Show knowledge of the main functions of a digital camera including resolution, digital compression, ISO, white balance and how these affect the final print/image.
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Show knowledge of the types of removable memory available
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Discuss the various types of camera and the accessories available
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Describe the processes and equipment needed to produce prints from a digital camera including the use of editing software
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Diagnose the faults that occur both at the photographing and printing stages such as over/under exposure and high/low contrast.  Explain the difference between camera shake & subject movement.
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Demonstrate that you know how to care for a camera & accessories.
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Phototographing People

Try to go for interesting faces or interesting situations. Get in as close as possible. If you are using flash see if your camera has a setting to eliminate red-eye. If not, most software packages have a facility to correct red-eyes. Crop your pictures to get rid of distracting details. You should always try to get the eyes. It doesn't matter if the subject is not looking at you but you should be able to see their eyes. Old people have the most interesting faces - but don't go bothering pensioners telling them you want to photograph their wrinkles! Next time you go to Scout Camp take photos of your friends taking part in the various scouting activities. You may even catch your leaders doing something daft!

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Photographing Landscapes/Seascapes

Landscape & seascape photography is fairly straightforward. Try to make sure that you have a clear point of interest. Remember the 2/3rds rule (find out more). Don't have too much sky in your photograph - especially if it's dull! Use the crop tool to get rid of excess sky. Plain blue skies can be boring. Fluffy white clouds are better - or stormy clouds, or sunsets.If you an expert software user you can import interesting skies to replace boring ones, These pictures are from New Zealand, Antarctica & Australia, but you don't have to go that far. Try Hilbre Island, North Wales, Lake District or the Peak District - none of them more than 2 hours away

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Nature Photography

Nature Photography includes animals, plants, flowers etc. Domestic pets & zoo animals can be included as well. Try to focus on the subject itself and crop out all distracting material. Try to get their eyes showing. Using flash may put a "catch light" in their eyes which adds life to the photo, but beware of over flashing. Take two, one with, one without flash. With the basic digital camera you may find a time lag between when you press the trigger and when the photograph is taken so you may find that your subject has moved out of the picture! You may not be able to photograph exotic creatures as these, but try flowers in your own garden, your own pets or go to Chester Zoo or Knowsley Safari Park.

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Sport Photography

Sport photography can be difficult, especially with the basic digital camera which is often not fast enough to capture the action. You may have a sports mode on your camera & take lots of shots to see if you get lucky! Try to get as close to the action as possible.

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Buildings & Record

This asepct is fairly broad including buildings & photographs as records of such things as statues, parts of the building, cars, graffiti etc. There may be lots of buildings near you worth photographing - churches etc. If you are on holiday look out for old buildings, interesting doorways, classical cars etc.

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Creative

This aspect gives you lots of opportunities to play with the various software packages. If you are using Adobe Photoshop try using the various filters to see the different effects you can get. Other software packages will have programs to allow to to exercise your creative talents!

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Functions of a digital camera

Digital photographs are actually mosaics of millions of tiny squares called picture elements or just pixels. Like the impressionist painters who painted wonderful scenes with small dabs of paint, your computer and printer use these tiny pixels to display or print photographs. To do so, the computer divides the screen or printed page into a grid of pixels. It then uses the values stored in the digital photograph to specify the brightness and color of each pixel in this grid—a form of painting by number.

Digital cameras are very much like all earlier cameras. Beginning with the very first camera all have been basically black boxes with a lens to gather the light, a wheel you turned to focus the image, an aperture that determines how bright the light is, and a shutter that determines how long the light enters.

The big difference between traditional film cameras and digital cameras is how they capture the image. Instead of film, digital cameras use a solid-state device called an image sensor. In some digital cameras the image sensor is a charge-coupled device (CCD), while in others it's a CMOS sensor. Both types can give very good results. On the surface of these fingernail-sized silicon chips are millions of photosensitive diodes, each of which captures a single pixel in the photograph being taken.

When you take a picture the shutter opens briefly and each pixel on the image sensor records the brightness of the light that falls on it by accumulating an electrical charge. The more light that hits a pixel, the higher the charge it records. Pixels capturing light from highlights in the scene will have high charges. Those capturing light from shadows will have low charges.

After the shutter closes to end the exposure, the charge from each pixel is measured and converted into a digital number. This series of numbers is then used to reconstruct the image by setting the color and brightness of matching pixels on the screen or printed page.

