One of the things you have to thing about for making great images with a camera is lighting. Digital photography captures light in many of the same ways that a film camera does, only it uses pixels of light as opposed to making impressions on chemicals. Lighting in digital photography can get just as expensive as with traditional photography, so you need to think carefully. First, choose what sort of photographs you take. If you want to go professional, you need professional lighting digital photography equipment, too.

Reflective Metering

In measuring lighting, digital photography relies on the reflective metering way of grabbing and recording light. Light usually has to be bounced off of the subject for your digital camera to pick it up and then bounce off of mirrors inside the camera. This is why in digital photography, professionals and amateurs alike usually resort to using a light meter. This can throw light onto the subject.

Before you use light meters or flashes with your digital camera, you need to turn off the automatic mode and set it to manual. If you don’t have a manual setting on your camera, guess what? You're out of luck and need a new camera.

Light Meters

Most digital cameras will already have a built-in light meter. Still, this might not be enough. You can tell when you look through the eyepiece. One good thing about lighting in digital photography is that what you see through your camera's eyepiece is the exact same picture your camera will make. You often have to just cross your fingers and pray with film cameras.

Light meters are NOT flashes. Those are different pieces of equipment. Light meters record the amount of light reflecting off of your subject. This also sets off all of the flashes in the area. Yes, kids – don’t do this at home. Not unless your parents are filthy rich. A light meter is a very high-tech recording gizmo that looks like a cell phone. It tells you when to press the shutter.

You need to use that because your built-in light meter can't handle a flash. So, it thinks that there's a huge blinding light and will not let you take a picture. You need to set the light meter and the camera to the same shutter speed, ISO setting and aperture value. This puts them in sync.

Or, you could do what I do and chuck out digital photography altogether and stick with film cameras. It a lot easier, IF you're not a professional photographer.