This page assumes that you live in the United States or that you live in Europe and will be mail ordering from the United States. If you are visiting Japan, you probably want to read Buying a Camera in Japan.
I want to support photo.net
photo.net was started in 1993 as my personal Web site. Today the site attracts almost 5 million visitors per month and the server processes more than 10 million requests every day. The site has a staff of full-time employees working on editorial, programming, system administration, and customer service. After much discussion with readers in the spring of 2000, we concluded that the best way to keep photo.net alive was referral fees from retailers. So if photo.net has been a valuable resource for you, please help by following one of the following encoded links:
* amazon.com (oftentimes the best price and delivery time)
* Adorama (full-line professional store)
For more specialized needs, here's our original "where to buy" page ...
I want it cheap and fast
You don't have to go to New York anymore. amazon.com sells all of the popular cameras, most lenses, and many accessories. You probably already have an account there and they have more sophisticated credit card fraud system than the New York stores, so your "ship today" order will actually ship today.
If you want to got to New York, we recommend Adorama, which has obscure items that you won't find at Amazon:
Adorama
42 West 18th Street
(between 5th and 6th Avenues)
New York City, NY 10011
US voice (800) 223-2500
overseas voice +1 (212) 741-0052
FAX +1 (212) 463-7223
email: info@adoramacamera.com
www.adorama.com
Many photo.net readers who have never set foot in the United States are satisfied Adorama customers.
One thing that a big New York retailer can do that your local camera shop cannot is to go to Japan or Europe and import cameras themselves. Suppose that Nikon USA is selling F5 bodies to retailers here for $2500. Adorama has enough volume that they can fly to Japan and buy a bunch of F5s from a wholesaler there for, say, $1800 each. They bring them back to the US and sell them as "grey market" (parallel import) for $2200. It is exactly the same camera but you get a lower price. You will miss out on any rebates that Nikon USA is offering and the Nikon USA warranty, though the US retailer will give you its own warranty. Camera bodies are very reliable, lenses are even more reliable, and the authorized importers usually offer extremely slow service to consumers. Hence, it is probably not worth paying more than $25 extra for a "USA" model. Sometimes grey market bodies even have useful features that are disabled in US models due to patent problems.
I want to get screwed
Place an order with any store offering a camera for less than 90 percent of what Amazon is charging. When you have finished reciting your credit card number, they'll say "oops, that price was for the grey market version; right now we only have the US version in stock and that is $200 extra." Another popular fraud is to add a $150 shipping charge to an order for a camera body and two lenses.
You'll find more stories about bad (and good) retailers in the photo.net Neighbor to Neighbor service.
I want to see it in a catalog and have it explained to me
Try Calumet, based in Chicago at 1-800-CALUMET. Their sales people tend to be patient and experienced. Calumet caters to professionals and studio photographers. Calumet is not competitive for common items such as the Canon or Nikon systems. They tend to push their house brands even when the consumer would be better served with a name-brand product. For example, their view cameras aren't much cheaper than equivalent Sinar products, but any working photographer would be much better off with Sinar (see "Choosing a Large Format Camera"). A friend bought two of their house-brand flash packs. They had some nice electronic features and were a bit cheaper than equivalent name-brand flashes, but neither triggered reliably when one hit the test button or used the sync cord. By contrast, I've seen lots of cheap strobe packs that didn't have the features of fancy Broncolor packs. But the cheap packs always worked.
I want an intelligent recommendation for serious equipment
Talk to Jeff Hirsch at FOTOCARE, 136 West 21st Street, NY, NY 10011. (212) 741-2990 ( http://www.fotocare.com/). Don't ask him which point & shoot to buy, but he rents all the good large- and medium-format stuff plus studio lighting. Because he rents and uses this stuff, he knows what matters. This is the place to buy weird but essential stuff, e.g., ballheads, quick releases, etc. Jeff's prices on those items are often identical to B&H and Adorama.
