The concept is pretty easy. Often when we take a picture, we sacrifice something. To get faces to be well exposed, the sky is blown out white. Or to get the pretty blue horizon, other things are in silhouette. Statues are especially difficult to capture.

During my Photography Walking Tour of UT Class on Saturday (what fun students–one of my best classes of all time!), I got a chance to take a few shots myself, specifically over and underexposing my images so that I could test them out with Photomatix, software designed especially to combine your images to get the best exposure from each.

Here are the three shots I took of a statue on the South Mall.

And here is the resulting combined HDR image. What a difference!

Download the software and try it yourself. The trial version is free.

You can read it online in their PDF version through the end of April. My piece is on page 22 of the online version.

Here are some highlights from the article:

Familiarize yourself with a few basic settings so that you may assist in a pinch. First, find the tulip icon, which marks the macro setting on your digital camera. If your child will be shoving the camera within inches of a flower, the only chance for getting the image in focus is to use this setting, which is designed for close-up shots. When you press the macro button, a small tulip should appear on your screen to let you know you are shooting in this special mode.

Learn how to turn off your flash. If the camera is closer than a few feet from the subject and the flash fires, the image will be blown out with light. Repeatedly pressing the lightning bolt icon should toggle you through the “auto flash,” “flash on” and “flash off” settings. Shutting off the flash also saves battery power.

Take time to reset your image size if you have a small memory card with limited space for photo storage. The kids will take pictures in rapid succession, easily going through hundreds of snaps in half an hour. Since you aren’t likely to be making poster prints of their efforts, you can safely set the image size to “fine” instead of “superfine.” This often doubles the number of images you can save on to a memory card.

 Shutter lag — that time between when you push the button and when the camera fires the shot — can frustrate children, especially if they are duck chasing. Teach your kids to push the button only halfway down to focus. That way, when the animal is in the shot, your child can press the rest of the way down for an instant snap.

When your children are confident with taking shots, you can show them how to use the zoom feature to get in extra close. Also, remind them that not all pictures have to be taken with the camera set on a horizontal angle. Many images look best if you turn the camera sideways for an up-and-down vertical shot. If your children are experimenting with horizontal and vertical shots, it’s smart to loop the camera straps around their wrists in case they stumble, get startled or let go of the equipment.

In the article, I also describe two very fun art projects to do with their photographs. Pick up a copy of this amazing free parenting magazine before they are gone!

Here are the most common reasons for blurry pictures and how to prevent them:

Too Low Light
If your camera does not have enough light to work with, it will choose a combination of settings that will make the image bright enough at the sacrifice of quality.

The first of these settings is the shutter speed. The shutter is the window that opens and closes to let the light in. If it opens and closes very fast, it can stop action such as someone running. If it is slow, even people standing still will not be “frozen” in time, and just the movement of your finger dipping the camera slightly to push the button will cause blur.

Your camera will give you a “shake warning” with either a hand or a camera with little “shake” marks beside it if it is worried that the shutter is too slow for you to hand hold the camera. If you get a shake warning, try one of these things:

1. Place your camera on a table or other surface to take the shot. Use the self timer if you can to avoid any movement when you push the button.
2. If you must hold the camera, brace your elbows on a table, shelf, sofa, or any surface for extra stability.
3. If you must stand freely, pull your elbows against your body, hold the camera up to your face (look through the view finder the old fashioned way), hold your breath, and push the button as gently as possible.

The second of the low light settings that can make a picture blurry is the ISO “film” speed. If the camera senses low light, it will pick a “faster” film speed, which results in odd colors, bits of colored pixels, and a blurred appearance. If your camera is resorting to this (and you can see the dancing colored pixels discoloring the scene), your only option is to find a way to get more light on the scene. Make sure your flash is turned on if you can use it, but realize you may have simply maxed out the capability of your camera.

Using the Wrong Setting
Sometimes a blurry picture is simply a matter of telling the camera you are photographing something that is moving.

When you place your camera in straight automatic mode, it has no idea what you are shooting–a tree or a track star. It will assess the light and the distance that you are focusing on, and pick a middle range of settings.

If you TELL the camera your subject is moving, it will choose a faster shutter speed. The action setting on your camera is usually found by pushing the “menu” or “set” button and finding the icon of a running man or, if you use a Canon, “kids and pets.”

