Well, yes and no. It is the camera's fault, in the sense that a digital camera does not work like a film camera. Like it or not you have to learn a new method for taking photos. The old point-and-shoot technique will almost certainly lead to disappointing results. And the cause of the disappointment can be summed up in two words -- shutter lag.

All digital cameras suffer to a greater or lesser extent from shutter lag, and camera companies are spending research and development dollars (or yen) on eliminating this phenomenon from the system.

Here's what happens when you frame the picture in the viewfinder and press the shutter release. The camera samples a spot in the frame and calculates the exposure. It samples the colour of the light and sets the white balance. At the same time the auto-focus lens is hunting for a sharp focus point. The digital sensor captures the picture and sends it to the processor and memory card. If your camera has an electronic viewfinder -- a small lcd screen in the eye-level viewfinder -- this may add to the time delay between what you see and what you end up capturing.

If you simply point and shoot the chances are that the focus/exposure point will be on either the background or the foreground and not on the subject you are photographing. The picture will be out of focus and incorrectly exposed. The subject will have moved.

To reduce the shutter lag effect all good digital cameras operate on the "half depressed" principle. You put the focus/exposure spot over the most important highlight in the picture area, even if it means moving the camera away from your intended framing, and then you press the shutter release half way down until a beep tells you that focus and exposure are locked. Then, continuing to hold the shutter release half-depressed you move the camera back to the intended framing position and then press the shutter release all the way down.

It sounds complicated and cumbersome, but it quickly becomes intuitive. And once the focus/exposure is locked you can wait for the decisive moment, to use Henri Cartier-Bresson's famous phrase. The great French photographer uses a rangefinder Leica which, to all intents and purposes, has no shutter lag. What you see in the viewfinder is what you get.

With a single lens reflex camera there is a slight lag as the mirror swings up before the shutter opens. It is near enough to instantaneous to be acceptable. But the auto-focus, auto-exposure digital camera takes time to prepare itself for the shot and you must adapt your technique to its idiosyncrasies.

Look at this photograph. The focus/exposure spot of the camera was centred over the subject's right eye. The button was half depressed and then the camera was moved to the photographer's right to reframe the head centrally. It takes much less time to do than to describe.

In any portrait the eyes are the important focus point and it is usually best to expose for the highlights so that they are not blown out in the photograph, as they will be if you put the exposure spot over a shadow area. If your camera permits in-camera adjustment of contrast it helps to lower it to preserve as much detail as possible at both ends of the grey scale.