How to capture creative shots with your Canon kit!

Get your creative photography juices flowing and capture imaginative images using your Canon kit ! Follow our top shooting tips to get started…

Use a Canon Speedlite
Pop some flash onto your subject matter. Use both the exposure compensation on your camera and flashgun to control the light. When the light is flat, underexposing the scene by one stop enhances the mood of the sky. You’ll also need to increase the power of the flashgun, depending on how far away your subject is, but don’t overdo it; the trick is to use just enough to pick up the colours and inject some life to the scene. It’s also worth popping the diffuser flap down on the Speedlite to soften the light.

Go wide!
Use a fish eye lens to distort the scene. Compose shots with it down low – or even on the ground. A fisheye distorts the perspective of a scene, creating extreme barrel distortion that magnifies foreground subjects. The trick with using a fisheye is to decide what the most important element is in the scene and to centre it.

How low can you go!
Take shots from angles that people don’t often encounter! If photographing people, get in close and come down low with your camera. Try not to include too much surrounding space in the top half of the frame, especially if the background is plain. Try taking the image blind by simply pointing the camera from a low angle up into the subject’s face. It helps if you speak to your subject as you shoot to make them feel more comfortable. Use some fill in flash to make the colours pop!

Use linking elements
Look for elements in the scene and bring them together. You can set up quirky shots like this by getting a friend to jump as you fire! Keep the background to foreground sharp by setting your Canon DSLR to a narrow depth of field around f/16.

Canon 50D: 5 quick tips to get more from your EOS camera

This entry was posted on Friday, August 17th, 2012 at 9:32 am and is filed under Canon D-SLR Skills. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.