Digital Photography - Tiscali Technology

Now you know a little more about digital photography, you might be keen to spread your wings and try something more ambitious. Modern digital cameras are packed with exciting new features that let you determine exactly how your photos come out: manual functions for pin-point control; special effects to impress your friends; and powerful digital features to change colours, detail and much more.

There are dozens of advanced features you might see on the best digital cameras today. Here's a brief run-down of some of the most useful and interesting:

Manual zoom and focus rings - shutter button left and right is slow and imprecise compared to directly zooming the lens in and out. A manual zoom is fast, silent and takes no power from your camera's over-worked batteries. Manual focusing is just as useful, especially in low light conditions where even the best autofocus systems can struggle.

Wideangle lens - you ever stepped back to fit a group portrait or landmark into your shot? A lot of people worry about long, telephoto zooms, but good wideangle performance is just as important. A 28mm equivalent wideangle setting lets you squeeze a wider field of view into the frame and is invaluable for taking pictures of landscapes or buildings.

High-speed shooting - shutter lag can be really irritating, but so can sluggish start-up times and unresponsive menus. The best cameras can shoot high- speed bursts of shots, start up in under a second and are ready to shoot again in the blink of an eye.

Focusing in - actually pretty rare that the subject want to focus on is slap bang in the middle of the frame. Advanced cameras let you choose which part of the frame the AF system focuses in on. They might also have time-saving continuous autofocusing, macro focusing for close-ups and the ability to lock the focus while you recompose your sceneshot.

Expose yourself When you venture beyond automatic exposure, theres a whole world to discover. Aperture and shutter priority modes are a great way to become familiar with your camera without risking over- or under-exposed images, and exposure bracketing will handle tricky lighting conditions. When youre happy using those, why not experiment with full manual control?