Which Camera Bag

Which camera bag should you use? There are four camera bags in this shot. A little white bag for the Kodak EasyShare V1253 that I took this picture with, and three others of various sizes and capacities.

The little white bag is fine for one little camera and an extra battery and memory card two. Toss in a pocket and get out there.

My favorite bag is a LowPro Slingshot. Bottom right. This bag has a single shoulder strap that goes over the right shoulder. It allows the bag to be carried on the back most of the time but swung around the front when needed. The bag is large enough for all the lenses I normally use plus most of the extras I might need for short trips away from my vehicle. I does not have a place for my big 500mm sigma, and there is no place for water bottles and granola bars.

The small bag at the lower left contains my back up Nikon D-70. It has everything for that camera handy and ready to go. I let my grandsons use this bag and camera when we go shooting together. I also keep this camera handy as it has the infrared remote capability that my larger D-300 does not have. I use this when I want to set my camera in a remote site to capture birds but I don't what to be too close myself. I can use the remote to activate the shutter from a distance. I have been successful with this beyond 100 feet.

The big LowPro at the top is my workhorse bag. When completely outfitted, I can be out all day and night in any weather. It has room for all my lenses, an extra camera body, filters, batteries, water bottles, granola bars, gps, mini digital recorder, notebooks, pens, and just about anything else you might want to carry along. I've even carried a little scout mess kit and tiny coleman stove and fuel cell.

I've just completed equipping this bag for long days in the desert where I am now. The weather has been rainy but that's about to end. This bag will allow me to carry enough water for a days photography so long as I go slow and don't over work physically. I can take my extreme wide angle lens, my macro lens, and my big 500mm telephoto. This will allow me to work landscapes, desert flowers, cactus plants, and any wildlife that I encounter.

What am I doing here? I need to get going!

Happy shooting!

Using your camera's shutter

Knowing how to use your camera's shutter button can effect the quality of your photos. On most, if not all of today's cameras, the shutter button is an important multi-function tool. Knowing how it works and using it properly can help improve your images.

Pressing the shutter button halfway or part way down usually activates the camera's light meter and focus mechanism. Holding the button in that position will lock the focus and exposure settings in place. You can then move or recompose your image in your frame based on those camera readings to improve your images. I will explain more about this in later posts as this is a very important tool for point and shoot cameras where you may not be able to manually set your exposure settings.

Once you have allowed your camera to calculate it's focus and exposure settings, and you have composed the shot you wish to take, you can press the shutter button the rest of the way down to activate the shutter and capture your image. How you do this can affect your pictures too.
If you press the button too hard or jerk the button, it will move the camera as you shoot and cause the images to be fuzzy. In some instances you may want to do this to create a certain effect but in normal photography any movement of the camera is to be avoided. You need to press the button down gently and smoothly to get the best image possible.

One of the most common errors everyone makes, including professionals from time to time, is to just press the shutter all the way down without hesitating an instant at halfway point to allow the camera to focus. Most of the time it takes less than a second for the camera to focus and set the exposure for the shot. But the common result is a blurry image that you can't use.

You should read your camera manual about all the functions your cameras shutter button does then practice using it to see how these functions work. You will be amazed how how much better your images can be if you know how your shutter button really works.