I want to trade a Hasselblad and a Leica in for a new Linhof
Petrified Forest (north-central Arizona). Gil Ghitelman, www.gilghitelman.com used to be a psychologist in the Montgomery County public schools, where I suffered through 10 grades, but I won't hold that against him. He started collecting Leicas and then decided to go into the family camera business. You can trust Gil; he'll go the extra mile to make sure that you get what you need, and you might pay less than you would at B&H.
Although Gil is hidden away in Weston, Connecticut, he is a pretty high-volume Hasselblad dealer and has an in-house repair service (forget what anyone says; 'blads need a lot of maintenance). He also stocks oddities like $800 English camera bags.
I've bought a bunch of Linhof stuff from Gil, new and used.
I want to take a picture like this
Brooks Falls, Katmai National Park
Talk to Leonard Lee Rue III and Len Rue, IV. When they aren't out chasing wildlife or sitting in a blind with a 600/4, the Rues operate a mail-order service for wildlife photographers.
They've personally used every piece of equipment in their illustrated catalog and don't sell it if it doesn't work. Much of the stuff you'd be unlikely to know you needed. If B&H has the same item, it will be somewhere between the same price and 25% cheaper.
Leonard Rue Enterprises, 138 Millbrook Road, Blairstown, NJ 07825, (800) 734-2568, http://www.rue.com.
[Note: Bear photo was taken with Nikon 300/2.8, FOBA ballhead, 8008 body, Ektar 25 film, 1/60th at 2.8 under overcast skies. From Travels with Samantha.]
I want to buy a used camera
A tree in Petrified Forest (north-central Arizona).
If you don't see anything you like in the photo.net Classifieds, rec.photo.marketplace and Shutterbug magazine are the places to look for advertisements from shops and individuals selling used cameras.
Midwest Photo Exchange, 3313 N. High Street, Columbus, OH 43202, 614-261-1264, FAX 614-261-1637, is a good source for old view cameras and the like (esp. strong on Linhof Technicas).
KEH Camera Brokers puts out a big catalog that is useful for reference prices.
http://www.photo.net/photo/where-to-buy
Monday, June 4, 2007
Kodak APS (Advanced Photo System)
Every ten years or so, Kodak decides that 35mm film is too good for consumers. They do a survey and find that "97% of pictures never get enlarged beyond 4x6". They conclude from this that the enormous 24x36mm swatch of film they've been selling you is excessive. Wouldn't you rather have half the image area? You'll barely notice the reduction in quality in a 4x6 print. And guess what, they'll charge you the same amount of money for film & processing despite the fact that they only have to use half the materials.
Kodak tried it in the 1970s with 110 cartridges. Image quality sucked so consumers rejected it. I've heard that the main reason for the bad quality was the lack of a pressure plate to keep the film flat.
Kodak tried it in the 1980s with the disc camera. They stuck tiny little pieces of film on the ends of plastic arms so that it was easy to rotate up to the next frame. Oh, yes, image quality was abysmal. Consumers rejected it.
My personal theory on what happened is that Kodak hired MBAs to do the surveys instead of photographers. Photographers know that one is lucky to take 10 great photographs a year. Forget 97% 4x6 prints; they'd be happy to throw out 99% of their negatives if they could get one more great picture. This is less true of casual photographers but even they probably have only a handful of images that they want to put up on the wall and look at every day.
The picture at right, part of my New York vignettes is about half of a 35mm Tri-X negative. I've had quite a few requests for enlargements. Had it been taken with a smaller format film, the grain would be the size of baseballs. The owl at left is a big bird. It was a snapshot in a zoo, now part of the infamous Heather Has Two Mommies. I never thought it would be a good image, but it turned out to be. I'm glad that I can enlarge it to 16x20. The owl deserves his wall space.
Half the size of 35mm
An APS negative is 56% the area of a 35mm negative. That's all that a serious photographer really needs to know about the format. Everything else is gadgetry.
