9 basic photography mistakes and how to solve them
Learn how to solve basic photography problems faced by both novice and veteran photographers. Every photographer makes mistakes when taking photos. Here are some tips for identifying and solving common problems that novice photographers may encounter.
Crooked horizon
You are in position, ready to photograph a beautiful sunset. But in all the excitement you forgot to check that the horizon is level, so the resulting photos are all lopsided.
There is an easy way to fix a crooked horizon. Most editing programs can do it for you automatically, or you can have direct control by tilting the canvas a bit in a program like Lightroom and Photoshop.
You may also want to enable electronic leveling for your camera. This function is known as the virtual horizon. The guide can help you level your shot, and can often be overlaid while viewing the shot in real-time.
Many DSLR cameras have a virtual horizon feature.
White balance is wrong
Are your photos looking too cold or too warm? Sometimes you can get strange tones in your photos that result from the camera reading the white balance incorrectly. Automatic White Balance (AWB) can determine the best setting for every situation, but many times the best way to get the balance right is to set a certain value for white balance.
You will need a white card or a neutral gray card to set a white balance value. A blank sheet of paper is another option.
Taking a manual white balance reading can help improve your photos.
In the same light condition as your subject, take a photo of the card so that it fills the entire frame. Then, go to your camera’s menus and look for the option to set the white balance. Select the photo from the card and set it as the white balance value.
The photos you will take from now on will look more natural. Remember to change the white balance to its automatic setting (or make another value setting) after you’re done.
Photographers shooting Raw images can easily adjust the white balance during the editing process without the danger of losing image quality.
Lens distortions
Some lenses can make subjects look warped, or introduce unwanted elements into photos in what is known as vignetting, or loss of color or brightness at the edges of images.
For example, wide-angle lenses distort perspective and are unflattering for portraits because the subject appears to be moving out of frame.
There are a few ways to deal with lens distortion, and the first step is to choose a lens with a focal length that best suits your subject. Depending on your camera, corrections can be applied automatically in-camera when you are taking JPEG images.
The easiest and most efficient way to correct lens distortions is through an image editing program such as Adobe Lightroom. How To Repair Canon Camera Lens Error, remove vignetting, and correct other problems such as chromatic aberrations.
In Lightroom, click to expand the Basic tab in the right column if it’s not visible. Then click Enable Profile Corrections, which will automatically detect the lens that was used to take the photo and adjust the image.
The Lens Corrections tab in Lightroom.
Profile corrections can also be done using the software that comes with your camera. Canon users can load the EOS Utility and Nikon users can use Capture NX.
Focus is not correct
When you rely on autofocus, it’s easy for the camera to get it wrong. Sometimes the camera’s autofocus system wants to focus on something in front of or behind the subject or object you want to photograph.
In this photo, my subject is in the background, but the camera’s autofocus decided to focus on the front.
To ensure that the system selects the correct focus point for still subjects, change the focus mode to a single autofocus point. This will force your camera to use only the autofocus point of your choice, rather than having to search for a focus point of the variety it can detect in a given shot.
The selection of a single autofocus point varies from camera to camera, so I recommend checking the instruction manual.
You can also consider using back button focus and setting your autofocus point to the center.
When you’re taking a portrait, check the focus after you’ve taken the photo. Use the camera’s LCD screen and zoom in on the image to the focus point to make sure details are sharp. Unless you want an artistic effect, focus on the subject’s eyes.
Images are not sharp
You’ve taken a great photo, but it’s not as sharp as you’d like. This lack of sharpness can result from several factors: the camera moved during the exposure; the subject moved; the camera chose the wrong focus point when using autofocus mode.
There are several things you can do to get sharper images.
Increase ISO sensitivity.
Increase the shutter speed. Ideally, your shutter speed should be at least 1 / focus length. So if you are taking a photo with a focal length of 80mm with a full-frame sensor, your shutter speed has to be at least 1/80 second. For a crop camera sensor like APS-C, an 80mm lens is equivalent to a 120mm or 130mm lens (80mm x 1.5 or 1.6 which is the crop factor). So the shutter speed has to be at least 1 / 125s to avoid any kind of movement.
Activate image stabilization on both the camera and the lens, which allows you to take photos at a slightly slower shutter speed than specified above.
Use a tripod.
Avoid shooting at apertures that are too wide like f / 1.8 because this can affect the sharpness of the photo, especially if the focus is not particularly accurate.
Photos look bland and dark
Sometimes your photos can appear darker than they should be. This is generally due to the camera underexposing the ambient light condition based on its metering.
Fortunately, this problem has an easy solution even if you don’t understand How to Remove Scratches From Camera Lens. It is known as exposure compensation. This is a value that you can adjust when in automatic mode.
On a compact digital SLR camera (also in your smartphone’s camera app), look for an icon that looks like a plus and minus sign: +/-.
Some cameras have a physical dial that controls exposure compensation. To make the photo look brighter, change the value to a positive number. You can do the opposite if the photo is too bright and you want to make it more opaque — to do this, change the exposure compensation value to a negative number.
also may read: How to Remove Scratches From Camera Lens
Composition
The composition is an important way to balance photos, which helps you improve image flow by employing certain rules.
It can be tempting to take a photo with your subject right in the center of the image, but that doesn’t always make for a pretty picture.
One of the simplest methods of composition is to start using the rule of thirds, in which you divide an image into three parts both vertically and horizontally, using two lines. Your subject can be placed at the intersection of these lines to produce a more interesting photo.
Some cameras have the ability to superimpose a grid of thirds over an image to aid in photo composition.
You can also change the composition of the photo by cropping it after you’ve taken it.
Over-processing
Good photo editing is all about subtlety, enhancing rather than overwhelming an image. Too much contrast, clarity, and too much HDR can make a photo look awful.
Each photo is different, so avoid applying the same filters and effects to a group of images. For example, increasing the saturation in a landscape may look fantastic, but doing the same in a portrait is unflattering.
Forget the basics
Composition, exposure, and focus are under control. But how about all the preparations you must have made before taking the photo?
Before you embark on your next photography adventure, get in the habit of recharging your batteries and keeping extra ones on hand in case you need them. Backup and format memory cards, and check that the camera does indeed have a memory card before you leave home.
And finally, remember to remove the lens cover. This is one of the most common mistakes that plague even the most seasoned photographers.
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