Blurred Pictures

Sadly, nine out of ten holiday snaps are blurred. Even more sad is the extent to which most people accept that blurred pictures are a fact of life. They needn't be!

The commonest reason is not holding the camera steady. An exposure takes time (the shutter speed). If the camera moves during this time then the image will come out smeared across the frame. You know the effect you get when you photograph a moving racing car. You get an impression of speed because the car moved during the exposure. It's the same kind of thing but, in this case, the subject remains still and the camera moves.

Now, there is only one way to guarantee that a camera doesn't move during the exposure. That is to embed the camera in ten tons of concrete. The camera will not move during the exposure (or, probably, ever again!)

OK, so there is no guarantee that the camera can be kept steady. What you can do is to minimise the movement by using a fast shutter speed or by finding a better way to hold the camera.

As a general rule, you can hand-hold a camera at a shutter speed equal to one over the focal length. That is if the focal length you are using is 200mm, then you need a shutter speed of 1/200sec or less to hand-hold the camera. If the light is so low that you need 1/30sec with a 200mm lens, you have two options: support the camera some other way or stop wasting film!

The obvious way to support a camera is a tripod. Even a small tripod can be useful, but in general the heavier the tripod the more useful it will be (and the less likely it is that you will have it with you when you need it.)

Monopods are smaller and lighter but need practice.

How about a bean bag? make a cloth bag about 8 inches square and part fill it with pudding rice (beans are actually too big, and long grain rice tends to work its way through he weave of the cloth bag.) Then, when you want to support the camera, find (for example) a nearby dry-stone wall, put the bag on the wall and scrunch the camera down into it. The result is a support which is good enough for most requirements.

Red Eye

This is widespread with small cameras which have a built in flash. You must have seen the effect: glowing eyes which make the subject look like a refugee from the Macbeth's blasted heath.

Red eye happens because the lens and the flash are close together and the subject is looking straight at the camera. Light from the flash enters the subject's eye and is reflected straight back from the retina at the back of the eye. The retina is full of blood vessels so it looks red. Any of the following will get rid of the problem:

• bounce the flash;
• move the flash further away from the lens;
• ask the subject not to look directly at the camera.

With a small compact camera, this last option is really the only one you have available. If you do ask the subject to look away, try to include in the picture something they can look at.

Burned out Skies

You take a picture of a scene which has a sky which, while not deep blue, does have some colour. The resulting picture has a pure white sky.

The trouble is that film has only a limited exposure range between blocked out blacks and burnt out highlights. For black and white film it is about 10 stops, for colour about 5 stops.

If the scene has a wider range than this, then the film can't record it. A really deep, blue sky is no problem, but a pale sky with high cloud is really very bright. You have to find some way of reducing, or hiding the contrast.

If the sky is clear blue, then a polarising filter might help. For maximum effect with a polarising filter the line from you to the sun needs to be at right angles to the direction in which the camera is pointing. Then rotate the filter until the sky seen through the viewfinder is darkest. Alternatively try a grey-graduate filter. This is a filter witch is half grey and half clear. Put the grey part over the sky to tone it down.

If neither of these options is possible, the only thing left is to find some way of not including the sky in the picture. Overhanging branches are often useful not only to fill a blank sky, but to frame the picture.

Clutter at the edge of the frame

When you look through a camera viewfinder, you tend to look only at the thing you want to take a picture of. Not really surprising! But the picture includes lots of other things as well.

First, you've got to learn to look at everything in the viewfinder: not just the main subject. This is something you just have to practice.

The other thing you can do is to fill the frame with more of the subject either by walking a bit closer or by fitting a longer lens. One word of warning here if you are using one of the cheaper compact cameras. The closest focus on these cameras is often about 6 feet (2 metres), so don't try going any closer than that.

Presenting Slides

When a slide comes back from the processor it could well be in a standard cardboard or plastic mount. For most purposes this is fine, but you don't always want a standard two-by-three frame. Maybe your picture would look better in a square mount, or perhaps as a letterbox.

First forget any ideas of using sticky tape. It always produces a ragged edge. The only successful way is to remount the slide. Throw the old mount away. When you put the slide in the new mount, use kitchen foil as a mask. Fold the kitchen foil in two, and the folded edge will produce a straight clean edge.

Don't forget the "spot" the slide. The spot is a marker to show which way up the slide should be. If you hold the slide the right way up, the spot should be at the bottom left (see the diagram).

Having remembered to spot the slide don't forget the date, your name and a title (if you want one).

Presenting Prints

Having made a print, there are two further steps to go through: "Spotting" and "Mounting".

Spotting is the process of removing all those blemishes which you couldn't get rid of when you made the print. Typically they are white spots which resulted from dust on the negative. Use photographic dyes (not poster paint) and a very fine brush (grade 000). The brush should be almost dry as you apply the dye with the a dabbing action with the tip of the brush, making small dots of tone to fill the white area.

All prints look best mounted on card. You can buy the card (mounting board) from any half decent art shop. You can do all sorts of complicated things such as making window mountsand using several different colours of card, but in the short term, black and white prints look fine on a dark grey mount. For colour prints you need to look a little more carefully at the relationship between the mount and the picture. A green mount with an orange picture is not always going to look ideal.

When cutting the mount remember that cardboard blunts knives very quickly. Use a craft knife with a new blade otherwise the result will look appalling.

Finally, how do you stick the print down? Books will go on at length about mounting tissue, but most people today use a mounting glue which comes in a spray can (they use it because its easier, not because its any better).

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