Digital Portrait Photography For Dummies®

Chapter 2. Choosing Your Equipment

In This Chapter

• Choosing your camera

• Choosing a second camera

• Choosing lighting equipment

• Accessorizing your camera

To create good portraits, you've got to have the right stuff. You can't take good pictures without a good camera, good optics, and the right light-ing equipment. And of course, you've got to have more than just the basics if you're going to create good portraits. At some point in time, you've got to shed some light on your subjects. I strongly recommend that you don't use the on-camera flash. Can you say "red-eye?" I knew you could. And you'll need other accessories as well, if you're going to be a serious (or even semi-serious) portrait photographer. In this chapter, I show you what I think is essential for portrait photography. I cover digital SLRs and point-and-shoot cameras.

Finding the Ideal Camera for Your Needs

There are lots of digital cameras on the market. All of them will give you digital images, but there are a lot of other elements to consider. It pays to be prepared and know your stuff — if you let your local camera-store salesman make the choice, you may end up with too much or too little camera.

Digital cameras come in two flavors: point-and-shoot cameras, and digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex) cameras. A point-and-shoot camera is fully contained, complete with a telephoto zoom lens and built-in flash. As the name implies, all ...