36 new of 39 responses total.
Also, pay attention to the background. I've seen quite a few otherwise good pictures ruined by a distracting background (and I've taken some like that, myself.) The background will be more noticable in the photo than it is to the naked eye. The classic example of this is the snapshot of someone who appears to have a tree growing out of their head. ;> If your camera allows you enough control, you can usually reduce the depth of field to blur a distracting background and force objects in the foreground to stand out more.
What is the bracketing feature?
re #4 You mean like GW's dog taking a squat behind the President on the White House lawn?
On virtually every camera you might buy these days there are two
variables which control the exposure by limiting the amount of light
that falls on the film (or in the case of a digital camera, the CCD
sensor.)
The first is the aperture setting. When the camera shutter opens,
the aperture setting controls how widely it opens. A wider opening
allows more light in. Aperture settings are measured in what are
called an "f-stop" number, e.g. 2.8.
The second is the shutter speed. Shutter speed is the measure of how
long the shutter remains open. The longer the shutter remains open,
the more light gets in. Shutter speeds are measured in fractions of
a second, e.g. 1/250
The big trick in photography is getting the right amount of exposure.
Allow in too much light (overexposure) and your photos will look
washed-out and faded. Allow in too little (underexposure) and
everything will look dark and shadowy.
Point-and-click cameras make the decisions for you about which aperture
and shutter speeds to use but on better cameras you can override the
camera's decision and pick your own settings. Almost all cameras that
do this also allow you to "bracket" your exposure by setting the camera
in an automatic mode that takes multiple exposures at different settings
by taking three (or five, or however many) pictures, one at the setting
the camera things is best, one at an aperture setting that is slightly
lower than the camera thinks is best, and one at an exposure setting that
the camera thinks is slightly too high.
Say the camera thinks your aperture setting should be 2.8. I often set
my camera to use +/- 0.6 bracketing so instead of one picture at 2.8
when I press the button:
+---+
|2.8|
+---+
I get three pictures at the same shutter speed but different apertures:
+---+ +---+ +---+
|2.2| |2.8| |3.4|
+---+ +---+ +---+
The point of bracketing is that the camera makes a decision about how
much light to let in but it isn't always right. Sometimes your pictures
come out overexposed and sometimes they come out underexposed. By
bracketing your exposure you take three pictures at three different
exposures, which gives you a much better chance that in at least one of
them the exposure will be right for the picture. That's how I get photos
where the sky and scenery colors are good -- by taking several exposures
and picking the best-looking one.
How do I do that on a Kodak DC-215?
I don't know if the DC-215 supports bracketing but if it does it will certainly be mentioned in the manual.
Ah, my camera doesnt do that.
I only see that option on the Canon Powershot G3 and hte Canon EOS 10D. Which of those 2 do you have, Mike? ;)
Pity. There's a lot that you can do if you have manual control over your camera's aperture or shutter speed. For example, here's a simple trick using shutter speed. You know those pictures you see of streams and/or waterfalls where the water is blurred and wispy while everything else is in clear sharp focus? That's a very easy effect to achieve. You'll need a tripod or something similar to stabilize your camera and either a timer or a cable remote because to get this effect you need to manually set your shutter speed to about 1/4 to 1/2 second. At that slow of a shutter speed you won't be able to hold the camera still enough to prevent the picture from blurring and even the force from pushing the shutter button with your finger will cause enough motion to blur, hence the requirement for the timer or cable remote. A similar effect using slow shutter speed can create intentional blurring to show motion if you're photographing a sporting event or wildlife. The relatively stable background will be in sharp focus while the moving subject will be blurred as its motion carries it partway through the picture during the interval when the shutter is open. Manual control over your aperture and shutter give you all kinds of very simple tricks like these, using only the features built into a reasonably good camera. No investment in fancy lenses and filters required..
I think I have some manual control. Just not a feature that automatically takes multiple pictures as you described. I am keeping a photo blog sort of. I am not updating it nearly often enough but anyone should feel free to check it out at http://slynne.blogspot.com
re #11: I have the Olympus C-2020 Zoom, a 3-year-old 2 megapixel camera
that isn't even made anymore. Before that I used an old Pentax
SLR body that weighed a ton; I'm much happier with digital but
it's about time for me to look for something with more lens
flexibility. I miss too many good bear, eagle, and whale shots
for lack of lens power.
general item #1011 <----> photography item #60
re# 7 The apperture is totally independent of the shutter. The shutter is usually the cloth or metal curtain you see when you open up the back of the camera. Even on a leaf shutter lenses, the shutter is a seperate thing. In film photography one of the rules for tricky exposures, is to expose for the shadows and develope for the highlights. It's just the opposite in digital (since there is less tonal range). The blown out highlights in digital are almost impossible to recover, so center weight or slightly under exposed would be your best bet, you can always mess around with the curve later in Photoshop.