If, however,  you are shooting action such as a volleyball or basketball game indoors, you simply may not have the capability to freeze the action of the game. Pros use extremely large lenses to capture enough light in those very difficult shooting environments.

Too Much Zoom
When you maximize the zoom on your camera, two things may happen:

1. A little wobble at the back of the camera where you are holding it becomes a BIG wobble at the end of that lens sticking out. This can create motion blur even when you don’t have a shake warning. Hold the camera very steady or zoom back a little.
2. Your camera may go into a “digital zoom” mode. This is a terrible setting that CROPS your picture. Your 7 megapixel image is now only maybe 4. And then it does something WORSE. To make you think it is still a 7 megapixel image, it does something called “interpolation,” which digitally generates fake pixels so that the file size is the same. This crop and interpolation ruins your picture, giving it jagged edges and random dots of strange color. Look it up in your manual and figure out how to turn it off.

Need more help? You can read other Better Picture How To features on the blog. Deanna also has many classes (including the new mom and child photo fun day) as well as private lessons.

Shutter lag is unique to digital technology for several reasons. One, these are not simple cameras the way film point and shoot models were. Even bottom market digital cameras perform very complex calculations prior to each shot. They also have red eye reduction and exaggerated zoom, which causes the bulk of your shutter lag.

Here are three things that can reduce your shutter lag almost completely:

1. Prefocus your shot when you can by pressing the shutter button only halfway. Your lens has to move in and out as it figures out where to focus. This can be a long process if you are using a lot of zoom. Press your shutter button only HALFWAY instead of all the way down, until you get the confirmation beep that your camera has focused. Then push the rest of the way. The picture will happen almost instantly. So line everybody up, frame the picture, do your half-press, then tell everyone, “Look here!” As everyone smiles, you can take your shot confidently.

2. Turn off your red eye reduction if you can. When you are outdoors or in a brightly lit area, you don’t need the red eye feature, which delays your shot by sending out pulses of light. This is designed to make your subject’s pupils get smaller so that you can’t see the blood in the back of the retina.

To change your flash setting, find the button marked by a lightning bolt. Push it and watch the corresponding icon on your screen. This can vary depending on your camera, but you should see:

A plain lightning bolt (flash on, no red eye)
A lightning bolt with a circle and a slash through it (no flash)
An eye or a lightning bolt with an eye beside it (red eye reduction on)

Make sure you have a plain lightning bolt (it’s okay if it has an “A” for “auto” beside it) and not an eye.

3. Give your camera time between shots to properly save the image and charge the flash again. When you take a picture, your camera needs a second or two to write the picture data to memory and to prepare the flash for another image. If you try too soon, you will get very long shutter lag. How quickly your camera recovers from a shot depends on the model.

But, you say, what if I’m at a soccer game? Or a track meet? Or my toddler moves at the speed of light?

Prefocus on where you think your child is about to be–for example focus on the finish line–and wait for your child to cross it to press the shutter all the way down. If the mad tricyclist is about to fly around the corner, focus on that corner and wait for the moment to happen.

The Shooting Digital web site has a great test where you can time the shutter lag of your camera.

Need more help? Find more of Deanna’s How To features on her blog, or sign up for one of Deanna’s camera classes. I have both total beginner classes for those taking their cameras out of the box, and intermediate walking tours where we capture the beauty of Austin. To make sure you don’t miss anything, you can safely join her mailling list and choose what information you want to receive.

Here is what happened: You focused on the middle of the image in your LCD screen, probably the center person or object. This told your camera: focus that far away and put out enough flash to light up that part of the room.

BUT there were other things and people in the image. So when your camera burst that light on the scene, anything that was closer to the camera than that focus point was totally blown out.

This can also happen if you were just too darn close and even at the minimum flash power, your camera couldn’t help but over light the scene.

What to do:

First, remember the rule of thumb for flash: keep everyone at least 8 feet away from you. A quick way to check is to imagine yourself falling straight onto your face. If you are going to hit anyone, they are too close for flash. Back away.

Second, if you HAVE to be that close, for example you’re in a restaurant and you’d be standing on someone else’s table, take a white paper napkin or a kleenex and lightly cover up the flash. This will diffuse the light enough that you won’t blow anyone out (it will also, as a bonus, prevent red eye.)

