The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS/1000D Companion

Snapshot Tips

While the rest of this book is going to cover just about every aspect of shooting in great detail—from holding the camera to processing images—you can do a lot with the Full Auto capability that you've already learned about. Since the camera is taking care of most of the technical issues for you, it's a good time to practice handling the camera and composing shots. We're going to talk about composition in great detail in Chapter 8. For now, consider the following tips when shooting snapshots.

Watch that Headroom: Fill the Frame

When shooting a portrait or candid snapshot of someone, you usually do not need a lot of headroom, unless you want to show something about the environment they're in.

Figure 1-15. The extra head room doesn't contribute anything to the image.

For example, in this image, the extra headroom doesn't add anything to the picture. In fact, it's kind of distracting and takes up space that could be used to show a larger image of the person. In the next image, we fill the frame with more of the person. We can see a better view of them, but we still get enough background detail to get an idea of the environment they're in.

Figure 1-16. In this image we've filled the entire frame, which lets us see a larger view of our subject.

"Fill the frame" is one of the most ...