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How To Video

Take better photos by staying wide

You may have a zoom lens, but use it sparingly.
1:10 /
Transcript
^M00:00:01 [ Music ] ^M00:00:08 >> I'm Brian Cooley with a quick How To on taking better digital photos by not using zoom. Now your digital camera probably has a zoom lens, maybe a powerful one. But don't use it all the time. Using zoom introduces camera shake both by the magnification of the zoom effect and that the camera will tend to shoot with a slower shutter speed when zoomed because zoom lenses gather less light when they are zoomed in. On top of that they tend to have worse optical performance in that position. So instead, keep the lens wide if you can and move with your camera. Wide tends to make everything stay in focus; virtually eliminates camera shake and gathers light the best. And since most cameras are very high res these days, you can always crop the image later to zoom the composition. Now here's a tip--if you're going to do that, make sure your camera is set to its highest resolution you're taking your photos. It makes cropping look a lot better. So get out there, use your zoom less, take some great digital photos.

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