If you want to be a little more exact, here are the dimensions of the various APS frames:
* HDTV: 30.2 x 16.7 mm
* Classic: 23.4 x 16.7 mm
* Panoramic: 30.2 x 9.5 mm
* (for comparison) standard 35mm camera: 36 x 24 mm
Bells & Whistles
Kodak did some cute things with APS that, had they been done with 35mm, would have been very nice. There is an optically clear but magnetically sensitive coating on the back of the APS film. The camera has a magnetic head like what you'd find in a floppy disk drive. It writes digital information on the magnetic coating. There is the obvious stuff like date and time and exposure settings. To help the processor, the use of flash is noted.
Communication with photo labs is expensive and they charge you for it. That's why a 4x6 machine print costs about 20 cents and getting one done at a pro lab, that sometimes won't even be as good, will cost you $20. APS lets you communicate with the photo lab by pushing buttons on the camera at exposure time. You can say "I want this to be panoramic", in which case the lab will print only from the center strip of the negative. You can say "I want this to be fake-zoomed", in which case the lab will print from only the center section of the negative, sort of as though you'd used a longer lens (except that image quality will be much lower because you're throwing away most of what was already a very small negative).
Film handling is better with APS. The cartridge is used to store processed negatives so they can't get dusty. You can use half a roll and then switch to a higher speed emulsion for night-time pictures, then switch back without going through leader-retrieval gymnastics like you'd have to with 35mm.
But they are making better film now
Aside from $millions in PR, the reason APS won't flop like 110 and the disc is that today we have films like Fuji Super G Plus. It really is possible to get an acceptable 8x10 print from a tiny negative. Kodak has even promised and delivered some improved emulsions in the APS format. However, any technology that makes APS film better is just as applicable to 35mm film. Fuji seems to be keeping its 35mm film right up to date with its new APS emulsions.
The Bottom Line
If you are reasonably serious about photography and are willing to be reasonably careful about choosing a lab and storing your negatives, 35mm is a better format. At least your images will have the potential to be great.
And now for a word from my vastly more intelligent friend...
... Kleanthes Koniaris ( kgk@martigny.ai.mit.edu) who already has his Ph.D. (and it isn't in a sissy field like computer science, but rather in physics).
For weeks, I wondered "How can somebody as smart as Greenspun not realize the genius behind the APS system?" Eventually I realized the answer: Greenspun looks at gear through the eyes of a professional, while I look at gear through the eyes of a guy who wants to properly document his vacation. It turns out that we're both correct, and you have to decide what you want.
The main idea behind an APS camera is that it is idiot-proof and it takes fantastic vacation pictures in sizes like 4x6", 4x7", or even 4x12".
Film Canister
There is no leader on the film canister, it is an elliptical prism. You never see your negatives, they also reside inside the canister. Each canister is uniquely identified by a six-digit serial number marked on the outside for humans and magnetically written on the film for the processor. The cartridge also displays one of four icons: unexposed (circle), half-exposed (half-circle), exposed ("x"), and developed (box). Canisters are available with 15, 25 and 40 exposures.
The magnetic surface on the film holds your bits, so be careful to keep it away from things that will erase your credit cards or floppy disks! (My local WalMart always tries to put my developed film on a plate that warns "WILL ERASE YOUR CREDIT CARDS" and I always manage to stop them just in time!) Neither Fuji nor Kodak warns against this hazard, but it would seem to be common sense to avoid magnetic fields.
[Comment received from one of my moles inside the Kodak research labs: "The magnetic particles used in APS file are similar to the particles used in Super VHS tape: They have a coercivity (Hc), i.e., field required to erase them, of about 900 Oersteds, three times the 300 Oersteds coercivity of credit cards and standard bias audio cassettes. Those nasty plates on the checkout counter have fields of around 300 Oe, enough to erase your credit cards and do funny things to audio tapes, but they shouldn't affect APS film. Of course I wouldn't take unnecessary risks, but if you get distracted by the same old photos of Jon Benet or princess Di, you probably won't have anything to worry about."]
Index Prints
Processed APS film comes with 4x7" sheet of index prints showing the roll ID (and bar codes, time stamps, etc). Each index print is numbered so you can say "I want to reprint picture #39 from roll ID850-939."
