How a Digital Photograph is Made

The most important part of a photographic image is made in the moment you shoot. When photographing with film you need to foresee as clearly as possible what the scene in your viewfinder is going to look like before pulling the trigger. When photographing our first rolls we will feel a little disoriented and end up picking up the processed pictures without exactly knowing what awaits. Without a good understanding of the technical aspect, and even with an automatic camera, we will find ourselves with images that look nothing like what we remembered, expected, or worse, with notable technical mistakes. These kind of photos immediately show that the person who pulled the trigger didn't really know what they were doing. This way we're are constantly exposed to error, and therefore aren't capable of understanding the causes and how to avoid them.

When we use a digital camera a great part of the uncertainty caused by using film disappears, this is because you can see the images captured on the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screen. The main advantage of the screen is that it removes any doubt about the exposure, with or without flash. For other errors in the

image quality, such as focus problems and unwanted movement, the screen is too small to know for sure and you might be surprised when viewing them in a larger format. Besides most pictures are of dynamic scenes and the LCD screen isn't very useful, except to verify that the instant we wanted to photograph got away.

The technical aspect needs to be resolved before shooting. For this you need to know more about how to handle the camera controls in relation with the scene to be photographed and the film being used.

This chapter goes over the conditions that need to be fulfilled in each and every picture made and should accompany us from now on as if they were part of the camera. These conditions can be summarized in three parts: focus , to avoid out of focus pictures, the light measurement , with which we will give the film a correct exposure, and controlling the stability of the image , to avoid having the image appear moved against our will.