Camera Basics

Run your hand over the bark of an old yellowwood and you can feel every ridge and fissure. Capturing that same sense of touch in a photograph is what texture is all about. Every subject has its own surface character, from rough and weathered to smooth and glossy, and when you record it well, your images feel more real and immediate. This guide explains what texture in photography means, the main types and the subjects that show it off, and the shooting and lens choices that help you capture it.

What is texture in photography?

Texture in photography describes how the surface of a subject looks as though it would feel: the cracks and moss on a fallen branch, the velvety softness of a flower petal, the cool gloss of polished metal. Closely related is surface quality, sometimes discussed as photo surface quality, which refers to the overall impression of what a subject is made of, whether stone, glass, fabric or skin. When both are rendered well, a photograph conveys a tactile sense of reality

Point your camera towards the harsh Highveld summer sun and the result can be a frame washed out with haze, dotted with coloured shapes or split between pure white and solid black. If you are new to photography, it is easy to assume something is wrong with your camera. In most cases, though, these effects are not faults at all but natural results of how lenses and sensors handle light. This guide explains what causes lens flare, ghosting and related effects, how to control them and how to use them to your advantage.

A photograph that uses ghosting creatively

Lens flare and other effects that change image quality

The way cameras and lenses handle light can produce effects you did not intend. The most common are:

•        Lens flare, where strong light washes out the image and lowers contrast

•        Ghosting, where rings, ovals or aperture-shaped spots of light appear in the frame

•        Vignetting, where the corners of the image turn darker than the centre

•        Blown-out

Stand at the side of a straight Karoo road and photograph it at eye level, and the result can look surprisingly flat. Crouch low with a wide-angle lens, let the road’s edges race away towards the horizon, and the same scene suddenly has depth and drama. The difference is perspective. Understanding how it works can solve two of the most common complaints in photography: images that look flat and images that lack impact. This guide covers the meaning of perspective, the techniques behind it and how to apply them to different subjects.

What is perspective in photography? The meaning of perspective

What is perspective?

TAMRON 17-50mm F4 (Model A068) Focal length: 17mm　Exposure: F6.3　Shutter Speed: 1/25sec　ISO: 100

The meaning of perspective in photography is the sense of depth and distance created by the relative size and position of objects in the frame, and by their distance from the background. So what is sense of depth? It is the impression that a flat photograph extends back into

Aspect ratio sounds like a technical footnote, a pair of numbers describing a photo's width and height. In practice, it is one of the quickest ways to change how an image feels. The right shape can make a landscape feel vast, a portrait feel intimate or a pattern feel bold. Many photographers never touch the default setting, so this guide explains what is aspect ratio, which recommended photo aspect ratios suit which subjects, and how to change it.

What is aspect ratio in photography?

Aspect ratio in practice

TAMRON 17-28mm F2.8 (Model A046) | Focal length: 17mm | Exposure: F7.1 | Shutter Speed: 0.4sec | ISO: 100

Aspect ratio describes the relationship between a photo's width and its height, written as width:height – for example, 3:2 or 16:9. It tells you the shape of the frame, not how many pixels it contains or how large it will print. A tiny thumbnail and a wall-sized print can share exactly the same aspect ratio.

Most full-frame and APS-C interchangeable-lens cameras default to 3:2.

Pick up a camera and the possibilities are endless: a braai spread at sunset, waves breaking along the coast, the family dog dozing on the stoep. In photography, everything you point your lens at is called a subject. This guide explains what a subject in photography is, clears up some commonly confused terms and shares practical ways to bring out the best in whatever you photograph, including how to match your lens to the subject.

What is a subject in photography?

What is a subject?

TAMRON 28-75mm F2.8 G2 (Model A063) Focal length: 62mm　Exposure: F5.6　Shutter Speed: 1/125sec　ISO: 200

A subject is anything you photograph. It might be a city skyline, a mountain view, a person, an animal, a plant, a plate of food or a building. Whatever the lens is pointed at becomes the subject of the image.