Digital Camera Resolution

Some typical resolutions include:

Compression

When you press the shutter on your digital camera the image must be saved as a digital file. Your choice (or lack thereof) of file format helps to determine the size of the file and amount of compression applied to the image.

So what is compression? As its name implies the image data is squeezed down so that its file size is smaller and thus takes up less disk space. Compression, when used correctly, is an extremely beneficial tool. However, when used improperly or overzealously, compression can literally destroy the quality of a digital image.

It's best to think of compression like you do salt; a little can really improve the flavor, but too much ruin it. And like salt, once you've added too much compression there's no going back!

Understanding File Types 
The most common digital image file types used today are JPEG, TIFF and RAW. Every digital camera on the market today commonly stores images in JPEG format by default. Some can also store images in TIFF format. RAW format is only found on high end digital cameras and digital SLRs (for reasons I'll explain in a moment). Each format has it's advantages and trade-offs.

TIFF format produces large files. Most TIFF files are completely uncompressed and therefore are tremendous in size. The benefit of TIFF files in digital photography is that you are able to capture a full undistorted image in all of its original glory before any compression is applied to the image. Most cameras only save TIFF files at the "native" resolution of the image sensor. In other words if you have a 3.0 megapixel camera with a maximum resolution of 2048x1536 and you choose to save in TIFF format, that file will be 2048x1536.

JPEG (also abbreviated JPG) files are much smaller than TIFF files as they're compressed. JPEG gives you millions of colors, and because you control the amount of compression, you can also control the amount of distortion that the compression brings with it as well as the size of the image you're capturing. That same 3.0 megapixel camera might give you a choice in saving JPEG files at the following common resolutions: 2048x1536, 1600x1200, 1280x960 and 640x480. Why would you want to capture images at lower resolutions? One might be that you're going to put the images on a Web site where even 640x480 is more than large enough or maybe you intend to email the images where smaller file sizes are a plus.

But in addition to resolution, JPEG mode also allows you to control the amount of compression that's applied to the image. In most cameras the amount of compression is set using the "quality" setting on the camera's menu. Choices vary from camera to camera but they'll usually be along the lines of "fine", "standard" and "economy".

To understand how compression works, you'll need to think back to resolution. An image is made up of many tiny squares called pixels. Each pixel has only one color assigned to it out of a palette of over 16 million colors. In the case of a TIFF file, the color data for each and every single pixel is recorded, even if the same color appears over and over again.

In the case of JPEG compression, an algorithm is used to reduce the number of pixels that are recorded by simply removing the colors that the human eye doesn't see. JPG doesn't remove pixels (which would reduce resolution) but instead removes "useless" data and thus reduces the amount of information that must be saved in the file. 

What's useless information? Imagine a photo of a red car. A TIFF file will record every pixel in the image of that red car. A JPEG file will record the first red pixel and then how many adjacent pixels are the nearly the same color red. Not having to record every pixel means you save a lot of space. How close the color can be and still be considered nearly the same color is determined by the amount of compression you choose (ex. fine, standard, economy).

RAW files are the largest of all. When you change the settings on your camera for things like sharpness, saturation or even the ISO setting you're telling the camera to change the image after it's captured - kind of like a mini version of Photoshop right inside your camera. In RAW mode the original unmodified image data is saved along with all the instructions you gave the camera through its settings. When you read a RAW file into Photoshop all those camera settings are applied to the image to make it look just as it did on your camera's LCD screen. The power of RAW mode is you can change those camera settings in your computer after the image is captured. A year later you can decide the image might have looked better if you'd used a different white balance setting and voila you can do it!

The price you pay for this flexibility is that RAW files are really big, even when compared to TIFF files. That means you'll be able to get fewer files on your memory card and fewer files on your hard drive.

ISO

ISO sensitivity expresses the speed of photographic negative materials (formerly expressed as ASA).

Since digital cameras do not use film but use image sensors instead, the ISO equivalent is usually given.

What ISO denotes is how sensitive the image sensor is to the amount of light present. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive the image sensor and therefore the possibility to take pictures in low-light situations.

And, where you would have needed to physically change to a different roll of film if you wanted a different ISO speed, digital technology allows you to simply dial one in. In this way, you can record images taken at different ISO speeds on the same memory card.

ISO Speed & Exposure

ISO speed affects the shutter speed / aperture combinations you can use to obtain correct exposure.

