priority mode, you can see what happens with the depth of field when different shutters speeds are being used and after some additional experimenting, you will know exactly what a certain situation would require in order to meet your needs.

Due to the sophisticated technology, digital cameras have numerous options that help improve the quality of the picture and these extra features allow us to play and change the style of the images in many ways.

The first and the most obvious thing that can be changed and adjusted on your digital camera is the mode. There are a few basic modes and they include automatic mode, portrait mode, macro mode, landscape mode, sports mode, night mode and movie mode. Apart from these, many cameras can include additional modes such as snow mode, panoramic mode, indoor mode, beach mode, kids and pets mode etc… There are also aperture priority mode, program mode and manual mode.

Automatic mode is used by most of the digital camera users since it can guide your camera to the most common features that are appropriate in most shooting situations. The camera itself is actually deciding what shutter speed to use, how to focus etc. It can also automatically include red eye reduction and other corrections and image improvement. Although this is usually the best solution since it works in most cases, sometimes the circumstances will require other options in order for the better photo quality to be achieved.

When you select portrait mode, the camera will switch to a larger aperture and keep the background out of the focus, centring the attention at the single, focused object.

Macro mode is specially designed for shooting smaller subjects such as flowers, insects, etc. The macro mode can be different with every camera and it can include various focus distances,, somewhere in between 2 to 10 cm. This mode will require that you hold the camera parallel to the object that you are photographing, otherwise focus will be difficult to achieve. Flash should not be used in this mode.

Landscape mode is quite the opposite from the portrait mode since it ensures that most of the scene you are shooting is in the focus, or in other words, it enables large field depth. When you use this mode, your camera will most likely opt for slower speed of the shutter and using some method to ensure that the camera is still is desirable.

Sports mode is intended for capturing moving objects which is why it is called action mode with some cameras. It manages to freeze the movement by using higher shutter speed.

One of the most interesting modes to play with would be night mode, since it can produce beautiful images, in terms of texture and colour. Since it is used where the light exposure is low, it illuminates the front scene and captures the back details at the same time. This makes this mode perfect for parties and events that involved coloured lights.

Lastly, movie mode means that the camera can also record movement and sound. The quality can vary but it is still very convenient and it can be combined with other modes as well (night mode for example).

When talking about digital cameras, two types simply have to be mentioned: bridge and mirrorless interchangeable lens camera.

Bridge is the type of camera that has the physical and ergonomic resemblance to DSLR (digital single-lens reflex camera). Apart from the appearance, the two types of cameras also share some more advance characteristics but preserve the small sensor and fixed lens of the compact cameras. Same as compacts, these cameras use live preview which uses the screen as the view and focus finder. Although they have autofocus option, bridge cameras allow for the focus to be adjusted manually with additional focus circle, ensuring a more precise “tuning” and focusing.

The name bridge was used because of the fact that this type of camera filled or bridged the gap that stand between the cost effective point and shoot cameras and the ones that were intended for professional usage only and therefore very expensive (SLRS).

Thanks to the somewhat greater size of bridge cameras which were combined with a smaller sensor, these cameras have lenses with greater zoom range and quick aperture (opening through which the light travels). Some even have a superzoom feature, which has very large focal length specifications, which is an excellent compensation for the reduced sensitivity of the smaller sensors.

Due to the similar design, this camera can be often confused with SLR or single lens reflex cameras; however, the difference is that bridge cameras have, as mentioned, fixed lenses. Nevertheless, some of them have the option of secondary lens being attached between the camera and a photographic lens, and they can make sound movies. The difference in quality between bridge and SLR camera is not great, but bridge cameras are much more practical since they are cost effective and portable. Second major advantage is that these cameras have large DOF or depth of field, which can be defined as a distance between the nearest and the farthest object in the image and relates to the sharpness of the photo.

In 2008, camera that combined interchangeable lenses with bigger sensors appeared on the market. They also had the live preview option that was achieved through electronic view finder. The model was simpler than regular DSLR since the mirror box was removed, but it kept the handling and the design of the compact cameras and DSLR. Benefits of this model include their smaller size (since they have fewer parts), versatility of interchangeable lenses, more quite shutter noise, no moving mirror and (in some cases) thinner, so called pancake lenses that are as mobile as compact cameras.

The overall performances of digital cameras are improved in 2011, when a 3D photo mode was introduced and the camera was enabled to automatically take a second image from a different perspective. It marked the new era of digital photography and introduced new challenges in the field of digital photography.

With the arrival of the 21^st century, many things have changed, including the way we perceive life. Together with our perception, the devices of capturing the significant moments in the form of images have been revolutionised and the digital cameras replaced their older versions -cameras that have optical zoom.

Digital cameras operate by recording video or capturing still photos (or both) through the use of electronic image sensor, and since the performances of such cameras and the features of digital photography are way ahead of the ones that can be achieved by using the obsolete optical zoom, most of the cameras produced now days are digital.

The first advantage that digital zoom has to offer is the possibility to view the image immediately after you have recorded it. The memory of a single digital camera can store thousands of images and videos and the space is constantly renewed by deleting the images that you have already stored elsewhere. The sound can also be recorded and majority of cameras have various options on how to improve the image quality. The tools for photo editing are included and you can adjust the light, density, sharpens etc on the spot. What is more, digital cameras offer an option called geo-tagging (since it has GPS receiver) integrated and the pictures are therefore marked according to the location.

The popularity and efficiency of these cameras are so immense, that they have become incorporated into other devices. Practically every mobile phone has the ability to capture images, sound and movements. Of course, the digital zoom performances are not used for entertaining purposes solely; digicams are initially designed for military and scientific and purposes and Hubble Space Telescope together with other astronomical devices are actually specialized digital zoom cameras.

There are several types of digital cameras and they differ from each other in terms of sizes and potential. The ones that are a part of mobile phones are naturally most commonly used, and with newer generations of phones, the quality of the image is not challenged. People with more professional approach and devotion to photography use more sophisticated an expensive DSLR (digital single lens reflex cameras). These specialized forms of cameras have the equipment for multispectral imaging. That means that these cameras can capture images by taking them at different wavelengths; brighter or darker areas relate to the energy concentration and the best example for this type of imaging is infrared.

Other than the image quality, other factors that increased the popularity of these particular cameras are their modern design and mobility. They are small – some of them no larger than a credit card – easily stored and therefore very convenient for spontaneous and fast usage.

Over the years, digital cameras improved both in terms of the design and the technical features, and the market was enriched by water resistant models, or the ones that have a retractable lens, allowing for a longer focal length. It almost feels that after using a digital camera, life has never seemed so clear…