Smart Photography: Capture Kids Without Going Crazy
Smart Photography: Capture Kids Without Going Crazy
Sure, kids are cute in real life. But when it comes to capturing them with your digital point-and-shoot camera, they can be as elusive as leprechauns.
Digitalpoint and shoots are great general-use cameras. But most of them are plagued by a phenomenon calledshutter lag: the response time from the moment you push the shutter button to when the picture is actually captured is too long, sometimes as long as a second. In kid photography, a second might as well be a week.
Choosing a DSLR Camera
This next section of this hack provides ways to increase your odds of success with point and shoots. But first, if you want to cut right over to the fast lane, consider getting a digital SLR (DSLR), which has a much faster response time and performs better overall. DSLRs look and behave just like your favorite 35mm single lens reflex (SLR) cameras of years past, but they have a sophisticated image sensor instead of film.
Not long ago, this wouldn't be practical advice for parents, because DSLRs were just too darned expensive. But you no longer have to choose between a camera and a college fund.
Both Canon and Nikon have introduced quality DSLRs for under US$1,000, and more are sure to be on the way. The Canon Digital Rebel and the Nikon D70 are two examples of DSLRs that will help you keep up with your kids without maxing out your credit card.
DSLRs have minimal shutter lag times, allow for generous sequential shooting, accept a variety of lenses, and enable you to use external flash. In other words, they are perfect for action, kid photography.
Hacking the Point-and-Shoot Camera
Now that you know what your next camera should be, how do you get the most out of the one in your hand? OK, here are some tips to increase your odds of success.
First, get everyone outdoors, where there's more light, better backgrounds, and lots of things for kids to do. Then, make these three adjustments on your camera:
Set for the highest resolution your camera allows: This enables you to latercrop outpart of the picture, yet still has enough pixel information to make a good-sized print. It's like adding a powerful telephoto lens to your little point and shoots.
Find Infinity Focus mode and activate it: Essentially, this disables the autofocus (which is slow as mud on most consumerdigicams) and lets you capture perfectly focused images from about eight feet toinfinity. By doing so, you've just shortened the length of time from when you push theshutter button to when the image is recorded. This also allows you to hang back a few feet, so you're not spending all your energy chasing kids around instead ofPhotographing them.
Enable Continuous shooting mode: Instead of taking a bunch of single shots and missing the action, Continuous Shootingmode lets you hold down the shutter button and fire a series of frames. The knack tothis is starting the sequence right before the decisive moment and shooting throughit. Then, review your pictures on the LCD screen, remove the obvious misses, andkeep the winners.
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