One luxury of using a digital camera that I'm slowly catching on to is the ability to adjust the "film speed" (really the CCD sensitivity) on the fly. My Canon EOS 300D lets me set it to anything from 100 to 1600 ASA equivalent. Higher settings give more light sensitivity at the expense of slightly more noise. This gives you a lot of latitude to use the shutter speed and aperture combination you want. An example of when this is useful happened just last night. I wanted to take a hand-held flash shot of a couple friends of mine at Barton Dam. It was dusk. At 200 ASA they might as well have been in a dark room -- you couldn't see anything behind them. At 1600 ASA, you could clearly see the background.
Cool ascii pictures.
re #17 I've been reading alot about the EOS 300D..its the bomb
I'm really happy with it. Being able to use any of the EOS-series lenses is really nice. One thing a few people I've shown it to have commented on is the inability to use the LCD as a viewfinder for framing a shot. That's a natural consequence of the SLR design, of course, but it may throw people who have used point-and-shoot digital cameras a lot. The optical viewfinder is excellent, though, and it has digital readouts of the F-stop and shutter speed at the bottom.
I find the LCD to be a waste of battery.
I almost never use the LCD as a viewfinder except
(a) in macro-mode shots where the parallax problem is severe, and
(b) when I'm taking something at an odd angle or bracing the camera
against something so that it's difficult to see through the
viewfinder.
I'm close to convincing myself to upgrade to a nice digital SLR but
so far I've been waiting for them to take a price plunge.
In a situation like this you raelly need to ask yourself "Which blonde beauty would Mohammad photograph?"
I'll use the LCD to check light levels and how the shot might turn out, especially when the camera is bitching about needing the flash turned on. But since it's easy to crop in the computer, really precise framing isn't that important anymore. Tip: Make sure your shot is level - look for a straight line in the background.
Re resp:24: Being able to snap a shot and then immediately review it on the LCD to see how it turned out is, for me, the greatest luxury of using a digital camera. I can see right away if I'm getting the effect I want without having to wait until I finish a whole roll of pictures.
Definitely. And if you don't like the results you can just keep shooting until you get something you're happy with. I'm sure there are photographers on Grex who are much more technically knowledgable than I am and who have interesting things to add. Would anyone else care to add their advice?
I've got a 64Mb card in my 2.1 megapixel camera, and even at the high resolution setting I've got space for something like 150 shots. So for me it's better to wait until I've got the pictures on a good computer screen before I start deleting the ones that aren't good enough.
I'm not sure anyone is talking about deleting, just viewing to see that you got something that you were pleased with.
Ah, OK. Though I should mention that I often take a couple of identical shots just in case one turns out blurred from camera shake. Hard to tell that from the camera screen.
Oh, definately. But it's nice to be able to get an idea of the overall exposure quality -- especially on things like time exposures, where there's a lot of guesswork involved. Also, on my LCD I can zoom in to look for focus and camera shake problems, if I suspect them.
I almost never look through the viewfinder and almost always look at the LCD screen on my camera.
I use a Canon PowerShot A80. I really like the blur effects on moving objects. The camera has a 'slow shutter' effect for this purpose. The 'fast shutter' effect helps for moving objects where you want detail. Comes with many cool features. The coolest one is the 'landscape' feature and that speaks for itself. I will have to take out the user guide again and learn about aperture. Here's a shot of a creek in Washington. (don't remember the name) http://www.morenatimm.com/vacation/creek.jpg I have the name somewhere...hmm!! It would be good to keep a journal next time.
I liked that shot, munkey!
My camera is a FujiFilm 2400Zoom, 2.1 MP with optical zoom. Bought it last winter on clearance, partially because it's Linux compatible. But also I was looking more for something likely to have good optics rather than just a lot of pixels. And it works out pretty well, I get nice sharp pictures that would look pretty good on 8.5x11 stock. Here's a photo I took recently, mostly just to document how a microphone was positioned inside the piano at the Ark. It turned out really well, though, digital cameras seem to take really nice photos with even half-assed stage lighting. http://www.scotthelmke.com/stereo-mic-piano.jpg (image was scaled down from 1200x1600)
I WAS OUTSIDE THE ARK< THOUGH I DIDN"T TAKE ANY PICTURES>
Re. 13: I liked the Chicago pic best. Normally, converging lines are considered a no-no, but making it B&W gives an artistic feel.
Thanks. Why would converging lines be considered a no no? I think that such things can add a lot to the composition of a photograph.
It makes things appear like their leaning when they actually aren't.
Hmm, lots of good suggestions here. :-)
You have several choices: