David Bailey I ain’t
My new camera turned up yesterday while I was at work, it was a long day waiting to get away to have a play with my new toy!
I’m really pleased with the purchase and glad that I didn’t go for the Sony DSC-T5 that I was originally opting for. The Powershot is some much cooler and has lots of manual features to get to grips with. I’ve been scouring the web looking for beginners guides to photography. I need to try and get my head around exposures, shutter speeds, and all that stuff, I never knew it was so complicated. I tried a few pages over at wikipedia and my head nearly exploded!
The only disappointment on Canon’s part is that they only supply a basic manual with the camera which tells you about absolutely nothing and constantly refers to the ‘Advanced Guide’ which you only get as a pdf. So i’ve had to print this myself. The stupid thing is they supplied the basic manual 5 times in different languages! With all that paper they could have printed the advanced guide for me !
Tags: a610, camera, canon, photography
June 20th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
I look forward to seeing some photos from Florida then, if you aren’t too busy reading the manual to get out of the hotel!
BTW does it come with a TV lead? Quite a useful thing to take on holiday, you can see your photos on a big screen (if your hotel room has a TV with video in) while you can still go and retake your shots if necessary.
June 20th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
I think I’m getting there with the manual. The concepts are very challenging and I think I really need to just get out and take some shots to get to grips with them.
It does come with a TV lead I believe so I’ll have to remember to take it with me.
I’ve got a 512Mb SD card in the camera at the moment and the on-screen display suggests I can fit about 850 pics on there.
So i’ll have a few pics to post when I get back
June 21st, 2006 at 6:43 am
Couple of quick thoughts:
You’ll be able to preview shots on an SD card using your Axim. Not as big a screen as a TV, but something like Resco Photo Viewer works very well when combined with the Axim’s 640×480 screen
I’d also check that your camera is set up at the highest quality (assuming that’s what you want). 850 pics sounds very high for a 512Mb card and 5 megapixels. My F10 only does 170 shots on a 512Mb card at its top quality setting. I suspect you may find there’s a higher quality mode available than the default. SD is so cheap these days (I recently bought a 2Gb card for £25 from Amazon), that it seems a shame not to capture photos at the best quality available
June 21st, 2006 at 6:48 am
I’ve lowered the resolution to 1600×1200 as this is sufficient for my needs, I only get the pictures printed at 6×7 inches so I may as well have the space for more pictures.
June 21st, 2006 at 10:40 am
I’m pleased to read you want to learn about apertures and shutter speeds - this often puts people off and they end up putting the camera in green star mode.
The most useful mode (for me, at any rate) is aperture priority (Av). I use this to control the depth of field (how much of the picture is sharp, and how blurry the background/foreground is). If you use a low number of, say, f/2.8 (a large apperture hole), your subject will be sharp, but the stuff in front and behind of the subject will be blurry — great for pictures of people. If you use a high number (a small apperture hole - f/11, say), then more of your foreground and background will be in focus — good for landscapes etc.
The thing to remember (and as a geek you should get this) is that the aperture value is the ratio of the focal length of the lens over the size of the hole down the middle of the lens. This is why a low aperture number (also known as F-Stop), say f/1.0, is a big hole (and hence shallow depth of field), and a high F-stop of f/16 is a small hole.
This article explains that all quite well I think…
Have fun!
June 21st, 2006 at 11:20 am
Great article Mark that really helped to hammer some info into my thick skull. As I mentioned earlier I probably need to put some of the info into practise and then it’ll probably sink in and make more sense.
I thought you’d be able to point me in the right direction !
You never know I may even get some stuff on flickr that I can be proud of !
June 21st, 2006 at 5:08 pm
If you are satill looking for some tips one of my pages has a few links of interest.
Look At This…: Photography Tips
June 21st, 2006 at 10:44 pm
Thanks, thats a great list, it’ll take me a while to go through all the links !!
…a little off topic but I’m sure this must be my post popular post ever !! I must have hit a photography nerve somewhere !
August 24th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
I too have recently got a Canon A610 PowerShot for my birthday
and have found your links of great value. Thank you. I am slowly getting my head round all the options and what they do.
Have some great shots using macro. One of a bee on a flower.
(well, I was pleased with it but I’m sure an expert would tear it to pieces!!)
August 26th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
I’m really enjoying the photography now, using flickr a lot too and getting a good response from the community. Sign up if you haven’t already, and tell me your address. You can view my pics from the flickr badge at the top of the sidebar.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/perlworld/