Stop Shooting Auto!

How to Remove Spots From Your Pictures?

Stop Shooting Auto! is intended as a set of lessons for helping you to understand the basics of exposure, and to help you learn to use your dSLR more effectively. I’ve deliberately avoided any discussions of post-processing, because I believe that a good image is the result of solid technical fundamentals, and that post-processing should focus on minor corrections more than repairing bad shots.

I just got a digital SLR. What do I do now?

If you’ve been a very good boy or girl, Santa Claus might have left a digital SLR under the tree for you. Maybe you know nothing at all about photography, or maybe you’ve been shooting with your phone or with a point & shoot camera for a while, and now you have this fantastic new camera.

What to do when autofocus deserts you?

You’ve framed your image. You’ve pressed the shutter button and taken the shot. You quickly review the image on the camera and find out that your subject is horribly out of focus.

When is autofocus likely to get it wrong?

Most of the time, autofocus will do a really good job of getting your subject in focus. Even though I never put my camera in green box mode anymore, I usually leave autofocus on. I keep an eye on it, though, just to make sure that it’s doing what I want. This is especially true in tricky situations where autofocus might not be smart enough to get me the results I’m looking for.

What lens should I use to take a picture of the moon?

A couple of years ago I wrote How to take a picture of the moon. It was, as you might guess, a lesson on how to take photos of the moon with your dSLR. You may all now compliment me on my creative and clever naming scheme– I spent hours wordsmithing that one. It’s my masterpiece.