Let's start with the number one complaint I hear from people: "My kids come out blurry in my pictures." This is one of the areas where "Auto" mode can let you down. Kids are usually on the move, and often when you are taking pictures outdoors your camera's auto mode will decide there is enough light to make a proper exposure and will not fire the flash to freeze the action, or will not bump up your ISO high enough to increase your shutter speed fast enough to capture quick movement. What is ISO anyway? I promise not to get overly technical here - basically it refers to light sensitivity. If you are old enough to remember buying actual film for your camera (if not, go ask your parents - why pass up a perfectly good opportunity to make them feel old?), you had to choose which speed of film you wanted to buy: 100, 200, 400, 800, etc.. If you were taking photos outside in bright sunlight you would use 100 film, it had a lower light sensitivity and gave the best looking photos with little grain (little dots), and great color saturation. If you were shooting in low light or action shots you would use 800 film, and 400 film was sort of a compromise, for when you would be shooting both indoors and out. Well the days of film are behind us (yes, I said it, film is dead except for artsy-stuff and die-hard hold-outs who haven't accepted that digital quality really has caught up to film), but your digital camera still uses the convention of ISO, changing the light sensitivity of your camera's sensor depending on what mode you choose and the overall light conditions as determined by your camera and choosing a correspondingly fast or slow shutter speed to make the proper exposure.
So what mode should you choose for taking photos of kids or people on the move? If your camera has the option, choose the "Kids&Pets" mode. Often with an icon that looks something like the image on the left. Cameras vary as to what exactly this setting does, but generally speaking it will fire the flash, choose a higher ISO (but will still use the overall brightness to select it), choose a faster shutter speed to reduce blur, while using a smaller aperture giving you a wide depth of field. "Depth of field" refers to how much of your image will be in focus. A "shallow depth of field" means that only a small amount of a scene is in focus, and the rest is blurred in proportion to it's proximity to the focus point. A "wide depth of field" means that a large amount of the scene is in focus, whether close to or far away from your focus point. Since kids are often moving around and might move away from where you initially focused by the time your camera makes the exposure, and especially if you are trying to take a picture with more than one person in it, you'll want that wider depth of field so that they are in focus.
shallow depth of field |
portrait |
So what about "Sports/Action" mode? Your camera may have a separate mode for this, and in some models there isn't a "Kids&Pets" mode, so this would be the mode you would need to select if "Auto" was resulting in blurry pictures of your moving kiddos. Typically this mode turns the flash off, because it assumes that your are too far away from your subject for the flash to make a difference (like at your kid's soccer game), and compensates for the fast movement by choosing a higher ISO. Why not just use this mode all the time instead of "Kids&Pets?" Since you are probably not using a flash, unless your are in a very bright setting your camera is going to have to make up for the lack of flash by setting a very high ISO to have enough light to make the proper exposure at the fast shutter speed you need to freeze the action and prevent motion blur without the flash. The higher the ISO the more "noise" (the little dots either light and dark or with color variation)you'll have in your photos. Here's an example of a photo with both color and luminance noise:
Back in the film days the same problem existed and caused "graininess" in photos with high ISO film. Manufacturers differ and if your camera doesn't have both "Kids&Pets" and "Sports/Action" modes, I think it's worth a little investigation to see if yours defaults to firing the flash or not. Since we already established that you aren't the manual reading type, the next time you choose the "Sports/Action" mode have someone watch for the flash as you take your photo, and voilà, you'll have your answer without ever cracking open that manual, and then you'll have a better idea when you can use that mode effectively.
Night Portrait |
Beach/Snow |
No comments:
Post a Comment