Many photographers, even some fairly advanced amateurs, misunderstand how to properly employ lenses of different focal lengths. Although selecting a lens isn’t really a step-by-step process, for purposes of keeping everything organized and showing you how to evaluate a scene, that’s how it will be presented here. This tutorial will explain the reasoning behind choosing a particular lens, and highlight how considering the angle of view can lead to a fantastic photograph.

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Everyone loves a parade, but they can be very difficult to photograph. Very few people end up with satisfying parade photos. Let’s look at some relatively simple things anyone can do to get more effective, more satisfying photos of parades.

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Cameras vary in terms of functions offered. There are differences from one brand to the next and even from one model to another of the same brand. By necessity, this tutorial will have to generalize but let’s try to de-mystify some of the more common settings found on cameras today, what they mean (to the camera) and how to use them.

Let’s start with the core shooting modes, then we’ll move on to the more common preset scene modes and finally to some other general information about camera functions.

If you come across terminology or concepts here that are unfamiliar to you, it may be best to refer to part 1 of this series which uncovers how your camera work and what terms like ‘Aperture’ and ‘ISO’ mean.

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When we spot a great photo waiting to happen, photographers often take many shots of the same thing to better their odds of doing it justice. But how often have you viewed your shots later and ended up with 5, 10, or 20 photos of the same scene or subject that are, well, pretty darn good! You can’t put all these duplicates in your portfolio or your ‘Favorites’ set on Twitter, so you are left with the challenge of needing to pick your best photo from the set. How do you do it?

In this tutorial, Jeffrey breaks down what we often do on ‘gut instinct’ – rank photos in order of how good they are. What, exactly, makes one composition better than another? What’s the real difference between a photo that “Just didn’t work out” and one that did?

These timeless tips will help you in your photography hobby, or career, for years to come.

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Most photography tutorials, including most of the ones you’ll find here on the Tuts+ network of web sites, assume a certain base level of knowledge. But what if you’ve only just decided you want to make the leap into taking photos with manual settings?

In this tutorial you’ll start to begin to learn the fundamentals of photography – fundamentals that will allow you to start reading and using more advanced tutorials, and manipulating the manual settings on your camera. Here we cover exposure, how the camera works, the shutter, focus, light, depth of field and ISO.

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