Ways to take better photos using your camera.

How to take better photos
Week one: the basics

This is the best camera you can buy if you want to take quality pictures

 

Anyone can take a decent snap on their phone, but to capture memorable images you'll need to master the basics of photography. Professional photographer MATONGO and Greg Funnell are your teachers:

 let lesson one commence

Composition is a vital part of photography basics. Square Photograph: Greg Funnell for the Guardian

Taking your photography to the next level might seem daunting at first, but arm yourself with some basic knowledge and you can take your snaps to the next level sooner than you might think. To push your creativity past the confines of a smartphone or point-and-shoot camera, invest in a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera, such as the Canon EOS 100D: few cameras on the market will give you the creative control that you get with a DSLR.

Lesson one: master the settings

With any DSLR there are three main settings that you need to get to grips with: the shutter speed, the aperture and the ISO. Look to your camera's instruction booklet to find where these are located. These three elements are all interconnected on a camera; changing one will affect the others. Once you understand this basic principle everything else starts to make sense.
• Shutter speed: The speed that the shutter opens and closes dictates how much light is let in to the camera. The higher the second number (eg 1/60 compared to 1/30), the faster the shutter: less light is let in and action is frozen. A slow shutter speed lets more light in, meaning you can create deliberately blurred images or shoot when there's less daylight. However, the photograph can be affected by "camera shake": any slight movement is transferred on to the image, meaning it can end up blurred. That's when a tripod (or a flat, stable surface) comes in handy – but more of that next lesson.
• Aperture: The size of the hole through which the light enters the camera. The higher the number, or "f-stop", the smaller the hole and the less light that can enter. You use aperture creatively to affect how much of the image is in focus – this is known as the "depth of field".
Use a high ISO when shooting in low-light conditions. Photograph:
Greg Funnell for the Guardian • ISO: The sensitivity of the sensor. In the days of film you chose this by the "speed" of film you used or how you chose to develop your film in the lab: now you alter it on the camera itself. The more sensitive (the higher the number) the less light is needed – therefore higher ISO's are better for pictures indoors or shots taken at night.
The aim here is to get all the settings correctly balanced so that your image gets the correct exposure – ie it's not too dark or too light. If you shoot in manual (M) mode, you make all these adjustments yourself and can truly tailor what the photograph looks like. There is, however, a simpler way to adjust the settings, and I recommend beginners start by experimenting with this.

Simplifying the settings

You can set your DSLR so that the camera takes care of some of the calculations for you. Put it in AUTO mode and it'll do everything – great for when you do want to point and shoot, but it won't give you much creative control. For now we will look at the TV (time value or shutter priority mode) and AV (aperture value or aperture priority) settings on your camera.

Try this: play with shutter speed

Put the camera in TV mode with AUTO ISO and experiment with different shutter ratings. Try shooting at 1/15th of second compared to 1/250th. You'll quickly notice that it's best not to go below 1/60th of a second as the images are likely to come out blurred. Later in the series we'll discuss why tripods are essential for night-time photography, but for now remember to keep the shutter rating at 1/60th of a second when holding the camera in your hand.
SOURCE http://www.theguardian.com/canon-yournextstep/how-to-take-better-photos-week-one-the-basics