Prints
Prints come in 4x6" (classical), 4x7" (HDTV) and 4x12" (panoramic). Classical means "crop the sides," while panoramic means "crop the top and bottom." The form-factor is recorded when you take the picture, but you can override your choice when reprinting. WalMart charges me $.25 for each 4x6", and I believe that the price goes up to $.44 for a 4x12".
Printed on the back of each photo is the ID number of the roll, the picture number, the time of exposure (optional), as well as camera-specific printing. For example, my Canon ELPH can print "Happy birthday" (or four other phrases) in one of five languages. This printing is done by the developing machines, which read the magnetic bits off the back of each frame. I'm thinking of setting the camera to write "I love you" on the back of my prints in Japanese. The camera can also write hints to the printing machines (like "I didn't get as much light as I wanted"), so most of your vacation pictures are keepers.
Camera
I bought a Canon ELPH for $295 from B&H Photo. It is tiny, with a sexy black leather case. Girls find it very cute and tiny and always ask where they can get one. The viewfinder automatically masks itselfs to match the mode (classical, HDTV, or panoramic), which is nice, but the viewfinder corners are blurry. The only other thing that I dislike about the camera is that I sometimes press the "on/off" button by accident. This makes the lens extend and stretches the leather case, but hasn't caused the camera to fail.
The LCD display is always on showing you the time. I set the time to Universal Time (UT, also known as GMT), since I don't have to change it when on vacation---I just have to remember what time zone I was in (i.e., where I was!). For example, I'm looking at a picture of a dinosaur taken at the Minnesota Zoo at 5:40pm on 96/6/22, and I believe that Minnesota is -5 from GMT, so the local time was 12:40pm. Easy, huh?
You load/unload the ELPH (like all APS cameras) through a hatch, and I am sure that anybody can do it. My camera cannot do mid-roll swapping, but it will not load exposed film, etc.
Summary
If you want to fill up photo books and send 4"x or 5"x prints to relatives, APS is for you. If you tend to be caught without a camera, APS is for you. Compare my Canon ELPH to Philip's Yashica T4 Super and you will be amazed by the size difference---but mine has a zoom as well!
If you want enormous enlargements to hang on your wall, APS is not for you.
More
* Q&A forum threads on this subject
* 35mm point & shoot cameras
* my review of the Minolta Vectis APS SLR
* my review of the Canon IX APS SLR
http://www.photo.net/equipment/aps/
Kodak tried it in the 1970s with 110 cartridges. Image quality sucked so consumers rejected it. I've heard that the main reason for the bad quality was the lack of a pressure plate to keep the film flat.
Kodak tried it in the 1980s with the disc camera. They stuck tiny little pieces of film on the ends of plastic arms so that it was easy to rotate up to the next frame. Oh, yes, image quality was abysmal. Consumers rejected it.
My personal theory on what happened is that Kodak hired MBAs to do the surveys instead of photographers. Photographers know that one is lucky to take 10 great photographs a year. Forget 97% 4x6 prints; they'd be happy to throw out 99% of their negatives if they could get one more great picture. This is less true of casual photographers but even they probably have only a handful of images that they want to put up on the wall and look at every day.
The picture at right, part of my New York vignettes is about half of a 35mm Tri-X negative. I've had quite a few requests for enlargements. Had it been taken with a smaller format film, the grain would be the size of baseballs. The owl at left is a big bird. It was a snapshot in a zoo, now part of the infamous Heather Has Two Mommies. I never thought it would be a good image, but it turned out to be. I'm glad that I can enlarge it to 16x20. The owl deserves his wall space.
Half the size of 35mm
An APS negative is 56% the area of a 35mm negative. That's all that a serious photographer really needs to know about the format. Everything else is gadgetry.
If you want to be a little more exact, here are the dimensions of the various APS frames:
* HDTV: 30.2 x 16.7 mm
* Classic: 23.4 x 16.7 mm
* Panoramic: 30.2 x 9.5 mm
* (for comparison) standard 35mm camera: 36 x 24 mm
Bells & Whistles
Kodak did some cute things with APS that, had they been done with 35mm, would have been very nice. There is an optically clear but magnetically sensitive coating on the back of the APS film. The camera has a magnetic head like what you'd find in a floppy disk drive. It writes digital information on the magnetic coating. There is the obvious stuff like date and time and exposure settings. To help the processor, the use of flash is noted.
