I’ve been on a photography kick lately. Previously I posted my review of the Canon 870 IS, but this week I ordered a Panazonic FZ18 which I will also post a review on.

The FZ18 was hard to resist – its a VERY hot camera, Amazon ran out of stock and has been rotating through its 3rd-party camera stores for fulfillment. Why so hot? Because it has this ridiculously long 18x zoom lens made by Leica – the finest lens maker out there. It zooms from a wideangle 28mm to an incredible 504mm telephoto. Plus it has full manual capability like an SLR and even RAW image format – but only about $300!!

But on with the tips…

Chances are, most of the photos on your hard drive were taken during two times of the year – summer, and over winter holidays.

Here are some tips for making sure you take some great photos this summer.

1. Try to get your subject to fill the frame. If you don’t care about the stuff surrounding your subject, get the subject to fill the full frame. If possible, do this by moving closer to the subject rather than using the zoom – in general, zoom pictures don’t come out as well.
2. Avoid using flash when you can. Your camera will probably trigger the flash liberally, to insure your subject is well lit, but a flash picture almost always ruins the mood of the scene. Most cameras let you turn off the flash, even in auto mode. On the down side, not using the flash can result in a blurry picture, so hold the camera very still or rest it on a table or against a wall if you can. Stabilization features help, but do not solve, this problem. Sometimes it is hard to tell in the LCD if the picture was blurred, so always take a flash shot as well for insurance. Also, keep in mind that not using flash will normally result in the camera choosing a high-ISO speed, which will add noise to your photo.
3. Lean to use some basic post-processing techniques. If your subject didn’t fill the frame, use an image processing program to crop the picture so it does. Try sharpening the photo and see if it looks better. Also try boosting the contrast and saturation a bit. I always try these 4 simple tools on pictures I use on StationStops to help photos look better, but rarely use any others. Don’t overdo any of them – be conservative and you will get better results.
4. Always have a spare battery, charger, lens cleaning kit, and plenty of storage media. Storage media is getting really cheap, even for many-megapixel cameras, so there is little excuse to not have plenty of gigabytes on hand. If your camera battery dies, you want to be able swap it, not charge it. Nothing is worse than getting stuck with a dirty lens and no cleaning kit – also make sure you inspect the lens regularly – sometimes a dirty lens isnt so obvious in the LCD, but is when you view the photos on a PC.
5. Use a photo-sharing service like Flickr rather than emailing photos. Emailing photos is very old-school, and very inefficient. By using a photo sharing site such as Flickr, you have an off-site backup of your photos, and your friends and family can access all of them at will and even order prints. If you have a big batch and a slow connection, just start the upload before going to bed!