Tips and tricks to help take better pictures

Implement a backup schedule
This isn’t so much a time-saver as a lifesaver. If your photo library isn’t backed up, you don’t need me to tell you what the consequences will be in the event of a hard disk failure or some other catastrophe.

Don’t forget that if you use album software to organise your photo collection, as well as backing up your images you’ll need to back up your album database.

Most album applications provide backup tools that allow you to arrange scheduled backups of both. You should also arrange to keep a set of backups off-site, in case something really catastrophic, such as theft, fire or flooding, occurs. There are a number of sites that offer this service for free.

Further reading: PCW May 2008
www.box.net
www.diino.com

Upgrade your hardware
Downloading your photos can become one of the biggest bottlenecks in your photo-processing workflow. If your PC is more than a few years old and has USB 1.1 ports, you’ll be waiting a very long time for image transfers. Updating to USB2 will speed things up considerably.

Compare the maximum data rates of USB2 (480Mbits/sec) and USB 1.1 (12Mbits/sec) and you’ll get an idea of the performance increase you can expect if you upgrade.

If you shoot a lot of large-capacity images and speed is of the essence, go for UltraDMA cards and a suitably equipped reader, such as the Lexar Professional UDMA dual-slot (Compact Flash and SD) card reader. If you want to go faster than that, you have two options: Firewire 800, or wait until next year for USB3.

Further reading: PCW February 2009, PCW March 2009
www.robgalbraith.com
www.sandisk.com

Shot Raw and bracket
Of all photo-processing tasks, I almost certainly spend most of my time making tonal adjustments ­ ensuring that highlights aren’t burnt out or shadows filled in and correcting for times when the metering didn’t get it quite right. Bracketing your exposures (shooting additional frames at settings under and over the metered recommendation) takes a little longer, but can save you time later.

Bracketed exposures are like an insurance policy ­ if the meter-based exposure turns out to be incorrect, one of the other shots in the set will be either bang on or at least nearer the mark. It’s better to have a correct exposure than to spend time getting a slightly off exposure to look right.

If you can’t be bothered to make bracketed exposures, shooting Raw files will give you more scope and make the job of producing a good tone and colour-adjusted image from an incorrectly exposed one much easier.

Further reading: PCW August 2006

Colour management
How much time have you spent trying to get your prints to look like what you see on screen? If it’s half as much as I have, you’ll know what a black hole this can be. But with the help of a colour management system you can get an on-screen or ‘soft’ proof, allowing you to see what your photos will look like before you print.

As well as helping with print output, a CMS can help maintain consistency across different monitors and other devices. It takes a bit of effort to set up and finding or creating profiles can be difficult, but if colour fidelity is important to you, this is the only way you’ll achieve it.

Further reading: PCW February 2008, PCW October 2006
http://shop.colourconfidence.com
www.pixl.dk/index_uk.htm
www.epson.co.uk/support/icc_profiling

Join some forums
Whether you want to generally improve your digital photo and video-making technique, or there’s a specific problem you need help with, the best place to get it is often forums. You can pick up a lot just by lurking and if you’re having problems getting something to work, the chances are you’re not the first and you’ll find a thread started by someone else who has already been there.
Further reading:
www.dpreview.com/forums
www.ephotozine.com/forums
http://forums.pcw.co.uk/forum.jspa?forumID=13