Suppose your digital camera's light meter warns you there is not enough light to correctly expose a scene. You could use the on-board flash, but let's suppose again it's not allowed (like in a concert or indoors recital).

You would then need to use a higher ISO. Set on "ISO Auto" mode, your digital camera will automatically select a higher ISO. Otherwise, you can manually select the next higher ISO and see if the increased sensitivity allows you to obtain a correctly exposed picture. If it does, you can now take a correctly exposed picture.

Similarly, if you find the camera is using a shutter speed that is too slow (1/60 sec. and slower) to handhold the camera steady and shake-free (thus resulting in blurred pictures), and you cannot open up the aperture anymore, and you do not have a tripod or other means to hold the camera steady, and you want to capture the action, etc. etc. -- then you might select the next higher ISO which will then allow you to select a faster shutter speed.

ISO Speed & Noise

However, all this increase in sensitivity does not come free. There is a price to pay with your image appearing more noisy.

See, when you boost the sensitivity of your image sensor by selecting a higher ISO, the image sensor is now able to record a fainter light signal. However, it is also true now that it will record fainter noise, where noise is any signal that is not attributed to the light from your subject. Remember that an image sensor is still an analog device and it generates its own noise, too! The increased sensitivity allows the image sensor to record more light signal and more noise. The ratio of light signal to noise (S/N ratio) determines the "noise" in your resultant image.

An image sensor is usually calibrated so that it gives the best image quality (greatest S/N ratio) at its lowest possible ISO speed. For most consumer digital cameras, this value will be expressed as ISO 50, ISO 64 or ISO 100. A few digital cameras use ISO 200 as their lowest ISO speed.

Just as with its film counterpart, an image sensor will exhibit "noise" (comparable to "graininess" in film) at the higher ISO speeds. Unlike film, where graininess can sometimes contribute to the mood of the image, noise produced by an image sensor is undesirable and appears as a motley of distracting coloured dots on your image.

ISO Speed & Image SensorSize

The size of the image sensor determines the ISO speed range that a digital camera can use without suffering from undue noise. One reason for this is because the pixels on the larger image sensor can be larger and therefore receive more light, and thus have a greater signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio . If we take two image sensors, each with 4 megapixels resolution, but of different sizes, the 4 megapixels image sensor that is smaller will exhibit more noise at higher ISOs than the larger one.

White Balance

White Balance is an aspect of photography that many digital camera owners don’t understand or use - but it’s something well worth learning about as it can have a real impact upon the shots you take.

At its simplest - the reason we adjust white balance is to get the colors in your images as accurate as possible.

Why would you need to get the color right in your shots?

You might have noticed when examining shots after taking them that at times images can come out with an orange, blue, yellow etc look to them - despite the fact that to the naked eye the scene looked quite normal. The reason for this is that images different sources of light have a different ‘color’ (or temperature) to them. Fluorescent lighting adds a bluish cast to photos whereas tungsten (incandescent/bulbs) lights add a yellowish tinge to photos

The range in different temperatures ranges from the very cool light of blue sky through to the very warm light of a candle.

We don’t generally notice this difference in temperature because our eyes adjust automatically for it. So unless the temperature of the light is very extreme a white sheet of paper will generally look white to us. However a digital camera doesn’t have the smarts to make these adjustments automatically and sometimes will need us to tell it how to treat different light. So for cooler (blue or green) light you’ll tell the camera to warm things up and in warm light you’ll tell it to cool down.

Adjusting White Balance

Different digital cameras have different ways of adjusting white balance so ultimately you’ll need to get out your camera’s manual out to work out the specifics of how to make changes. Having said this - many digital cameras have automatic and semi-automatic modes to help you make the adjustments.

 

Preset White Balance Settings

Here are some of the basic White Balance settings you’ll find on cameras:

• Auto - this is where the camera makes a best guess on a shot by shot basis. You’ll find it works in many situations but it’s worth venturing out of it for trickier lighting.
• Tungsten - this mode is usually symbolized with a little bulb and is for shooting indoors, especially under tungsten (incandescent) lighting (such as bulb lighting). It generally cools down the colors in photos.
• Fluorescent - this compensates for the ‘cool’ light of fluorescent light and will warm up your shots.
• Daylight/Sunny - not all cameras have this setting because it sets things as fairly ‘normal’ white balance settings.
• Cloudy - this setting generally warms things up a touch more than ‘daylight’ mode.
• Flash - the flash of a camera can be quite a cool light so in Flash WB mode you’ll find it warms up your shots a touch.
• Shade - the light in shade is generally cooler (bluer) than shooting in direct sunlight so this mode will warm things up a little.

