Top tips!

[Viper]

I've been reading a magazine not to long ago where a professional was giving his top 10 photography tips. Since I have learnt a great deal already from this site I wondered if people would be willing to share their 'top tip' as something you do automatically might help people of differing levels in photography. My tip would be to always keep a camera with you, as you never know when you might wish to take that special shot.

[sredd68]

My top tip would be to take as many photos as you can and discard unwanted ones later. You might miss something while checking the photo on the viewscreen. Just make sure you have extra memory cards and batteries

[John_Reed]

Using flash may seem like the right thing for indoor shots, but actually, I try to avoid using it unless I absolutely have to. My philosophy is, when something attracts me about a scene enough to actually want to shoot a photograph, it was the light striking the scene that drew my eye in the first place. So, I try to capture that impression, working with the light "as is." If I flip on the flash and shoot the scene that way, the light from the flash itself changes the scene, sometimes in unpredictable, sometimes undesireable ways. So, my available light tips:
1. Learn to use Manual White Balance if your camera has the feature. Me, I find anything white, zoom in so it will fill my viewfinder, and hit Manual on the White Balance menu. Your mileage may vary.
2. Even people shots with proper white balance, can look great,, but sometimes you have to shoot more than once to get a sharp shot. You certainly won't have any red-eye problems!
3. Indoor available light shots can be slow. It helps, if you don't have an image stabilizer, to use a tripod.
4. If at first you don't succeed, keep on trying!

[dwgriffi]

Ever since I put my A80 into continuous shooting mode, to compensate for its inability to register a spontaneous shot, I haven't taken it off. Now, unless there's literally no movement in the subject matter, I always let it fire off five or ten every time I compose a shot. Even for portraits I find a few that are really amazing that I never would have gotten had I used single mode. Having a few storage cards and wading through them later to discard 75% is a small price to pay.


D

[Jayde]

To stop your filters sticking use a pencil in the threads graphite is a lubricant..

buy extra lens covers for front and backs of your other lens, then always protected when changing..

small but perfectly formed

[lucasdigital]

Just two for starters, some good tips having already been given.

1) Get a tripod. Although carrying them around can be a bit of a pain, they greatly increase the range of settings you can use, and therefore give you more options for taking great pictures.

Possibly more imporant, using a tripod forces you to take your time on a shot. Admittedly this isn't much good for a spontaneous shot, but its great when you see something you know will look great.

2) Before getting sucked into the view finder, have a think about the prevailing conditions, particularly lighting. I usually take one or two shots outside the expected settings range, somethings you can capture something unexpected

[Rhys]

My top tip - think about composition:

middleground, foreground + background

The rule of thirds

exposure - which area do you want to have most detail?

angle - is the angle right

proximity - is that long zoom really needed for this photo or would you be better walking closer? Remember - longer focal lengths compress perspective.