Quick Tips to Level Your Camera Horizon

Hi, I'm Ian Plant, managing editor of Outdoor Photography Guide. And when you're making photos outdoors, unless you're going for some intentional artistic tilted horizon look, you wanna make sure that you have your horizon completely level. Now, there's a few ways you can do this. I think a lot of people might think, well, if my horizon is just a little bit off, I can always fix it in post-processing. Which is true, usually the fix is pretty easy, but especially if your horizon is fairly off tilt, those fixes will involve a fair amount of cropping, so you'll lose a little bit of image quality. So it's always best to get it right in camera if you can. So when you're shooting in camera, there are a few things you can do to make sure that your horizon is level. One is just to go out and buy an inexpensive accessory which is a bubble level that you put in the hot shoe of your camera. And what you do basically is you just position the camera until that bubble level is perfectly true. And then your horizon is leveled. Another way to do it is using the electronic level that comes standard with most digital cameras these days. So you just go ahead and turn the level on and you move it around until you get the level to show you the true position. And then you lock everything in. Also with a lot of cameras, in your live use screen, there'll be a grid over the screen, and you can use that grid to make sure that your horizon is perfectly level. Sometimes, however, you'll be dealing with a natural horizon that isn't perfectly level. For example, the Grand Canyon is infamous among photographers because the background landscape is gradually sloping. One side of the Canyon is at a higher altitude than the other. So when you take a photo with your camera perfectly level, the horizon is gonna look a little tilted. This can also happen when you're photographing a body of water and the shoreline is receding away from you in the distance. The shoreline may appear tilted, even though you've had your camera perfectly level because the shoreline on one side is closer to you than the shoreline or the other. So in situations like that, you have to make a judgment call as to whether you wanna level your camera and have the horizon look a little crooked or if you wanna make the camera crooked so that the horizon and the background looks like it's true in level. Usually what I do is I try to make sure that the horizon looks level, because if it's just a little bit off, even if it's the natural slope of the landscape, it's gonna look like it's crooked to viewers. So usually what I do is I go ahead and adjust my camera to make that horizon look like it's perfectly level. These days, it's so easy to make sure that your horizon is level that you don't have any excuses. So when you're out there in the field, making photos, make sure to keep things on the level.