So let’s cover some techniques for shooting with your camera set to Full Auto. Your camera has got a lot of technology in it and it’s really smart and it’s not a bad thing to get used to shooting in Full Auto. I even know some professionals that do it so it’s not a bad thing.
We’re going to start with recomposing. Focus and recompose. When you’re shooting a portrait or almost anything, you don’t want to center your subject in the middle or the center of your viewfinder. You want to focus and recompose. So you’ll obtain focus on your subject and press your shutter halfway down to choose your AF point, your auto focus point and when you’ve achieved focus with the shutter still pressed halfway down, you just move the subject to, let’s say, the right hand side of the viewfinder and then press the shutter.
What you’ve done, without knowing it, is use the rule of thirds, which is a very strong photographic technique and it makes your photograph not a snapshot but an actual well-composed, thought-out photograph. You’ll also want to take into consideration depth of field when you’re shooting portraits. You don’t always want the background in focus when you’re shooting the portrait, you might want to blur the background.
You can cheat a little bit and switch over to your camera’s “Portrait Mode” (if it has one) or if you wanted to experiment, go to Aperture Priority and make sure that your exposure meter is centered when you open the aperture up. Remember a large aperture will blur the background.
In Aperture Priority your camera will set your shutter speed so you should be centered on your meter and press the shutter halfway down, obtain focus, recompose by moving the subject to the left or to the right of your viewfinder and take the shot. Experiment a little bit. With digital cameras you get instant feedback, it’s a lot harder with film cameras to improve your skills because you might shoot a hundred images then you have to go back to the dark room to get your feedback. So shoot away and have some fun.