The Shutter Release Button by 42nd St Photo

One of the often-misunderstood features on a digital camera is the shutter release button. This is the ‘trigger’ that takes the picture, but the way you use it affects everything. 42nd St Photo has some suggestions for improving your technique:

Hold your camera with both hands. This helps keep the camera steady when you move your finger to press the button.

Don’t use the very tip of your finger to press the shutter button. Lay the flat part of the tip on the button, giving you more control.

Your camera has a unique “feel” when you press the shutter release button, and many cameras have features that occur at the half-way point, like locking in the focus and exposure. Just like learning to use a clutch on a car, you have to know your own camera by experience.

Once you know where that lock-in occurs, you can focus on your feature and move the camera slightly to change the composition, keeping that feature in focus. Gently pressing the rest of the way will take the picture.

Many of the cameras carried by 42nd St Photo will also have a continuous shooting mode triggered by keeping the shutter release button pressed. You get a series of shots, quite helpful in many situations and easy to edit by deleting the undesirable images.

Digital cameras also have a slight lag (in fractions of seconds) between the time the button is pressed and the shutter is released for the shot. This varies with each model, so if you are looking for a camera with less lag, talk to the professionals at 42nd St Photo about which camera will be best for you.

 

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