Communication with photo labs is expensive and they charge you for it. That's why a 4x6 machine print costs about 20 cents and getting one done at a pro lab, that sometimes won't even be as good, will cost you $20. APS lets you communicate with the photo lab by pushing buttons on the camera at exposure time. You can say "I want this to be panoramic", in which case the lab will print only from the center strip of the negative. You can say "I want this to be fake-zoomed", in which case the lab will print from only the center section of the negative, sort of as though you'd used a longer lens (except that image quality will be much lower because you're throwing away most of what was already a very small negative).
Film handling is better with APS. The cartridge is used to store processed negatives so they can't get dusty. You can use half a roll and then switch to a higher speed emulsion for night-time pictures, then switch back without going through leader-retrieval gymnastics like you'd have to with 35mm.
But they are making better film now
Aside from $millions in PR, the reason APS won't flop like 110 and the disc is that today we have films like Fuji Super G Plus. It really is possible to get an acceptable 8x10 print from a tiny negative. Kodak has even promised and delivered some improved emulsions in the APS format. However, any technology that makes APS film better is just as applicable to 35mm film. Fuji seems to be keeping its 35mm film right up to date with its new APS emulsions.
The Bottom Line
If you are reasonably serious about photography and are willing to be reasonably careful about choosing a lab and storing your negatives, 35mm is a better format. At least your images will have the potential to be great.
And now for a word from my vastly more intelligent friend...
... Kleanthes Koniaris ( kgk@martigny.ai.mit.edu) who already has his Ph.D. (and it isn't in a sissy field like computer science, but rather in physics).
For weeks, I wondered "How can somebody as smart as Greenspun not realize the genius behind the APS system?" Eventually I realized the answer: Greenspun looks at gear through the eyes of a professional, while I look at gear through the eyes of a guy who wants to properly document his vacation. It turns out that we're both correct, and you have to decide what you want.
The main idea behind an APS camera is that it is idiot-proof and it takes fantastic vacation pictures in sizes like 4x6", 4x7", or even 4x12".
Film Canister
There is no leader on the film canister, it is an elliptical prism. You never see your negatives, they also reside inside the canister. Each canister is uniquely identified by a six-digit serial number marked on the outside for humans and magnetically written on the film for the processor. The cartridge also displays one of four icons: unexposed (circle), half-exposed (half-circle), exposed ("x"), and developed (box). Canisters are available with 15, 25 and 40 exposures.
The magnetic surface on the film holds your bits, so be careful to keep it away from things that will erase your credit cards or floppy disks! (My local WalMart always tries to put my developed film on a plate that warns "WILL ERASE YOUR CREDIT CARDS" and I always manage to stop them just in time!) Neither Fuji nor Kodak warns against this hazard, but it would seem to be common sense to avoid magnetic fields.
[Comment received from one of my moles inside the Kodak research labs: "The magnetic particles used in APS file are similar to the particles used in Super VHS tape: They have a coercivity (Hc), i.e., field required to erase them, of about 900 Oersteds, three times the 300 Oersteds coercivity of credit cards and standard bias audio cassettes. Those nasty plates on the checkout counter have fields of around 300 Oe, enough to erase your credit cards and do funny things to audio tapes, but they shouldn't affect APS film. Of course I wouldn't take unnecessary risks, but if you get distracted by the same old photos of Jon Benet or princess Di, you probably won't have anything to worry about."]
Index Prints
Processed APS film comes with 4x7" sheet of index prints showing the roll ID (and bar codes, time stamps, etc). Each index print is numbered so you can say "I want to reprint picture #39 from roll ID850-939."
Prints
Prints come in 4x6" (classical), 4x7" (HDTV) and 4x12" (panoramic). Classical means "crop the sides," while panoramic means "crop the top and bottom." The form-factor is recorded when you take the picture, but you can override your choice when reprinting. WalMart charges me $.25 for each 4x6", and I believe that the price goes up to $.44 for a 4x12".
