Lighting basics for better photos

Bright conditions indoors

• Let in all the light you can

  Provide as much natural light as possible by opening curtains and blinds. This way you can keep from using your camera's flash, which generally washes out color and casts harsh shadows.
  
  

• Avoid standing in front of windows

  Placing your subject in front of a bright window will leave them silhouetted against the bright light shining in. The light will often appear too bright, and your subject too dark.
  
  

Bright conditions outdoors

• Avoid harsh midday sunlight

  The same way your camera's flash can wash out color, the intense midday sun can mute colors and cast deep shadows, reducing warmth and detail.
  
  The best time of day for photos is either early morning or early evening. Colors are warmer and shadows are softer.
  
  

  Intense sun mutes colors and casts deep shadows.

  
  

Tools for outdoor conditions

• Use HP adaptive lighting

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  For outdoor scenes with a mixture of sun and shade, some HP cameras have adaptive lighting technology. In areas that are too dark, adaptive lighting adds just the right amount of light. It also brings detail out in areas that are too bright.
  
  Select HP R-Series digital cameras include adaptive lighting bracketing which can be turned on to automatically to create three separate photos at once: normal, adaptive lighting low, and adaptive lighting high. This almost guarantees one of the three will have just the right balance of light and detail.
  
  

Low-light conditions indoors

• Disable your flash

  Using your flash should be a last resort in most situations. It mutes color and casts stark, deep shadows (especially unflattering for portraits).
  
  Press the flash button on your HP camera and select Flash off.
  
  Take advantage of indirect, ambient light from lamps, overhead lights, or candles instead. Set your camera to the Auto shooting mode. It will slow its shutter speed (the time needed to capture enough light) when the flash is off. To avoid blurring, use a tripod or stable surface to keep your camera steady.
  
  There are other tools you can use to improve your indoor shots.
  
  

• Adjust white balance

  
  Artificial light can produce unnatural tinting in your photos. Many cameras will compensate for this automatically. As accurate as automatic white balance is most of the time, it's not always perfect. For more control, set your camera to Tungsten (normal incandescent bulbs), or Fluorescent to fix color.
  
  

Low-light conditions outdoors

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The same rules for low-light conditions indoors apply to the outdoors as well. Avoid the flash and use a tripod to steady your camera. Holding perfectly still is especially important outdoors. You will often have even less light than when you're indoors. This means longer exposure time (sometimes as long as a few seconds).

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Here are a couple additional options to improve outdoor photos.

• Adjust ISO for light sensitivity

  If your camera allows you to adjust ISO, set it low (somewhere around 50 or 100) for rich detail in low-light.
  
  

• Use Night Portrait shooting mode

  
  
  For low-light photos with moving subjects like people set your HP digital camera to the Night Portrait shooting mode. This uses the flash very briefly at the beginning of a long exposure to capture detail. It still helps for you to keep your camera as steady as possible, but it's not absolutely necessary in this mode.