So you just bought your first digital camera. You started taking photos of friends and family. Full of excitement, you printed out the photos and showed them to your loved ones. Great. Everybody likes the photos, but you wonder, can you get better picture with your simple point and shoot cameras?
When taking pictures with a point and shoot camera, you can be very limited with your creativity and flexibility. That is kind of the point anyway. However, you can still take great shots as long as you follow the tried and true compositional techniques for visual images.
In my previous post about basic photography in 15 minutes, I mentioned about the exposure versus composition. With point and shoot camera, you are very limited with your exposure setting, indeed. But you can always get creative with your composition.
Compositional techniques are not only used for photography, they are used for videotaping, painting, and any other visual media. If you can master composition in photography, you can easily take any other field that is similar. A point and shoot camera is what? A visual capture device and although it does not have the bells and whistles of SLR cameras, it still is very powerful.
Many people assume that because it’s a point and shoot camera they won’t take good pictures. People use this as a crutch and blame the poor images as the result of bad quality cameras.
I say they are wrong! Point and shoot camera can still make very good photos. Heck, you can get really good picture even with pinhole cameras! Check out this “Oatmeal Pinhole Camera Tutorial”
Apart from my previous tutorial, here is a very useful compositional tip that can help you immensely.
Keep it simple stupid (KISS) always works. Trying on creating simple compositions means isolating the subject, reducing the background clutter, and making the subject of interest very easily viewable. The viewer should instantly be able to know what he or she is to look at.
Nemo surprised! Fill the frame
You can achieve simpler photos by:
Moving in closer
Fill the frame friday - Telephone!
Using the depth of field to blur the background
Give Me A Bokeh!
Focusing on, for example, one flower instead of five
Yellow, Green and Bokeh !
Leaving unnecessary information out of the frames of the border.
Krystal Vee
You can take great photos whether you use a point and shoot camera or a digital SLR. The photo is not made by the equipment but by the eye of the photographer.
On side note, you can check out Learn Digital Photography Tips to get a free report on basic photography tutorials.