Printed on the back of each photo is the ID number of the roll, the picture number, the time of exposure (optional), as well as camera-specific printing. For example, my Canon ELPH can print "Happy birthday" (or four other phrases) in one of five languages. This printing is done by the developing machines, which read the magnetic bits off the back of each frame. I'm thinking of setting the camera to write "I love you" on the back of my prints in Japanese. The camera can also write hints to the printing machines (like "I didn't get as much light as I wanted"), so most of your vacation pictures are keepers.
Camera
I bought a Canon ELPH for $295 from B&H Photo. It is tiny, with a sexy black leather case. Girls find it very cute and tiny and always ask where they can get one. The viewfinder automatically masks itselfs to match the mode (classical, HDTV, or panoramic), which is nice, but the viewfinder corners are blurry. The only other thing that I dislike about the camera is that I sometimes press the "on/off" button by accident. This makes the lens extend and stretches the leather case, but hasn't caused the camera to fail.
The LCD display is always on showing you the time. I set the time to Universal Time (UT, also known as GMT), since I don't have to change it when on vacation---I just have to remember what time zone I was in (i.e., where I was!). For example, I'm looking at a picture of a dinosaur taken at the Minnesota Zoo at 5:40pm on 96/6/22, and I believe that Minnesota is -5 from GMT, so the local time was 12:40pm. Easy, huh?
You load/unload the ELPH (like all APS cameras) through a hatch, and I am sure that anybody can do it. My camera cannot do mid-roll swapping, but it will not load exposed film, etc.
Summary
If you want to fill up photo books and send 4"x or 5"x prints to relatives, APS is for you. If you tend to be caught without a camera, APS is for you. Compare my Canon ELPH to Philip's Yashica T4 Super and you will be amazed by the size difference---but mine has a zoom as well!
If you want enormous enlargements to hang on your wall, APS is not for you.
More
* Q&A forum threads on this subject
* 35mm point & shoot cameras
* my review of the Minolta Vectis APS SLR
* my review of the Canon IX APS SLR
http://www.photo.net/equipment/aps/
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").
MIT Graduation 1998 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
My personal definition of photography is "the recording of light rays." It is therefore difficult to take a decent picture if you have not chosen the lighting carefully. Read the photo.net tutorial chapter on light.
Just say no
Amy, Philip, Paula, at Aspects of Love in Minneapolis 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.
Just say yes
Just say "yes" to on-camera flash. Hey, "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" (Emerson; slightly out of context).
The on-camera flash on a compact digital camera is useful. It just isn't useful for what you'd think. As noted above, it is not useful for lighting up a dark room. However, it is useful outdoors when you have both shaded and sunlit objects in the same scene. A JPEG photo or a print cannot handle the same range of contrast as your eyes. A picture that is correctly exposed for the sunlight object will render the shaded portrait subject as solid black. A picture that is correctly exposed for the shaded portrait subject will render the sunlit background object as solid white.
Manhattan 1995. Here the chess players are being shaded by some overhead screens while the background foliage is not. The on-camera flash makes sure that the foreground players are bright. In fact they are a bit brighter than they probably should be and note the washed-out highlight on the leading edge of the table, which is close to the camera. This picture was taken by prefocusing on the shirtless player on the right, then moving the camera with the shutter release half-depressed to the final composition. Without the prefocusing the camera would have latched onto one of the chess tables in the center of the picture, quite far away. The foreground men would have been out of focus and also tremendously overexposed since an amount of flash adequate to illuminate a far away subject would have been used. [Note that many $1000 SLR cameras would not have been capable of making this picture except in a completely manual mode. Their flash metering systems look for light reaching the central area of the image rather than computing appropriate flash power from the focussed distance.]
