Tips for Using a Point & Shoot Camera
Do you feel inadequate because you have a puny Canon SD900 or Fuji F30 in your pocket while your friend is lugging around a digital SLR?
Don't.
You can get a better picture than he can, for the following reasons:
- Your camera is light and compact enough that you have it with you at all times.
- You have about as good a lens as he does; like most first-time SLR owners, he hasn't bothered to upgrade from the cheap low-contrast zoom lens that was included in a kit with his camera body.
- He is using the pop-up flash on his camera as his primary light. You would never be that uncreative (at least not after reading the rest of this article).
- Your camera has a better system for combining light from the flash with ambient light ("fill-flash").
A professional photographer with a pile of $1500 lenses and a tripod is going to be able to do many things that you aren't. But rest assured that he carries a P&S camera in his pocket as well.
The photo at left shows Bill Clinton handing out a diploma at MIT's 1998 graduation ceremony. I was in the press box with a Canon EOS-5 (film!), 70-200/2.8L lens, and 1.4X teleconverter ($2500 total). In the upper right of the frame is a woman with a point and shoot camera. I would venture to guess that her pictures of Clinton are better than mine.
Think about Light
"He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it."
-- Joseph Romm
Just say no
Just say "no" to on-camera flash. Your eye needs shadows to make out shapes. When the light is coming from the same position as the lens, there are no shadows to "model" faces. Light from a point source like the on-camera flash falls off as the square of the distance from the source. That means things close to the camera will be washed-out, the subject on which you focussed will be properly exposed, and the background will be nearly black.
We're at a theater. Can't you tell from the background? That's me in the middle. The guy with the flat face and big washed-out white areas of skin. Part of the problem here is that the camera was loaded with ISO 50 film and therefore doesn't capture much ambient light (i.e., the theater background).
Virtually all point and shoot cameras allow you to control the on-camera flash. What you want to do most of the time is press the tiny lightning bolt button until the "no flash" symbol is displayed. The "no flash" symbol is usually a lightning bolt with a circle around it and line through it. Now the camera will never strobe the flash and will leave the shutter open long enough to capture enough ambient light to make an exposure.
A good point and shoot camera will have a longest shutter speed of at least 1 second. You can probably only hold the camera steady for 1/30th of a second. Your subjects may not hold still for a full second either. So you must start looking for ways to keep the camera still and to complete the exposure in less time. You can:
- look for some light. Move your subjects underneath whatever light sources are handy and see how they look with your eyes.
- set a higher ISO sensitivity, e.g., ISO 400 or ISO 800 (currently only Fuji F30 and rather expensive compact digicams are designed to give good quality at higher ISO settings; the rest just give you a lot of digital "noise")
- steady the camera against a tree/rock/chair/whatever as you press the shutter release
- leave the camera on a tree/rock/chair/whatever and use the self-timer so that the jostling of pressing the shutter release isn't reflected on film. This works well for photographing decorated ceilings in Europe. Just leave the camera on the floor, self-timer on, flash off.
- use a little plastic tripod, monopod, or some other purpose-built camera support
Yes it was dark in Bar 89. But I steadied the camera against a stair railing and captured the scene with a Minolta Freedom Zoom 28-70 (current eBay value $5?). Note that not using flash preserves the lighting of the bar.
Prefocus
The best-composed photographs don't usually have their subject dead center. However, that's where the focusing sensor on a P&S camera is. Since the best photographs usually do have their subject in sharp focus, what you want to do is point the center sensor at your main subject, hold the shutter release halfway down, then move the camera until you like the composition
Virtually all P&S cameras work this way but not everyone knows it because not everyone is willing to read the owner's manual.
A side effect of prefocusing is that most P&S cameras will preset exposure as well. Ideal exposure with a reflected light meter is obtained when the subject reflectance is 18% gray (a medium gray). If you don't want to wade into the exposure compensation menus, try to prefocus on something that is the correct distance from the camera and a reasonable mid-tone. I.e., avoid focusing on something that is pure white or black.
Burn Memory
If a memory card is lasting for months, something is wrong. You aren't experimenting enough. An ideal memory card for has 50 pictures of the same subject, all of them bad. These prove that you're not afraid to experiment. And then one good picture. This proves that you're not completely incompetent.
It takes at least 10 frames to get one good picture of one person. To have everyone in a group photo looking good requires holding down that shutter release button. You should have pictures from different angles, different heights, flash on, flash off, etc.
Buy a stack of 2 GB SD cards and challenge yourself to fill them up!