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October 17, 2007
[ HOW TO BE POPULAR AT PARTIES ]
A FUNNY THING HAS HAPPENED since we began to represent ourselves as experts on digital photography. We have suddenly become as popular as doctors at parties.
Ad hoc requests for diagnosis and advice fall into two categories, either “what camera should I buy?” or “why won’t my camera take sharp, well exposed, natural looking pictures?”
When someone says: “I want to spend $1500 on a digital single lens reflex”, as happened last week, it’s simply a matter of saying what we reckon is best for that money at that time.
When the question is: “Why won’t my camera focus properly? Why are all my pictures fuzzy?” it doesn’t take a doctor to know what is going on, but it does take a little longer to explain how to fix it.
The big problem with digital cameras is this: they all come with default factory settings guaranteed to produce fuzzy, badly exposed pictures.
First, the default camera mode is Auto, which means that you might as well stay at home and send the camera out on its own. It will make assumptions about ISO speed, flash use, focussing and exposure and they will almost always be wrong.
When the camera comes from the box immediately set the Mode to P, or an equivalent semi-auto setting. Once that is done you can turn off the flash so that it only works when you want it. You can set the ISO – 200 is a good starting point. And you can fix the focus and exposure problems.
Left on Auto the camera assumes that you want the object closest to the camera to be in focus. One time in twenty this is so, but for the other 19 shots the subject will be blurred. To correct this crazy behaviour you have to go into the menu and look for the AF settings. One option will be a small spot in the centre of the viewfinder. That is the one you want. Then, when you put the centre spot over the subject’s eye and half depress the shutter and hold it down, you can focus on the eye and also reframe the picture.
If you are seeing random green rectangles on your compact LCD screen, or an array of little red squares in your SLR viewfinder, then you have the AF set to some sort of automatic array. Turn it off!
Most digital cameras produce over-saturated images with contrast too high, leading to blown highlights, featureless shadows and bleeding colours. While in the menu system turn down saturation and contrast a notch.
Auto exposure (AE) is a little harder to second guess. By default the camera will be set to read the light reflected from the entire scene. This will work most of the time but not for backlit subjects or any dark subject in a bright environment. For these situations AE should be set to either centre-weighted or spot metering. Centre-weighted is the best all-purpose setting, and Spot is for tricky dark subjects.
The camera makers’ assume that customers are idiots, but just in case some intelligent user comes along they have buried in their menu systems all the controls you need to turn off the drongo defaults.
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Posted by terry at October 17, 2007 11:15 AM
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Comments
Hi Terry,
sorry for not relating to the above article...
If you're ever able to review the Canon G9 I'll read it with interest. Wondering how you think it's turned out given the fact that 12 megapixels have been crammed into it, and what you have written before about the technical problems of this.
Wondering also what you think of its price. A well-known store quotes $800 AUS. On overseas websites they talk of $500 US. This Melbourne store said that they'd only had it for two weeks. Given that the Aussie dollar is (has been recently) up at 90 US cents, I wonder if $800 AUS is a bit steep, or is there something in the biz that explains that? Is it to do with the rate of Yen to $AUS rather than $US to $AUS?
Thanks, Dave
Posted by: Dave at October 22, 2007 02:33 PM
Dave:
The Canon G9 is on my list of cameras for review in the near future. And like you I am sceptical of the 12mp picture quality -- so far all the 12mp compacts that I have seen have been plagued by image noise, including the G7. [What happened to the G8? After all, 8 is the lucky number for a lot of people.]
On the price difference between Australia and the US -- it applies to all camera hardware. We sometimes pay up to 100% more than Americans for the same gear. The only comfort I can offer is that the Japanese pay the same prices as we do. Americans benefit from a huge market and therefore minuscule company overheads per unit sold. Plus we have 10% GST. It seems to be the price we must pay for living on a huge continent with a small population.
TL
Posted by: Terry at October 22, 2007 11:32 PM