Outdoor Photography. Chiz Dakin

Many cameras now have Face Recognition technology. If they detect one face in their field of view, they’ll focus on it. If you’re shooting a portrait this is probably exactly what you want but for some other shots it may not be. When shooting a climber you might want some shots to focus on fingers crimping a tiny hold, not on the face at all. If cameras detect more than one face they’ll probably focus on the nearest, but again this may or may not be what you want.

      The clear implication is that, if you aren’t going to use manual focus, it pays to know how the camera decides where its focus point will be. (That’s if the camera gives you any choice in the matter. Some compacts may insist that you want to focus on faces every time.) This means looking for what may be called AF-area mode, AF Point Selection, or something of that ilk.

      It’s important not to confuse these with focus modes, which may have names like Single-shot or Continuous. Some of these are designed to focus on static subjects, some for moving subjects. We’ll discuss these more in Chapter 4.

      Colour space

      Hidden in the menus of most DSLRs is a little setting called colour space. Usually this is set to sRGB. Unless you’re sure you need the alternative (AdobeRGB), this is best left alone, as most online/high street printers and all monitors and projectors are not able to display the larger range of colours that AdobeRGB allows. But if you produce your own high-quality prints you may find it useful to change this setting – however, you’ll need a good understanding of colour management in this case! We’ll talk a little more about colour management in Chapter 12.

      Lenses

      Don’t neglect the lens; it’s at least as important to the quality of the image as the camera itself. DSLR cameras have the big advantage of interchangeable lenses, so if your needs change (for example, if you discover you’d like a wider view for landscape shooting) you can accommodate this. On other cameras, you’re stuck with what you’ve got.

Focal length and angle of view

      You probably know that a lens like a 28mm gives a relatively wide-angle view while, say, a 200mm lens gives a much narrower view, often suitable for distant subjects. So far so good. But as soon as you try and unpick what the numbers really mean, it gets confusing. Conventional ways of describing lens focal length seem designed to cause confusion.

      The lenses of SLR cameras are designated by their actual focal length. Compact cameras have much smaller lenses and their true focal lengths are correspondingly smaller, but they are nearly always described by their ‘equivalent’ focal length. This is the lens that would give the same picture coverage on a 35mm camera or full-frame DSLR. Sometimes they’ll say ‘35mm equivalent’ – so you can even get a lens which is ‘35mm (35mm equivalent).’

      Where it gets really confusing is with other SLR formats, such as the widely-used APS-C. This is just under half the size of 35mm/full-frame and therefore, naturally, gives less picture coverage, or angle of view, from any given lens. The same lens on a Nikon D700 (full-frame) and D7000 (APS-C) will give different results; an 18mm lens on the APS-size camera gives coverage equivalent to 27mm on full-frame (see photos). 18mm is commonly found as the wide end of DSLR kit lenses. On an APS-C camera this is 27mm-equivalent, so it gives a slightly less wide view than the 24mm-equivalent found on a few compacts – but on the SLR you can always fit a wider lens. On the compact you’re stuck with what you’ve got.

      HANDLING THE CAMERA

      Cameras which rely on screen viewing produce a distinctive ‘praying mantis’ posture. Some of these cameras are so small that it’s hard to get a decent two-handed grip, but two hands will always give better support than one.

      Good handling, with the left hand supporting the lens. On a very wet day, the camera is in an Aquapac waterproof case. (Jon)

      SLRs in particular are designed for shooting with the viewfinder. This gives an extra point of contact – the photographer’s head – and is therefore intrinsically more stable anyway. To get the very best support and access to camera controls, make sure the left hand is cupped underneath the lens, with the thumb and index finger forward.

      This is really the best way to hand hold any camera, as long as the lens is large enough to allow it. The ergonomic advantages become even clearer when longer lenses are in play.

      In this book, when we refer to focal lengths in the general text you can assume it’s ‘35mm equivalent’ unless we specifically say otherwise. So if we say 28mm we mean a moderate wide-angle and if we say 14mm we mean a pretty extreme wide-angle. To get a better idea of what this really means, take a look at the daffodil image opposite. This was taken on a full-frame DSLR, so the 12mm lens really is a 12mm (35mm equivalent).

      Lens Types

      Most lenses that you can buy, and nearly all those that are sold as a kit with a camera, are zoom lenses. ‘Zoom’ means that the lens has a variable focal length. A typical kit lens might be 18–50mm, 18–70mm or even 18–105mm: 18–50 is about a 3x zoom range, 18–105 is about 6x. This is a pretty decent range, which covers many needs, but the interchangeability of SLR lenses gives you a much wider range of options.

      While zooms dominate the market, there are still many lenses with fixed focal length, also known as prime lenses, from 14mm wide-angles to 600mm and 800mm telephoto monsters. Prime lenses are simpler to design and build, and can be light and compact, and some critical users still reckon they give better optical quality. However, it can’t be denied they are less versatile than zooms.

      Daffodils beside Ullswater, Lake District (Jon) A real wide-angle lens (12mm here) can take in both foreground detail and the sweep of a landscape

      Near Garstang, Lancashire (Jon) Showing the coverage given by the same lens (48mm) on full-frame and APS-C cameras. The APS-C frame is indicated by the red line

      Apart from focal length, lenses also vary in their maximum aperture. Wide maximum apertures have several advantages: they give a brighter viewfinder image, give extra options for shooting in low light, and allow you to achieve narrower depth of field. On the other hand, they make lenses bigger, heavier and more expensive. f/2.8 is a wide maximum aperture for a zoom lens, especially if it is maintained throughout the zoom range, but some prime lenses go as wide as f/1.4. Lenses with a wide maximum aperture are sometimes called ‘fast’ lenses but this is so fraught with potential confusion that we won’t use the term. Just watch out if you see a lens described this way: it doesn’t necessarily mean – as you might think – that it has a fast focusing action.

      Franco, Cuesta del Viento, Argentina (Chiz) A long lens (400m here) allows the photographer to fill the frame – and the subject’s hair gives a clue how windy it is!

      The vast majority of lenses sold today are autofocus lenses. Most can also be switched over to focusing manually, and it is occasionally advantageous or even necessary to do so. Lenses with a very wide zoom range are sometimes referred to as superzooms. There’s no clear definition of what constitutes a superzoom. The widest range currently available in a single lens is 18–270mm, or 15x. This is impressive but of course there are drawbacks. Superzooms may deliver decent optical quality in mid-range but are often less impressive at the extremes – and the extremes are the reason for buying a superzoom. A particular problem is distortion (straight lines appear curved). This might appear to be more of a problem for the urban photographer than the outdoor type, but can you honestly say you never photograph anything with straight lines in?

      Some cameras claim extraordinary zoom ranges thanks to ‘digital zoom’. This is a highly misleading