Seven things to do before going out with your camera.

The following list is a photographic reminder to help you remember all the technical aspects of photography to keep in mind before starting a new photo session.

Your camera is a sophisticated piece of equipment with many customizable settings that can vary from time to time.

These 7 tips should help you avoid trivial mistakes that could compromise your photographic output. Let's see them together:

1) Have you charged the battery?

It will seem absurd but it is one of the first things that are forgotten. Often you will go out with the battery dead or almost because you forgot.

Every time you shoot you will be curious to review the image on the display if it turned out well, but this operation requires a large expenditure of energy from the camera and if the battery is flat you will do very little. So much so that, to get started, I recommend buying a spare battery .

2) Have you formatted the memory card?

Before a photographic outing and after downloading all your old shots to your computer you must always, absolutely always, format the memory card of your camera. As with all technological devices, failure is always possible.

In these cases, however, you risk losing the images. However, you can reduce the risk to the maximum thanks to good maintenance. Format the card in the camera's format menu before each use and after making sure you have downloaded old shots.

3) Do you have enough memory on the memory card?

One of the perks of the pre-digital era was that you could get a new roll of film in just about any store.

It is true that memory cards are now large enough to take several hundred photographs, but I strongly advise you to buy more than one , both for reasons of space and to prevent a memory from stopping working for some strange reason.

Make sure you have enough when you leave for a vacation in the Caribbean or some other remote location in the world, where buying a new memory card could be a problem!

4) Have you cleaned the sensor?

If you are used to changing lenses often, there is a possibility that the dust that sticks to it will create black specks or filaments which will then appear in your files. This is especially possible if you forget to turn off the camera before performing the operation.

If the sensor is not cleaned thoroughly, it could be damaged. Visit your camera company's website and follow the advice on how to clean it and how to maintain it.

One way to avoid cleaning it often, however, is to keep the camera pointing down while changing lenses. This makes it more difficult for dust to settle on the sensor.