4 Tools for Taking Great Photos

There's a city in Georgia called Tbilisi, which stands on the banks of the Kura River and boasts a population of about 1.5 million people. The city has been capital of Georgia for various intervals throughout history and is currently Georgia's largest city.

It's also the place Panasonic asked world-class photographer Thomas Dworzak (of elite agency Magnum Photos) to explore — and bring back the fruits of his labor via digital photos. The region is not new for Dworzak, as he spent most of the 1990s photographing conflict and war in Caucasus and Chechnya.

Armed with the LUMIX GX7, Dworzak set out to see how the region has changed in the decades since his earlier visits. What's also changed is the tool he carries — the LUMIX is understandably more portable than tools of years past, but notably, the shutter is silent and allows Dworzak to take photos without being noticed.

It's a simple feature that can change the experience of being a photographer, as the pros know only too well. We took a deeper look at photography terms someone like Dworzak needs to know before going in the field.

1. Touch Auto Focus

Unlike lighting, the focus of a shot is unlikely to be fixed in editing. For catching a shot that isn't a still life, it's nice if your camera can autofocus for you — and fast.

What the camera does is change its focus distance, then check to see if focus improved, and if not, will change the distance again. A camera can have anywhere from one to more than 45 autofocus points, and using the GX7, you can intuitively touch the screen where you'd like to focus. Autofocus works best in good light but some cameras can still autofocus in -2 EV or -3 EV, which is equivalent to moonlight.

How fast can a camera autofocus? Many recent releases boast strikingly fast speeds — creeping up on how fast at focusing the human eye is. The Panasonic Dworzak used in Tbilisi has a high-speed autofocus that operates at 0.06 seconds.

2. Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is one of the three basics of photography, along with aperture and film speed, and determines how much light is allowed into your shot. But is faster always better? Of course not — but if you're going to be photographing extreme situations, you want to have options. Some photographers say they've used the super-fast 1/8000 second speed when shooting over snowfields on a clear day. In bright sunlight the shutter needs to be fast to avoid overexposure.

A fast shutter speed also allows for a larger aperture — which will in turn give you a shallow depth of field, something photographers prefer for portraits, to give them a blurry, faded background so the focus in on the subject.

3. MOS Sensor Technology

Digital cameras introduced a trend towards more megapixels — for awhile it seemed the limits would just keep rising. But how many you really need continues to be a popular topic. For amateurs who might print a photo at 8x10 inches, six megapixels is plenty. But with 36 megapixels, you can obtain a hard-to-reach shot by taking a wider shot and cropping.

Either way, more megapixels doesn't immediately render better quality (and can saddle you with a bunch of huge files to store). Sensors can enhance detail without increasing megapixels because they take in light more efficiently.

When Dworzak was shooting in Tbilisi, the LUMIX GX7's built-in sensor worked remarkably well at night or other low light conditions. "I take a lot of pictures in low light situations," he says in a video interview.

In low light, photos can often look gravelly, and some sensors aim to change that. It allows for smooth color balance by increasing the light-receiving area on each pixel.

4. Built-in Image Stabilizer

Image stabilization is incredibly important when shooting sports or wildlife. But the debate on whether the stabilization should be in your camera or in each lens continues.

Putting the stabilization in the camera has one big advantage — it can work with any lens, even the old film lenses. But, if the stabilization is in the camera, it is not visible through a DSLR viewfinder. That drawback no longer applies though with electronic viewfinders and mirrorless cameras (like the GX7).

A camera that can detect if your lens has its own stabilization is a flexible tool since it will work with the various lenses you might have accumulated over time.

Photography is "the only thing that gives me the right to look into other peoples lives," Dworzak says. When he went to Tbilisi in the 1990s he was looking for war, but it's become a different world.

"I'm trying to be as much a fly on the wall as possible," Dworzak says. The small body and silent shutter make the GX7 the kind of camera he wants to have, he says, after being provided the camera for capturing photos on his trip. "It's a different ballgame that you can take silent pictures."

For further information on Thomas Dworzak and his assignment with the new LUMIX GX7, click here.

Image: Flickr, Reed Kennedy