Halo 3’s been out for some time now and one of the more interesting new additions is the ability to take screenshots from match replays. The new game engine really does look spectacular, from the ‘bloom’ generated by explosions and weapons fire to the reflections on the player models, it all lends itself perfectly to some really nice action shots which you can download via your account with bungie.net.

But how do you make the most of the screenshot feature to get that perfect picture? read on!

#1 Take your time
Ok, so you just finished a game and know you have some great footage to use – don’t rush in to the replay viewer and blitz through it, slow down a little and take the time to look about. Often you’ll miss a great photo opportunity simply because you failed to rotate the camera 180deg and see whats going on behind you. Don’t forget you can ‘detach’ the camera from its default position locked to your player-model by pressing ‘Y’ for a whole lot more positioning options.

#2 No going back
The replay viewer has a strange setup in that you can’t rewind the footage. Bungie have explained that this is down to the way the replays are recorded but all you need to know is if you see a good frame, take that screenshot just in case because if you go past it, you’ll have to go from the start again to find that exact same spot.

#3 Rule of 3rds
This is a fairly well known tip in the photography world, but I expect there are still people that don’t know about it or don’t fully understand it. The rule of thirds focuses on the position of your subject within the image and is best explained through visual examples, as follows…

Click the image to view a larger version

As you can see, I’ve divided the image into a grid and positioned the main subject of the image at the upper right intersection of the lines. As a general rule, putting subjects roughly where the lines intersect will give you a better image composition – however there are times when this rule won’t apply, use your judgement as you get more experienced.

#4 Simple backgrounds for portrait-style shots
Sure, Halo 3 looks stunning but resist the temptation to get that sexy texture into your shot unless it adds relevance to the image, you’re just distracting the viewer from what you actually want them to look at. This is especially true for close-ups and portrait style shots.

#5 Repetition
You found a great moment you want to capture forever, why take a single image? Chances are that when you come back to look at it later you’d have moved slightly to the left or taken a lower angle or some other tweak that’s going to be near impossible to go back and apply. Most photographers find that they can shoot something 10 times and only get one really good image – it’s better to delete all the extra images you stored than regret not taking a few more shots when you had the chance.

Well, they’re my tips. Hopfully they’ll help some people improve the quality of their screenshots in Halo 3, there are so many great moments to capture in each game, once you have the ‘eye’ for a good shot its hard not to spend more time snapping images than you do actually playing!