Choosing a subject, and deciding how to frame it, is one of the main ways a photographer expresses ideas and feelings. Take a strelitzia in a Durban garden: you could fill the frame with its sharp

Photograph the same protea three times: once from above, once at eye level and once from the ground looking up. You will end up with three quite different images, each with its own sense of depth, scale and energy. Camera angles and positions cost nothing, yet they change the story a picture tells. This guide explains the main angles and positions, how they differ from a lens’s field of view, how to combine them with composition and how to apply them to popular subjects.

What are camera angles? The three main types

What are camera angles?

A camera angle is the direction in which the lens is tilted when you take a picture. Pointing it down, holding it level or tilting it up can change the impression of the same subject dramatically. There are several types of angles, but most photography builds on three: high, horizontal and low.

High-angle photography: looking down

High-angle photography means shooting from above with the camera tilted downwards, and it is ideal for showing scale and layout.

After a Cape winter front passes, every fynbos leaf can hold a row of raindrops, each one reflecting the sky like a tiny lens. Moments like these are easy to walk past, yet they reveal an entire world when you move in close. Flowers, insects, jewellery and everyday objects are all rewarding subjects for close-up photography. This guide explains what close-up and macro shooting mean, the subjects that suit them, the gear that helps, the techniques that make the difference and what to look for in a lens.

What is close-up photography, and how does macro shooting differ?

What is close-up photography?

TAMRON 18-300mm F3.5-6.3 (Model B061) Focal length: 18mm　Exposure: F3.5　Shutter Speed: 1/500sec　ISO: 100

Close-up photography means photographing a subject from very near so that it appears larger in the frame than you would normally see it. When you work within a few centimetres of a subject, the result is commonly described as close-up or macro shooting. Strictly speaking, macro shooting

Picture a summer thunderstorm rolling across the Highveld at sunset, the sky shifting from deep purple to copper within minutes. Capture it as a JPEG and those subtle colours can band or burn out; capture it as a RAW photo and you keep far more information to work with later. Choosing between the two is one of the first decisions in RAW shooting. This guide explains how the two differ, the strengths and weaknesses of each, how processing works and the scenes where RAW makes the biggest difference.

What is a RAW photo, and what is RAW shooting?

A RAW photo is a file containing the data recorded by the camera’s image sensor before it has been turned into a finished image. Each photosite on the sensor sits beneath a red, green or blue filter and records a single brightness value; the full-colour picture is only created later, when software combines those values in a step known as demosaicing. Because nothing has yet been fixed in place, a RAW file is often compared to a film negative: it holds

You are deciding between two lenses. Both product pages show a graph with a few curved lines running left to right, some numbers along the bottom, and nothing on the page explaining what any of it means. That graph is an MTF chart, and it is one of the few pieces of genuinely objective optical data a manufacturer publishes. Learning to read one takes about ten minutes and it will change how you compare lenses. This article covers what MTF measures, how to read the chart, and — just as importantly — what it cannot tell you.

What is MTF?

MTF stands for Modulation Transfer Function. It is a measure of how faithfully a lens transfers the contrast of a subject into the image it projects.

Every lens loses some contrast. Point one at a pattern of crisp black and white lines and what emerges on the other side is never quite as crisp — the blacks lift slightly toward grey, the whites drop slightly, and the finer the lines, the more of that original contrast is lost. MTF puts a number on how much

Almost nobody focuses a camera by hand any more, and almost nobody changes the autofocus settings either. The camera arrives on its defaults, the defaults work well enough for a photograph of a stationary friend in good light, and most people never look further. The trouble starts the moment the subject moves, the light drops, or there is more than one thing in the frame worth focusing on — at which point the default is frequently the wrong choice, and the resulting photograph is sharp in the wrong place. This article covers what autofocus is, the modes and focus areas you can choose between, how the underlying mechanisms actually work, and when to turn the whole thing off.

What is autofocus?

Autofocus is the camera's ability to bring a subject into focus without your intervention. Several different technologies sit behind it, and which one your camera uses affects how quickly and reliably it works — but from the photographer's side, the controls come down to two decisions: which operating