Make Better Pictures

One great advantage of digital photography is the dozens of options your camera allows. But this can also be a disadvantage. Most photographers use only a very few of these options regularly. And sometimes settings get changed accidentally, which can lead to flawed or unexpected results.

The following are the primary camera settings you should be concerned with, and an opinion on how you should set them. Feel free to deviate. Regardless of the settings you choose, these are settings you should check before every photo session to make sure they are set as you want them:

The best cameras generally offer the most features, but many of these go forever unused. The most important features, such as interchangeable lenses and RAW capture, are typically available on DSLR and interchangeable-lens mirrorless cameras. The differences are often in the quality of the features.

Professional cameras are almost always more rugged—better protected against impact, dust incursion, or water damage. Moreover, the best cameras are often paired with the highest-quality lenses. Many DSLR manufacturers make two levels of lenses—a standard and a professional model. Both will produce very good results, but professional lenses are more sturdy and should show less distortion or other optical aberrations, though you may not see these in your results, and more important they probably open to a wider aperture for better low-light capture and/or shallower depth of field.

Good lenses are important to the quality of your final result, but more important are the image sensor and processor. The sensor captures light and the processor turns that capture into an image file. The newest and physically largest sensors most often produce the best quality, and manufacturers don’t put large sensors on less-expensive cameras.

Cellphone and tablet cameras have tiny sensors and simpler lenses, but many still produce good-quality results, especially for screen viewing.

People come to photography for their own reasons. And it takes all kinds. Some are romantic and dreamy, while others socially conscious or practical. In most cases, people make photographs that match their interests, moods, or personality.

But there is another quite common type in photography circles—the geek. For the geek, tech is what drives them. Perhaps it’s the number of the image sensor’s pixels, the optical design of a lens, or hidden tricks or actions in postproduction. For the true geek, photography may be more about equipment and technique than about the image itself.

While this goes against all creative reasoning, it’s not too surprising. Photography is technically driven, after all. You may or may not agree with this, but remember: geeks have rights, too. And you may even benefit from their obsessiveness. After all, who else writes the endless equipment reviews on photo blogs and other sites?

You can spend pretty much any amount on a digital camera/lens—from less than $100 to tens of thousands. Of course, you have a budget to consider and can’t buy whatever you want. But in general, buy the best camera you can afford. Usually, a more expensive camera gives you better quality and more features, but it also gives you some surety that the pictures you make now will have all the quality you need in the future.

It’s hard to predict the future, as technology today is so much better than it used to be, but look back at older digital still and moving images. The quality is often inferior, even when made with the best equipment available at the time. Shooting with the best now helps guarantee that your images will still look good years down the road.

What does the “best” mean when you can choose, when buying lenses, between the camera manufacturer’s lens or any number of third-party models?

Not long ago, third-party lenses were strictly for bargain-hunting amateurs and poorly regarded. Their construction was often shoddy, as was their optical quality. But modern versions have made great strides, and a few are even rated better than their branded equivalents, if user reviews are any measure.

Some third-party companies even offer both standard models and pro models. And a few even offer lenses or features that comparable brand-name lenses don’t—maybe advanced image stabilization or larger maximum apertures. A few third-party brands even offer old-school manual focusing along with premium optics.

Lower cost has always been the draw of third-party lenses, but costs have crept up with the addition of professional-level models. Consider a lens’s features, including its bulk and weight. DSLR zooms, in particular, can be hefty, making a more compact, lighter lens very tempting. And that model may just come from a third party.

The term “stop” usually refers to f-stop, a measure of the size of the lens opening. Standard f-stops double or halve the light that reaches the image sensor, so f/4 lets in twice as much light as f/5.6, and f/16 lets in half the light of f/11.

But photographers also use the term “stop” as shorthand for a general doubling or halving of light, as in: This image is a stop underexposed. Or, the right side of her face is two stops brighter than the left. Here are the usual ways the term “stop” is used.

Digital cameras produce RAW or JPEG image files. As the camera’s sensor captures the subject, its processor digitizes and stores it on your memory card. With JPEGs, the processed information is compressed (made smaller) as the camera automatically decides how much data to keep. With RAWs, information is uncompressed, so it allows much more adjustment in post.

The upside of RAWs is significant. Since no information is lost, it gives you far more control of the final results—more ability to darken a bright image and lighten a dark one. Or pull detail out of shadows and highlights. And so much more. Note that DNG files are RAWs that are universal, which means they can be used pretty much by all software.

JPEGs can be useful, however. They provide generally good results with minimal work, and they hog less space on your memory card and hard drive. Fortunately, many good cameras allow you to make both JPEGs and RAWs at the same time. Use JPEGs for convenience, RAWs for quality. The best of both worlds.

There are many factors that go into picture quality, but one of the most important is the size of the camera’s image sensor. Large sensors almost always produce better-quality images than small sensors. Thus, most full-frame cameras trump cameras with APS-C or Micro Four Thirds sensors—and, of course, cellphones. And not all cellphone cameras have equal-size sensors either.

Even if you have, say, 24 megapixels on both a full-frame and APS-C camera, the larger sensor will usually rule because the pixels will gather light more effectively. Large image sensors contain larger individual pixels, and large pixels mean better light-gathering ability. This means reduced image noise, better low-light capture, higher dynamic range (the range between the whitest white and darkest black the camera can record), and generally more image detail/information, especially in low light at high ISOs.

Image noise is most likely to occur with underexposure, when too little light has reached the image sensor. But even in a well-exposed image, there are shadow areas. Because they are dark, shadow areas have less exposure and are most likely to show image noise.

Some cameras are better than others in suppressing noise in the shadows, notably full-frame and other large-sensor cameras. Also, newer models are usually better at suppressing shadow noise. Witness many of the latest smartphone models.

You can reduce image noise in shadows (or otherwise) in postproduction, but you can also help a lot when taking the picture. When framing your subject, don’t include heavy shadow areas unless they are critical to the composition. You can also use flash to fill in (brighten up) the shadows. Overexposing a little also brightens up the shadows. Slight overexposure is good practice anyway, as long as your highlight areas don’t blow out (start blinking).