Basics

While extremely rewarding, each type of photography takes time to master. With todays digital cameras, it will be easy to snap away with little thought of outcome. Begin with the basics, shoot often and slow down. The best photos are well thought out compositons, before clicking the shutter. This requires using your camera out of fully automatic settings to control the results.

To begin, lens aperture (f/stop) not only helps control exposure, but depth of field too; the area between the closest object in focus, and the furthest object in focus.

The larger the aperture number (f/11 for example), the greater the depth of field, and the longer the shutter speed needed to make an exposure. The smaller the aperture number (f/2), the shallower the depth of field, and requires a faster shutter speed to expose properly.

This is important, since it allows fine control of background blur and sharpness. Examples would be when shooting a portrait, it is preferrable to have a shallow depth of field to seperate the subject from background. But when photographing landscapes, using a large depth of field allows keeping foreground, and background in focus.

Shutter speed also controls motion, as seen in this example photo using slow shutter, tripod and rear flash sync. Other times we may want to show movement in a water fall, or wind blowing grass to give a painted effect to landscape photos. While this can be desireable in such situations, motion blur can ruin an otherwise nice photo.

A good rule to follow  is keeping the shutter speed at least 1.5 times faster than the length of lens being used. This becomes more important when using telephoto lenses. Longer lenses smaller angle of view increases motion from not only the subject, but hand shake as well. In such situations, a flash, tripod or higher ISO (film speed) might be needed. It's good to remember too, even todays "image stablized" lenses are acceptable to motion. While they'll minimize "hand shake" to keep stationary objects in focus, moving subjects can still be blurred.

Another factor when considering lens choice is depth of field changes with focal length.  Amount of "dof" varies greatly between lens sizes, with wide angles having the most.

When shooting landscapes, instead of focusing to infinity, try back focusing to gain additional depth of field instead of stopping down more.  If your lens has a focus scale, it's simple. If not, you can find charts on the net by searching.

Turn the lens until the infinity mark aligns with the f/stops left mark. the right f/stop mark will tell you the closest focused distance for your lens aperture setting. (More: hyperfocal distance.)

But don't be afraid to experiment.  For "rolling hills", try using a telephoto for a compressed look to exagerate the effect. Rules are meant to be broken, and by trying new things, we learn. 

Rule Of Thirds:

By placing your subject "off center", it helps create a more interesting photograph. This also applies to landscapes, where the horizon would be at one, or two thirds of center frame.

Please check the Macro Basics section for additional photography tips.

Perspective:

There still seems to be misunderstanding concerning how small sensor bodies affect perspective. To demonstrate perspective is only dependent on distance, below are a few quick shots (camera mounted on tripod) approximately 1 meter distance from lens front to subject. But don't stop there, read on....

Taken with EF 100mm Macro @ f/5.6

Taken with Sigma 10-20, 10mm @ f/5.6

Left photo taken at 10mm is cropped for comparison. As you see, the only actual difference is associated with the depth of field, but perspective is unchanged.

Here is where we need to look deeper...

Something that seems to escape the attention of many, is the focal length "value" of lenses isn't consistent. Manufacturers rate lenses when focused to infinity, but when focused closer, there can be drastic differences in magnification. To show this effect, the below photos were taken with the camera mounted on a tripod. The first photo was taken with a Canon 100-300 f/5.6L at closest focus distance. The second taken with a Canon EF 100mm F/2.8 USM Macro at the same distance from lens front. Note the larger magnification of the zoom, even though it's set to 100mm.

In this case, if we wanted the subject to cover the same area of the photo in the first shot as the second, we'd be forced to change distance due to lens magnification. Since we know perspective is determined by distance, this demonstrats what is usually called, "perceived perspective". This simply means, we thought the lens changed perspective, but we actually did by changing position when filling our frame. Though common, it is not always safe to say a shorter lens acts the same on a small sensor body, as a longer lens on a full frame body (when focused closer than infinity). The 50mm lens thought perfect for portraits on your small sensor body, might still stretch a persons features. It's always advisible to compare magnification of lenses too, because distance is key.

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