Learn to operate your camera blindfolded!

Back when I was first starting out, one of the senior photographers at the paper said to me that I ought to be able to operate my camera blindfolded.

Now, I don't think he actually meant shoot blindfolded because that does make framing shots quite tricky. What he meant was that it's really important to understand how your camera works, and know where the important settings are so that you're not rummaging around for them at the moment you ought to be shooting. Any delay in shooting can mean you miss the shot, and breaking the connection between you and your subject. 

By comparison, if your camera feels like an extension of your body and your brain, you will almost certainly get better shots, as there will be less of a barrier between you and the images you want to get.

So I’d suggest practicing with your camera as much as possible. Get a real feel for where all those essential controls are. You don't need to know where every single submenu setting is located, but you really ought to know where the settings for things like focus, exposure and release modes are all located.

It also means that if something does go wrong, your familiarity means you'll flag it up quickly, you’ll rapidly realize things aren't right and you won't end up shootting lots of shots you can't use.

My personal favorites include knocking exposure settings when the camera is on my hip and I'm running about the place, or knocking the focus mode as I’m mounting or mounting a lens. With my Sony, I’ve left it set for self-timer mode and wondered why I can't take a picture. Of course I'm hammering away at the release and it's waiting 10s to take a picture. I genuinely did this a few months ago!

When something like this happens, don't panic. Just bring the camera down from your eye, and go through your own personal checklist of the basic settings and where they should be, and reset them. Now, if it's something more fundamental, and something is genuinely going wrong, that's when you reach for your second camera body, but I expect most of the time it'll just be a fairly basic setting. Familiarity with your camera means you'll be able to remedy it pretty quickly.