If the scene is complex, for example a child blowing out candles surrounded by other kids, try to zoom enough that the people closest to you, and who will get blown out by the flash, are out of the picture.

To fix the sample picture above, I could have either

1. Backed away.
2. Focused on the boy by only pressing the shutter button halfway, waited for the confirmation beep that the camera is focused, and then moved my camera over to get the pumpkin in the shot.
3. Turned off my flash.

The beauty of digital is that you can see your mistake and often fix it before the moment is lost.

Need more help? Deanna’s Point and Shoot Camera Basics Class is coming up in a few weeks.

Before I get carried away, I’ll cut to the chase.

Best small point and shoot digital camera:
Canon Digital Elph Line (they are all good) $250-$350 depending on model

Best starter digital SLR for manual control:
Canon Rebel Kit $500-$1000 depending on model and lens in the kit

I gave Amazon links since most people are familiar and comfortable with them. Buying digital camera equipment on the internet takes some know-how. Many companies are literally setting up a temporary online presence, putting up very low prices, and then refusing to fill orders or giving open-ended shipping dates unless you “call their salespeople” to listen to long high pressure spiels for expensive extras. Once they get too many negative reviews, they change names and start all over again.

Here are two other reputable places to buy equipment. They won’t pull any gimmicks. I buy 75% of my cameras, lenses, lights, tripods, and printing supplies from one of these two places:

 www.bhphotovideo.com

www.adorama.com

Those two sites will be within a dollar or two of each other. B&H has more selection for pros, I think, if I’m buying flashes or strobes, so I often go with them, but Adorama often has free shipping options, so in those cases I go for them. To see them quickly side by side, type in what you’re looking for at www.pricegrabber.com, just don’t get fooled by the very cheap places, which pop up as fast as the site can weed them out. Basically, if a company has lowballed a price, it is either a purchase-only-with-accessories or a gray market (non-US warranty) item. I’ve also used Tri-state and Abe’s of Maine (should they pop up for you at PriceGrabber), although I do not recommend them as highly.

If you want to go local, your options are few. I buy things at Precision Camera on Lamar at 35th whenever I can to support them, as the only other two camera stores with pro equipment shut down. We need Precision around and they will often work with you if you bring in an internet printout on a price. I buy a few things at Fry’s, especially printers, spare camera batteries, and memory cards. I will use them especially if I think I might end up returning the item. I will not buy cameras at other electronics or camera stores, as any salesperson who knows enough to be helpful will only work there about 1.2 seconds before moving up or on, and the others can pass on terrible misinformation. I’ve had terrible arguments with some of them, especially about negative issues on cameras they tout as “bonus” features–but they are settings you should not use under any circumstance, such as digital zoom or auto ISO.

If you’ve taken any of my photo classes, you’ll know my highest recommendation for getting your pictures printed is NEVER going to be anything you will buy and do at home, which is always an iffy proposition for both quality and longevity. Upload your images to be printed to www.mpix.com, which is a sister company to my professional lab. You will not believe how good your pictures look over your Target or Walgreens prints. Try it. You’ll believe me.

If you are buying a printer and plan to do pictures, first, really, don’t. But if you do, get an Epson. Yes, you have to take care of them (ALWAYS turn them off when you are done or the heads will dry out and it will stop working.) But they care about how long your prints last. The other manufacturers’ prints will often fade in six months.  Yes, months. Not exactly what you want to fill your family albums with. I bought an Epson PictureMate for 4×6 prints for my mom and she loves it. Its a wonderful little photo printer that you can carry around with you. She takes it to birthday parties, on vacation. You stick your card in, push print, and it makes your full bleed 4×6 in about 60 seconds. For 29 cents. And the print lasts 125 years according to independent industry testing.

It is CRITICAL if you are buying a point and shoot digital camera without trying it out in a store that you at least read a review of it, hopefully one with comments where people post their problems with the camera. There is nothing worse than spending several hundred dollars on a digital camera and discovering it takes ten seconds to turn on, therefore missing most any shot. My favorite review site, mainly because they review most everything, is

http://www.dpreview.com/

You can easily compare models, see when they were released, and how much the major sites are charging for it.

Whew!