Travel Photos and Travel

If you want to learn the basics of digital photography, it really doesn’t matter whether you’re using a digital compact or a DSLR with the exception of these few important differences.

Digital Compacts

One of the biggest advantages to digital compacts is the cost. Also when you purchase a DSLR you will also need to purchase at least one lens, and if you want to take pictures from afar, you’ll also need a good telephoto lens. Digital compacts always come with a built in lens and sometimes even come with a zoom.

If you have an optical zoom on your digital compact, you can get some good quality telephoto shots too. An Optical zoom is always better than digital zoom because a digital zoom works like cropping and takes away pixels. The more you zoom with digital zoom, the lower the quality of your photograph. Unlike regular zooms, an optical zoom maintains the quality of your picture.

Some compacts produce such high quality photographs that many a pro will grab the compact if they dont’ want to carry all their DSLR gear. The quality of the photo depends largely on the photographer’s skill.

Even though digital compacts don’t have as many megapixels as DSLRs, they can still produce a good 8×10 print (perfect for an 8×10 picture frame) even if they just have 5 megapixels.

And lastly, learning how to use a digital compact is a lot easier than learning how to use a DSLR with all of its functions.

Digital Single Lens Reflexes (DSLRs)

A Digital SLR is the digital version of a single lens reflex camera or SLR. DSLR’s are also called SLRs but never the other way around. With the release of cameras like the Canon Rebel and other moderately priced DSLRs, more photography enthusiasts are enjoying the benefits of using a DSLR.

The big advantage of the DSLR is its creativity and versatility. 

For example, by using a long telephoto lens you can take a close up of an eagle on the top of a tree and you’ll never be able to tell from the picture that he was so far away. With a DSLR, you can find a lens or filter to suit almost any photographic need.

Another advantage to the DSLR is its ability to take crisp, focused sports and other action shots in places with low light where flash isn’t allowed. The larger sensor on a DSLR allows you to adjust the ISO and get a good picture, whereas with a compact it usually creates an image with a lot of grain called digital noise.  If you’re taking still shots, it’s not an issue. The problem with Sports Mode in a low light setting is that the shutter must close quickly so there is just not enough light to hit the image sensor even with a large aperture setting. The only way this can be compensated for is with a flash or a higher ISO setting.

However, you can get rid of most digital noise by using photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop.

Another advantage of using a DSLR is that you can use an external flash instead of always having to use natural light.

DSLRs have more megapixels than the best of the digital compacts, meaning you can take and print high quality pictures for framing in large picture frames like 11×14 frames or larger.. Finally, digital cameras are slower to take the picture, but DSLRs are far faster than compacts.

Although the digital photography basics do start with selecting a camera, the quality of your images will largely depend upon how you use your camera. Regardless of what type of camera you have or will be buying, you have to be willing to practice and enjoy taking lots of pictures with your camera.