Digital Photography Lesson 2

So what do they mean when they talk about 3.2 or 4 or 5 or 6 megapixels? Well it's calculated by multiplying the phyical dimensions of the camera sensor's long and short sides. So a 3.3MP camera would have a sensor that has 2200 pixels along the long side and 1500 pixels along the short side. Remember though that a picture taken at a higher resolution is a bigger file but this would allow you to make larger prints so keep that in mind when taking pictures.

I'm sure you heard the term exposure. All this is means is mow much light you allow to fall onto your sensor. Exposure is a very important part of good photography so this is something you wanna get right... My camera has 3 setting and I think most cameras have the same 3 settings... Whole screen metering is when the picture that is projected onto the camera's focal plane is divided int sections and a light reading is taken off these sections. Then your camera works out an average reading to find a single exposure value.

Then there's the Centred-weighted average. This method reads the bottom of the screen and part of the rest of the screen in a pyramid shape up to the centre of the screen. This method is biased towards exposing for the light off the ground.

And last but not least, Spot metering. With this system a certain spot in the viewfinder is sensitive to light(usually the centre)

This exposure information is shown on your camera as being under or over exposed. It would be indicated by either a + or - symbol. You will need to adjust some controls to deal with the light intensity. You can alter both the aperture and shutter speed or you can select an automatic exposure control to set the aperture and shutter speed for you. I prefer to use the manual setting to adjust these levels myself. It takes a bit of getting used to.. but you have so much more control over your images...

Keep in mind that shutter speed and aperture work together to ensure that the right amount of light falls onto the sensor. But to use these setting effectively you need to know what they are and how they work together...

So check in tomorrow when I explain it... or alternatively, visit Digital Photography Secrets and if you looking for books on digital photography check out Amazon .

Until tomorrow then, happy snapping...