Now that I’ve gotten into photography a little bit, I tend to pay more attention to how other people use their cameras. There’s two things that I repeatedly see which drive me up the wall: pointless use of flash, and that dang beeping noise.

Let’s start with the beeping. On most cameras, this will occur either when the camera focuses or when you release the shutter — or both. In my opinion, this feature is pretty unnecessary for most people, because there are visual confirmations for both of these actions (and I do hope you’re looking at your camera when you use it!). The cacophony of beeps is just plain annoying when you’ve got several people all trying to focus and snap pictures all at the same time. It’s downright rude when you’re in a quiet setting — like some sort of performance, gallery, etc. People seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that their camera is making loud, rude noises while someone is performing a solo or whatever. There is a simple on-off setting for this…please, consider turning it off.

The second item of photography etiquette on today’s agenda is the use of flash. Most people buy their point-and-shoot cameras and then never take it off the Auto Flash function. This works fine for many situations, but cameras are still kind of stupid about when to use flash. I remember watching diving at the Beijing Olympics a couple months ago, for example, and the Water Cube announcers repeatedly asked spectators not to use flash. Yet, every single time someone went off the diving board, hundreds of flash bulbs popped from the stands.

My favorite part about this was not only that it was rude and inconsiderate to the divers, but the fans were hundreds of feet away! Most P&S flashes are only good to around 30 feet, maybe. Not to mention that the pool was lit extremely well, but the distance made the use of flash pointless anyway. The cameras got confused because the stands were a bit darker than the pool area, and so they figured they’d expose for the foreground and fired up the flash. This is why, when you’re in the stands for a sporting event and snap a picture with flash, the best part of the picture is of the guy’s head right in front of you.

So, people need to learn how to turn two things off: the focus/shot confirmation beep (and the stupid fake “shutter” sounds when the picture is taken), and the auto flash. Camera makers know that people should be able to quickly turn off their flash, and that’s why most of them make it available within just one or two button presses. On the back of my point-and-shoot, I just press the flash button (the lightning bolt) once and the flash gets shut off. So please learn how to do it on yours, be aware of when you should turn it off, and practice some basic photography etiquette.