Digital Photography Basics

There are two digital photography basics you need to consider when you begin working with this technology. One of the basics is the actual digital camera you are going to use for photography and the other is how you are going to configure your digital photography settings.

It is a big mistake to look at just the camera without looking at the settings you need just as it is a big mistake to look at the outcome of your digital photography without understanding the range and capabilities of your digital camera.

Books have been written on digital cameras and what you need to know. However a thumbnail sketch of the digital photography basics begins with the primary way that digital cameras are categorized.  This is through pixel count.  Pixel stands for Picture Element or Pix El. Pixels are the little squares that make up an image. Think of them like tiles in a mosaic.

If you have a 4 foot square mosaic made up of 16 tiles, the result might be attractive but each tile is a square foot and the overall picture is not going to have much detail.  If you use 64 tiles making up the same 4 square feet, each tile will be 6 inches square and you will have more detail in your mosaic. What would happen if each tile was one inch square?  Then you would have 2,304 tiles in your mosaic and you could have a lot of detail.

This is how digital photography works. The more pixels you have in your digital photography, the more definition your photo will have. A basic digital camera will have 1 million pixels. This is referred to as 1MP (one million pixels). While a millions pixels may sound like a lot, digital cameras have more to offer.  Currently the standard is a pixel count of between 2MP and 5MP.

What does this mean to you?  This means that for a good crisp 4x6 inch print, a 3MP camera is wonderful.  If your goal is to produce sharp 8x10 inch prints, you should look at a higher end digital camera in the 4MP or 5MP range.

The second of the important digital photography basics is configuring your camera. There are so many varieties of cameras the best advice is to get to know what each of the little symbols on your camera means. You will have to look at your manual for this information.  Very briefly, if you had two things to learn first about the basics of digital photography they would be how to control exposure and how to use the flash. Before taking once in a lifetime photos, experiment with both of these using your camera and its manual.