Pressing the shutter button to snap a photo seems like the most simple part of photography. I mean, you just “press the button” — right?
Well, there’s a few things to remember when pressing that button, especially when you’re handholding the camera:
1 — Press the button halfway first
You’ve probably noticed that you can press the shutter button halfway or all the way down. When you first got your camera, pressing it halfway probably initiated autofocus (but, hopefully now you use back-button autofocus).
With back-button AF (and if you’re in manual mode), pressing the button halfway does nothing to camera settings, but physically it’s important. Pressing the button all the way down in one press puts much more physical pressure on the camera than doing it halfway first, stopping for half a second and then going down the rest of the way. Physical pressure is important because with more pressure, you’re shaking the camera more and that increases your chance of getting a blurry photo and can mess up your focus point and/or composition (especially true for close-up images). [Read more…] about Pressing The Button