How to set up your camera to shoot beaches?

Beaches have number of opportunities to shoot. The sand, the shore, natural beauty, sun, water, trees...... and the list goes on. Beaches are a perfect mix of natural beauty, colors and interesting light. We all love to be clicked at beaches, but most of the time either our photographs are too dark or over exposed or under exposed. Majority of our beach photographs suffer poor color balance, making them look dull and pale.

Here are some of the simple beach photography tips that will help you improve the end result:

1 Exposure compensation

To avoid darker beach photos, you may need anything from one-third to a full f/stop of positive exposure compensation. Because beaches have predominantly bright content, using a full exposure compensation might help you click better beach photographs.

2 Fill flash:

If you are photographing a group of people on the beach, then fill flash may help to avoid people looking underexposed against bright content of the beach. Fill flash helps in reducing dark shadows created by overhead sun, specifically around the eyes and and under the nose.

3 White balance

Setting white balance to a preset value helps in accurate color rendition. Setting it at 'Daylight' or 'Cloudy' will just work fine.

4  Sunrise and sunset:

Beaches are the perfect location to photograph a sunrise or a sunset. They are also great for silhouettes. When photographing sunrise or sunset, setting white balance to a present value will help you to a great extent.  Set it at 'Cloudy' or 'shade' for best results.

5 Shutter priority to capture action:

If you are taking pictures of some action at the beach, switch to shutter-priority mode and use 1/500th (or faster) shutter speed. you can also choose to select auto ISO ti increase camera sensitivity.