44 essential digital camera tips and tricks

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Digital camera tips: 35. White balance bracketing

If you’re shooting JPEG images and your camera allows it, try activating white balance bracketing. JPEG files take up minimal space on your memory card and it could save you hours on your computer spent correcting a slight unwanted color cast.

Digital camera tips: 36. Using the wrong white balance

Deliberately setting the wrong white balance can add an overall color cast to your images – blue if you shoot in daylight with a Tungsten white balance, and a warm orange if you shoot under tungsten lighting with a Daylight white balance. During sunsets, an auto white balance setting can try and correct for the overall warm tone, which is exactly what you’re trying to capture. ‘Trick’ your camera by using the Cloudy preset, which is designed to warm up cool scenes.

Digital camera tips: 37. Shoot a color target

If you want your colors to be consistent from shot to shot, include a color target in the first frame of a sequence. When it comes to processing, set the grey point (and black and white points) using the target reference frame, and your software will match the subsequent batch of images.

Digital camera tips: 38. Fill-in flash

44 essential digital camera tips and tricks

Fill-in flash is great for lighting shadows, but it can also be used to create quite dramatic images. Use your camera’s Exposure Compensation to reduce the overall exposure by 1/2 a stop, and then increase the Flash Exposure Compensation to +1/2 to balance the exposure. (Some cameras enable you to adjust the exposure for the ambient light without affecting the flash exposure, and in this case you wouldn’t need to dial in +1/2 for the flash.) The result is a flash-dominated shot where a well-lit subject stands out against a subtly darkened background.