Introduction If you re like most Americans (indeed, like most residents of civilized countries today), you own at least one digital camera. It may be an easy-to-carry point-and-shoot model, a fancy-shmancy (and quite expensive) digital SLR, or it may be something in-between. Maybe you purchased it a few years ago, when it meant a lot to have megapixel capacity, or more recently when even the lowest-priced models shoot pictures of 5 megapixel or higher resolution. Your camera may be a Canon or a Fuji or a Kodak or a Nikon or a Sony; it may be black or silver or even pink.
2 Photo pedia The point is, you have a digital camera, and you use it probably a lot. You use it to shoot vacation pictures and graduation pictures and pictures of your growing family and your closest friends. You use it to shoot candid photographs and formal portraits, practical pictures of items you sell on ebay, and pretty pictures of the flowers in your garden. If you took the time to look, you d find hundreds if not thousands of digital photographs stored on your computer s hard disk, with that number growing weekly. In short, you take a lot of photographs with your digital camera. But are all those great photographs or are many of them somehow less than ideal? If your photos seldom turn out picture perfect, count yourself in the majority. Whether you re a casual photographer, a dedicated hobbyist, or an aspiring professional, it s difficult to take consistently good photos. There s always something that can go wrong too much shadow here, too much light there, bad color from indoor lighting, poor composition, blurry images, red-eyed subjects, you name it. It s not that you don t try to take good photos, it s just that things don t always work out right. That s where this book comes in. Photopedia: The Ultimate Digital Photography Resource is designed to be your guide to creating better digital photos. Whether you take the occasional holiday snap or tons of artistic shots, you ll benefit from the techniques discussed here. The steps to taking better photographs, after all, are accessible to anyone. The first step toward taking better photos is to better understand your camera and the whole digital photography process. Did you know, for example, that your camera probably has a special mode just for shooting sports and action photos? Or that you can adjust your camera s aperture and shutter speed manually? Or that you can attach a filter to improve the colors in your photographs? I bet you didn t, but that information is exceedingly useful. The next step, and perhaps the most important, is learning how to take specific types of photographs. What do you need to do to take the perfect portrait? What camera settings result in the best action shots? How do you compose great-looking landscape photos? You don t have to reinvent the wheel; all this information exists, and it s all in this book. Finally, know that not every photograph is created perfectly in the camera. Sometimes a little post-camera manipulation is necessary to fix small errors or turn an average shot into an above-average one. That means mastering the tools in your favorite photo editing program, such as Adobe Photoshop Elements or Photoshop CS. Do you know how to crop a photo for better composition? Or use levels to punch up a shot s brightness and contrast? Or use
INTRODUCTION 3 the Clone Stamp tool to remove unwanted elements from an image? If you want to fine-tune your photos for best effect, you need to learn these techniques. And that s what this book is about. I ll lead you step-by-step from the basics of selecting a camera through what you need to create top-flight photo prints, and everything in-between. It doesn t matter what type of digital camera you have, either; you can use the techniques and advice presented in this book to get great results from an inexpensive point-and-shoot camera just as well as you can from a high-end digital SLR. A good photo is a good photo, after all, no matter what kind of equipment you have. That said, I do have a bias towards getting the picture right in the camera, rather than fixing it after-the-fact in Photoshop. As powerful as Photoshop is, you can only fix so much; you get much better results when you employ timeproven photographic techniques to take better pictures from the start. It s easy to do a quick touchup on a picture that was composed and exposed properly. It s much harder to try to salvage a poorly-shot photo. The bottom line is this: Anyone can take great photographs, if you know the right things to do. I show you those things in this book, and then you can take the photographs. What s in This Book Photopedia: The Ultimate Digital Photography Resource is a comprehensive guide to all aspects of digital photography from choosing a camera to composing the shot all the way through printing or displaying the photograph on the Web. After all, a lot is involved in taking a good picture, so this book has to cover a lot of ground. To that end, this book contains 30 chapters of information, organized into 8 major sections: Part I, Understanding Digital Photography, is an introduction to how digital camera photography works. You ll learn about how a digital camera takes pictures, and how those pictures are edited and enhanced in the digital darkroom. Part II, Digital Camera Essentials, contains everything you need to know about choosing and using a digital camera. You ll learn all about the three major types of digital cameras in use today pointand-shoot cameras, prosumer cameras, and the increasingly popular digital SLR cameras.
