How to Correct Common Digital Photo Problems

Here are some common digital photo problems that may pop up while you are taking photographs with your digital camera and with tips on how to fix them.

Keep Your Whites White

When photographing bright white objects like snow, flowers, or fabric you may find that they look gray in digital image. This is a common problem and can be corrected quite easily.

For snow, check to see if your digital camera has a Snow mode. This new feature on some cameras is mode marked with a snowman icon. Switching your camera to this mode will fix snow related problems such as grayness (see an example of gray snow, below).

If you don’t have Snow mode or you want to shoot another type of white object, frame your shot and then open you program settings. Brighten your image by going to the exposure compensation setting and pressing the arrow key in the positive direction. Don’t go crazy, though. You want the image just bright enough to get rid of the gray, but not so bright that you lose color saturation in other parts of the picture. This should give you whites you can be proud of.

Getting Rid of Yellow Lighting

Most indoor lighting is called incandescent or tungsten lighting. This kind of lighting may give your subjects a yellow look or cast that can be less than flattering. You can correct this by using your digital camera’s white balance settings and specifying a light source. Check with your digital camera’s manual to see if you camera has a white balance setting and how to use it effectively.

Blurry Action Shots

Action shots can be blurry if you use normal settings to take them. To avoid blurriness, make sure to have your digital camera set to Action mode, which is marked with an icon of a man running. Next, try to keep your camera as still as possible. This is hard to do since action shots require the camera to follow the action. To compensate, try to anticipate what the subject will do. When the subject is just about to create a great shot, depress the shutter button and hold as still as possible. A tripod with a swivel is ideal for these types of shots.

Red Eye

This problem is common when using a flash. Fortunately, most digital cameras come with a feature that helps eliminate red eye. Simply pose your subject and halfway depress the shutter button. This will set off a flash of light before the actual flash. Right after this flash goes off press the shutter button all the way down. No red eyes!