 

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Memory

There are different types of memory cards used by Cameras. Some of these are below

Compact Flash CompactFlash is the de facto standard to flash memory Storage. It is used everywhere from digital cameras to MP3 players to embedded systems. There are two variants of Compact Flash: Type 1 & Type 2. CF Type 2 cards are a little bit thicker than CF type I Cards. Currently CF Type 2 cards house devices like Microdrive and WiFi network Card. CF cards are very robust and industrially proven to be reliable.
Secure Digital Card - SD card The postage stamp size Secure Digital (SD) card is the most popular type of memory card on the market. Its small size, large capacity and robust design has made it common in everything from cameras to MP3 players. Other advantages include relatively high speed data transfer, a mechanical write protect switch to protect data and built-in copyright protection technology
XD card xD-Picture Card is a contender invented and promoted by Olympus and Fuji. Once again Olympus and Fuji tried to gain market share by inventing and promoting their own format. Currently only Olympus and Fuji cameras support xD-Picture Card. Therefore, it hasn't picked up much popularity among consumers and will probably not take off as a mainstream storage card form-factor.
Memory Stick Unlike the other memory card types, the Memory Stick is a proprietary standard invented by Sony. As always, Sony has to invert and push its own standards instead of joining the rest of the industry. Memory Stick uses a serial interface to transfer data between the host device and card. It turned out that Sony's physical design is far more robust and reliable than SmartMedia design.

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Types of Camera

Ultra Compact digital cameras

Ultra compact digital cameras are capable of taking quality images. They are very small, lightweight, easy to use and convenient to carry. Some models have fewer featyres than compact cameras, such as manual controls and a viewfinder. Buttons and dials are small though usually work well. Moderate to high priced.

 

Compact digital cameras

Consumer-level digital cameras are compact, lightweight and great for point-and-shoot photo-taking. They have fully automatic and scene modes; some have semi-automatic and manual controls. All but the cheapest provide very good image quality. Low to moderately priced, depending on features.

 

Advanced digital cameras

“Prosumer” digital cameras are geared to advanced amateurs with skill levels between a professional and consumer. They sport high quality lenses and advanced features for creative control. Some have long telephoto zooms lenses while others start at wide angle. A few have a zoom range from wide to super telephoto. Most advanced digital cameras accept accessories including converter lenses,* filters, remote controls and external flashes. Moderate to high priced.

 

Digital single lens reflex cameras

DSLR cameras, used by professionals and photo enthusiasts, are top-of-the-line. They have outstanding optics, produce high resolution images and accept interchangeable lenses and sophisticated accessories. They perform better in low light than most consumer cameras that have small sensors. DSLRs function automatically but also have a full range of manual controls. You can buy only a DSLR body, and purchase lenses separately. The price of professional level lenses can be jaw-dropping. Models include entry level, semi-pro and pro. High priced to extremely expensive.

Processes & Software

Once you have taken a picture it can be adjusted/improved on a computer using appropriate software. The most popular editing software is Adobe Photoshop, but there are many others. Most software allows you adjust brightness & contrast, crop images and resize pictures. This guide cannot cover all the processes covered by the various software packages, so you need to read the instructions carefully on your chosen software packages. For the photographer badge you need to explain how you adjusted your photographs with the software you use. Some advice can be found here

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Faults

If the photograph is too light you may have overexposed it. If it is too dark you have under exposed it. Generally speaking if you have lost detail because you have overexposed it you cannot get that detail back. However you can often recover detail from underexposed pictures through use of photo-editing software. A photograph may look blurred for one of two reasons. Your subject may have moved, If you are taking a moving object you need as fast a speed as possible. The other reason is that you may have shaken the camera whilst taking the photograph. Slow speeds of less than 1/60 will often result in camera shake unless you have your camera on a tripod. Software packages offer sharpening techniques, but if your picture is out of focus, no amount of sharpening will make it look focussed!

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Care of Camera

Look at your handbook to find out how to take care of your camera. Most cameras do not like extremes of heat & cold. Batteries run out more quickly in extreme cold. As sensitive electronic devices, digital cameras and water do not mix unless you have a waterproof camera. Always try to keep the lens clean - use special cloths to clean them if they get dirty. If you have a DSLR be careful not to get dust inside the camera when changing lenses.

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