Thinking of getting a better camera to take better pictures?
Let’s see if a better camera will improve your photos.
First, you have to find out why your pictures are no good.
Let’s go through the possibilities:
Troubleshooting blurry pictures
(Click on the pictures to view the larger versions.)
If the whole picture is blurry, this is most certainly caused by camera shake.
The problem is that the chosen shutter speed is too low and the slight movement of the camera causes the picture to be blurred. What you need to do is to find a way to shoot with a faster shutter speed.
What you need: A higher shutter speed, or less camera shake:
What you can do with your current camera:
- Set a higher iso (if possible)
If you are worried about reducing image quality, well don’t be. It is far better to have an image with some high iso noise than a completely blurry picture.
- Set a faster aperture (if possible)
This will let you choose a faster shutter speed for the same exposure.
- Set negative exposure compensation
Yes, the whole picture will be darker if you pull the exposure compensation down. But which is better, a dark image (presumably of a dark scene anyway) or a blurry one? Again, for you to decide. Have common sense , if you expose -8 stops to stop camera shake, you will get an almost completely black but not blurry image, not a dark one.
- Work on your handholding technique
- Shoot with a tripod or improvised support
Both will minimize the camera movement and help you get sharper shots. There is a limit to what you can do with handholding, but with a bit of practice, it will take you surprisingly far. If you don’t like carrying a tripod around, look out for any object where you can place the camera to take the picture.
How a new camera can help you:
- If your camera doesn’t have image stabilisation, you will gain some breathing room by getting one that has. This can make a difference of up to 2-3 stops.
- A camera (or lens) with a faster aperture than your current one will help you shoot with faster shutter speeds
Troubleshooting motion blur in pictures
If a moving subject in the picture is blurry and the rest of the picture is sharp, this is caused by a too slow shutter speed. The shutter speed was not fast enough to freeze the motion of the subject.
What you need: A higher shutter speed
What you can do with your current camera:
- Set a higher iso (if possible)
- Set a faster aperture (if possible)
Again, as explained above, setting a higher iso or a higher aperture will let you choose a higher shutter speed
How a new camera can help you:
- A camera (or lens) with a faster aperture than your current one will help you shoot with faster shutter speeds
Image stabilisation will not make a difference here, because the problem is not camera shake.
Troubleshooting out of focus pictures
This is sometimes hard to tell apart from blurry photos, but there is an easy way to check: If nothing in the frame is sharp, then it is camera shake. If however, your subject is out of focus but the complete background is in focus, then you have a focus problem. The camera focused either too close or too far from the distance where you wanted the focus.
What you need: Correct choice of focus distance
What you can do with your current camera:
- Shoot by focusing and reframing
What you can do is the following: The autofocus points are usually indicated on the viewfinder or the display of the camera. First, point the camera so that where you want to focus lies smack under the focus point. This may be different to how you want to frame the shot. Half-press the shutter to let the camera acquire focus. Then without taking your hand off the shutter, quickly pan the camera to what you actually want to shoot and fully press the shutter before the camera has a chance to reacquire the focus. (Don’t let go of the shutter button when doing this.) In more advanced cameras, there is also an autofocus-lock button to keep the focus manually.
How a new camera can help you:
- A camera with a better auto-focus system can help you get more better focused pictures. If you took a picture quickly or of a moving subject and the autofocus could not keep up, then this is also a point where a better / quicker autofocus system will make a world of difference. Currently, almost all compact cameras have what could only be called mediocre autofocus systems that need almost a second to focus. DSLRs, even the cheapest ones are far quicker. If you need to shoot fast moving subjects, at the moment you have to have a DSLR.
Troubleshooting grainy pictures
This problem is usually caused by having a low light scene. Usually the aperture is wide open and the shutter speed is as low as it can reasonably be. Therefore the camera starts cranking up the iso to have the correct exposure. Unfortunately the image quality degrades as higher and higher iso settings are used. The reason for this is that the sensor has less and less light information to work with. Most compact cameras have tiny sensors thus a very small amount of light to begin with and as a result generate very poor image quality at high iso settings.
What you need: Possibility to use a lower iso setting
What you can do with your current camera:
- You can try to lower the shutter speed further and thus lower the iso setting as well. In this case, you either need to be careful with your handholding, or use some sort of support, otherwise you will trade in a grainy picture for a blurry one.
- You can try to set a larger aperture if it is not already wide open.
- You can shoot with a shorter focal length. This makes no sense at first, but there is an explanation. Yes, the focal length has at first nothing to do with the exposure or the iso. However, there is an indirect link because basically all consumer zoom lenses have variable aperture. The maximum aperture of the lens decreases with increasing focal length. A typical kit lens these days would be a 18-55mm zoom, where the aperture at 18mm is f3.5 and the aperture at 55mm is f5.6. So the short end of the zoom is almost two stops better than the long end. Therefore shooting with a shorter focal length (wider angle) will let the camera have a larger aperture and thus lower iso.
How a new camera or lens can help you:
- Getting a camera that is better at high ISOs will help in this case. All else being equal, the picture quality will be better. But note that this is primarily a function of sensor size. For example, moving up from an entry level compact camera to a slightly more expensive one will not make much of a difference because the vast majority of compact cameras have sensors of the same size. The image quality improves gradually over the years, but the fact is, you need a larger sensor for noticeably better high ISO images. I think this is perhaps the biggest gain in moving up to a DSLR or similar large sensor camera.
- Getting a camera or a lens with a higher maximum aperture will also let you choose a lower iso for the same exposure.
If your pictures have none of these problems, and yet you don’t like them:
Well, you need to improve your shooting more than anything else, your camera is not at fault. Get out there and practice! Happy shooting!
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