Taking Great Digital Photos

Recently I was asked to look at some listings of one of our bead customers to see if there was anything that I could suggest to improve her sales. She asked me how she could improve her photos. Following are some suggestion to improve your digital photography.

Comment:
Digital cameras have improved in quality by leaps and bounds over the past 5 years. The quality has gone up and the price has come down. A few years ago, you would have to spend $600 plus for a decent digital camera. Today you can get very good pictures with a camera that costs a few hundred dollars.

If you purchase a 3 mega pixel camera, you will be able to make very nice pictures that you can send over the Internet or post to a website or eBay listing. The fact is that you do not need a 3 mega pixel picture for the internet, but it is good to start with an image that has plenty of mega pixels so that the compressed version of the picture is good quality. We use 8 mega pixel cameras but usually only set them on the 1 mega pixel setting when we do photos for the Internet.

The reason for having a high mega pixel camera is for making large prints from your digital photos. Personally, even though I would not take a 3-mega pixel shot for the Internet, I would still purchase a camera with at least 3-mega pixel capabilities.

There are three critical things to consider when taking digital pictures. First, be sure that you have plenty of light.When we take product photos, we use 4, 500W halogen lights.When you use lots of light, the aperture of the camera will close down smaller. The smaller the aperture, the better the depth of focus. This means that more of your object will be in focus.

Second, read the section of you camera manual about white balancing. To getthe truest colors possible you can manually white balance your camera. This is done by putting a white piece of paper in front of your lens and,usually, pressing your white balance button. You should do this whenever you change your light source or each time you turn on your camera if it defaults to a different settingwhen it turns off. If your pictures don't have the right colors when you put them in your computer, this will take the guesswork out of whether the color of your subject is right or not.

Third, be sure that your camera is set for close up if you are taking close up pictures. Digital cameras will only focus close if you set your camera to close up mode. Look in your manual and find out how close your camera will focus with and without close up mode and know how to turn it on for close up shots.

If you want to take good digital photos, pay attention to these three simple factors and you will take clear, sharp, true to life, color digital photos.