4 Photo pedia Part III, Digital Camera Accessories, shows you what you need to get the most out of your digital camera. You ll learn about all the various types of camera accessories, as well as how to extend your camera s battery life, use different types of lenses, and enhance your lenses with different lens filters. Part IV, Photography Essentials, is a detailed guide to basic photographic techniques. I m talking about the things that every photographer needs to know and master: composition, lighting and flash, color, exposure, and focus and depth of field. This is important stuff, even for casual photographers. Part V, Transferring and Managing Photos, is a short section that shows you what to do with your photos after you ve taken them that is, how to get your photos from your camera to your computer and manage them after they re there. Part VI, Digital Photo Editing, is the Photoshop section. Turn to the chapters in this part when you want to choose a photo editing program, and then edit and enhance your photos. It s all covered, from basic cropping and red eye removal to advanced editing and special effects. Part VII, Digital Photography Techniques, puts it all together, both in the camera and on your computer, to show you how to create specific types of photographs. This section takes a holistic approach, starting with step-by-step camera techniques and including the most common Photoshop enhancements. You ll learn how to create all sorts of photos: portraits, candids, travel and vacation shots, landscapes and nature photos, sports and action shots, still life photos, and black-andwhite shots. You ll even learn how to shoot in special conditions, such as at night or underwater. Turn here to learn how to shoot great photos of any type. Part VIII, Photo Printing and Sharing, puts a bow on the entire package by showing you what to do with the photos you create. Want to create great photo prints? The information s here. Want to send your photos via email to family and friends? Also here. Want to post your photos to the Web? Ditto. And when you re finished reading the body of the book, or if you just run across a term you re unfamiliar with, turn to the book s appendix, which is a detailed glossary of common photographic terms. If you don t know an aperture from a zoom lens, you can find out what s what here.
INTRODUCTION 5 Who Can Use This Book Photopedia can be used by any level or type of photographer; it doesn t matter whether you have a point-and-shoot camera or a digital SLR, the information and advice still applies. In fact, I ve specifically tried to provide instructions and examples that can be used by even the most casual photographer, using any type of digital camera. Of course, you will need a digital camera, as well as a photo editing program of some kind. While the pros like the somewhat expensive Photoshop CS software, the techniques presented here can be easily adapted to work with just about any software. Then, with digital camera and photo editing program at the ready, you re ready to start shooting! How to Use This Book I hope that this book is easy enough to read that you don t need instructions. That said, there are a few elements that bear explaining. First, there are several special elements in this book, presented in what we in the publishing business call margin notes. There are different types of margin notes for different types of information, as you see here. This is a tip that might prove useful for whatever it is you re in the process of doing. This is a caution that something you might accidentally do might have undesirable results. In addition, all chapters end with a bit of personal commentary, presented in the form of a sidebar. These sections are meant to be read separately, as they exist outside the main text. And remember these sidebars are my opinions only, so feel free to agree or disagree as you like. Obviously, there are lots of web page addresses in the book, like this one: www.molehillgroup.com. When you see one of these addresses (also known as URLs), you can go to that web page by entering the URL into the address box in your web browser. I ve made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the web addresses presented here, but given the ever-changing nature of the Web, don t be surprised if you run across an address or two that s changed. I apologize in advance.
6 Photo pedia About the Photographs in This Book This is a long book, but fortunately the text is broken up and illustrated by lots of great photographs. The photos come from a number of different photographers, both amateur and professional; they were taken with all different types of digital cameras, from simple point-and-shooters to fancy professional D-SLRs. In fact, some of the best photos came from nonprofessionals using low-cost cameras which just goes to show that it s the photographer that matters, not the equipment. (Although good equipment is nice, let me tell you.) If you see a photo you particularly like, you can find out who took it by referring to the Photo Credits page located elsewhere in the introductory section of this book. If you peruse these credits, you ll discover that many of the photos were taken by Sherry Elliott, a fine photographer in her own right who also served as the book s photo editor. If you like the way the book looks, it s her doing. There s More Online If you like the photographs in this book and want to view them on your own computer, I urge you to visit my PhotopediaPhotos site on Flickr (www.flickr.com/ photos/12150723@n06/). Photos from photo editor Sherry Elliott, myself, and several other contributors are listed in the Photopedia Photos set, while photos from other Flickr members can be found on the Favorites tab. Feel free to download any of these photos for your own purposes; it's also okay to use these photos to experiment with, in terms of photo editing. I also urge you to visit my personal website, located at www.molehillgroup.com. Here you ll find more information on this book and other books I ve written including an errata page for this book, in the inevitable event that an error or two creeps into this text. (Hey, nobody s perfect!) And if you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me directly at photopedia@molehillgroup.com. I can t guarantee that I ll respond to every email, but I do guarantee I ll read them all. Get Ready to Shoot! With all these preliminaries out of the way, it s now time to get started. While I recommend reading the book in consecutive order, that isn t completely necessary, especially if you re already well-versed in some photographic techniques. It s okay to skip around. So get ready to turn the page and learn more about creating great digital photographs. If I ve done my job right, you ll soon be taking more and better photos than you did before which will make us both happy