Digital Photography Composition For Dummies

Chapter 3. Getting to Know Your Equipment

In This Chapter

^ Matching the lens to the job F Getting your exposure right %. Equipping yourself with the necessities

omposing beautiful photographs and understanding your photographic equipment go hand in hand. Composition, like any task, is easier and more effective when you have the right tools and use them correctly. You wouldn't choose a screwdriver over a hammer when you wanted to drive a nail, and in the same way, certain lenses and camera settings make more sense for certain compositions.

Camera equipment may seem overwhelmingly technical to you at first, but after you get to know your gear, it likely will become as familiar as using a hammer or screwdriver. So be sure to read the manuals that come with your camera and lenses in order to better understand all the settings and what they control. This chapter guides you to the parts of the manual that help you take better photos right off the bat.

The more time you spend getting to know your gear, the more natural your understanding of it becomes. A photographer who constantly fidgets with his camera controls is one who misses many great photographic opportunities. You want to develop an understanding that frees you and allows you to notice your surroundings, compose images, and communicate with your subjects.

Making the Alt-Important Lens Choice

A good camera lens can cost almost as much as (or in some cases more than) your digital SLR camera body. You may purchase a new body every few years based on the upgrades in technology, but your lenses will stick with you through time. So, before purchasing a specific lens, make sure it will be useful to your style of photography. Each type of lens is useful for different purposes, and knowing the benefits of specific lenses can help you choose the right tool for the job. The lenses you add to your camera bag should be based on the style of photography you mainly are involved in.

A lens can allow your camera to see an entire scene (including what's in your peripheral vision), or it can magnify a scene to provide a narrower angle of view. It also can provide a view that's similar to what you see with your eyes.

A lens's focal length (the distance in millimeters from the optical center of the lens to the digital sensor) determines how much the camera can see. A lens's curvature determines its focal length. More curvature causes the light to focus at a shorter distance and produces a wide angle of view. Less curvature causes light to focus at a greater distance and produces a narrower angle of view. (For more information on focal length and how it affects your composition, read Chapters 8 and 9.)

When choosing a lens, you can select a fixed lens or a zoom lens. Both can be helpful in certain situations. I introduce each in the following sections.

Workinq With a fixed lens

A fixed lens is one that contains only one focal length. Fixed lenses are designed to work perfectly at a specific focal length, and all their scientific and technological qualities are directed toward doing so. They're lighter than zoom lenses because they require fewer moving parts, and they tend to shoot faster — that is, they have a larger maximum aperture, which allows more light to come in and creates a faster shutter speed.

When I shoot fashion shots or portraits, I use only fixed lenses. I have time to study my scenes and compose my images, so I don't need to zoom in and out while shooting.

Here are the different types of fixed lenses you can choose from with regard to 35mm digital SLR photography:

Normal lenses: These lenses have a focal length of 40mm to 85mm. The lens's curvature is normal, and it produces an angle of view that's similar to the one seen by the human eye. You can use this type of lens for shooting portraits, street photography, and still-life photos.

Telephoto lenses: These lenses have a focal length that's greater than 90mm. They have minimum curvature, which produces a narrow angle of view and causes a scene to be magnified. The greater your focal length, the more magnification you have. Telephoto lenses are great for getting close to the action when you're actually far away. This effect can be useful in photojournalism and sports and wildlife photography.

Wide-angle lenses: These lenses have a focal length of 17mm to 35mm. They have a great deal of curvature and produce very wide angles of view. Your camera can see more of a scene through a wide-angle lens. Try using this type of lens to photograph landscapes, architecture, interiors, and large groups of people.

Fisheye lenses: These lenses have a focal length that's less than 16mm, and they produce an extremely wide angle of view. Fisheye lenses typically are used to create a fun or dramatic look, because elements that are close to the lens appear much larger than elements that are slightly farther from the lens. This look is commonly used in sports photography (skating, climbing, and so on) and in dramatic commercial advertising and high-fashion campaigns.

Savinq time With a zoom lens

Some lenses contain a range of focal lengths so you can shift among them to find the right length for a specific shooting situation. These lenses, which are called zoom lenses, are convenient for scenarios that require you to shoot a variety of subjects from varying distances without wasting any time. After all, changing from one lens to another for one shot and then back again for another is time consuming and a pain.

The drawbacks to zoom lenses are that they're heavy and don't always provide the sharpest quality in an image. Most zoom lenses work better at certain focal lengths than at others. Because they can accommodate so many focal lengths, they drop the ball when it comes to perfecting just one.

I took the three images in Figure 3–1 within a matter of seconds using my 28mm-135mm zoom lens. The zoom lens enabled me to display one scene three different ways and to change my message without moving my camera or changing lenses.

24mm, 1/4 sac, f/11, 50 50mm, 1/4 sac, f/11, 50

Figure 3–1: Three angles of view of one scene taken with a zoom lens.

135mm, 1/4 sac, f/11,50

If you find that you require multiple focal lengths to get the job done, you're wise to purchase a couple zoom lenses. If you have a 24mm-70mm zoom lens and a 70mm-200mm zoom lens, you can cover the wide, normal, and tele-photo ranges with just two lenses. Having this variety in two lenses would be much more convenient than carrying 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 135mm, and 200mm lenses and having to constantly change them as you were shooting.

Exposing your Images Properly