Pressing the little buttons on a P&S camera until a single solid lightning bolt appears in the LCD display will keep the flash on at all times. Note that a side-effect of the "flash on" mode is that you also get the same long shutter speeds for capturing ambient light that you would with "flash off" mode. The standard illustrative picture for this has an illuminated building at night as the background with a group of people in the foreground who've been correctly exposed by the flash.
Sunglasses & ferris wheel. Coney Island. Sometimes it all comes together, as it did here in Coney Island. Without fill-flash, the ride operator would have been a silhouette. Prefocussed on the human subject's face. "Flash on" mode.
Prefocus
Market Street, San Francisco 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
Stockholm airport, hopskotch 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!
http://www.photo.net/photo/point-and-shoot-tips
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").
MIT Graduation 1998 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
My personal definition of photography is "the recording of light rays." It is therefore difficult to take a decent picture if you have not chosen the lighting carefully. Read the photo.net tutorial chapter on light.
Just say no
Amy, Philip, Paula, at Aspects of Love in Minneapolis 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.
Just say yes
Just say "yes" to on-camera flash. Hey, "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" (Emerson; slightly out of context).
The on-camera flash on a compact digital camera is useful. It just isn't useful for what you'd think. As noted above, it is not useful for lighting up a dark room. However, it is useful outdoors when you have both shaded and sunlit objects in the same scene. A JPEG photo or a print cannot handle the same range of contrast as your eyes. A picture that is correctly exposed for the sunlight object will render the shaded portrait subject as solid black. A picture that is correctly exposed for the shaded portrait subject will render the sunlit background object as solid white.
Manhattan 1995. Here the chess players are being shaded by some overhead screens while the background foliage is not. The on-camera flash makes sure that the foreground players are bright. In fact they are a bit brighter than they probably should be and note the washed-out highlight on the leading edge of the table, which is close to the camera. This picture was taken by prefocusing on the shirtless player on the right, then moving the camera with the shutter release half-depressed to the final composition. Without the prefocusing the camera would have latched onto one of the chess tables in the center of the picture, quite far away. The foreground men would have been out of focus and also tremendously overexposed since an amount of flash adequate to illuminate a far away subject would have been used. [Note that many $1000 SLR cameras would not have been capable of making this picture except in a completely manual mode. Their flash metering systems look for light reaching the central area of the image rather than computing appropriate flash power from the focussed distance.]
Pressing the little buttons on a P&S camera until a single solid lightning bolt appears in the LCD display will keep the flash on at all times. Note that a side-effect of the "flash on" mode is that you also get the same long shutter speeds for capturing ambient light that you would with "flash off" mode. The standard illustrative picture for this has an illuminated building at night as the background with a group of people in the foreground who've been correctly exposed by the flash.
Sunglasses & ferris wheel. Coney Island. Sometimes it all comes together, as it did here in Coney Island. Without fill-flash, the ride operator would have been a silhouette. Prefocussed on the human subject's face. "Flash on" mode.
Prefocus
Market Street, San Francisco 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
Stockholm airport, hopskotch 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!
http://www.photo.net/photo/point-and-shoot-tips
Fujifilm F40fd Digital Camera Review
The newest model in Fujifilm’s F-series includes all the bells and whistles from the older cameras and adds a few cool features too. The Fujifilm FinePix F40fd has face detection and high ISO sensitivity like its predecessors. It adds 8.3 megapixel resolution and accepts both xD-Picture and SD memory cards. The F40fd was announced in January 2007 and now sells for $299.
Front (7.75)
The F40fd is one of the most simply-styled FinePix models on the market, and that is a good thing. Its front conveys more elegance than most FinePix digital cameras. The left side of the front has a finger grip that curves inward toward the top of the camera where a Fujifilm logo is placed. The black line that runs up the left side is somewhat transparent and shows up red when the IrSimple technology is activated. A FinePix logo graces the center of the left side. The 3x zoom lens is placed near the right side, with specs rounding the end of the barrel: "Fujinon Zoom Lens, 3x, f=8-24mm, 1:2.8-5.1." To the upper right of the lens is the rectangular built-in flash, with the circular auto focus assist lamp below it. In the bottom right corner is the microphone and a few labels to flaunt the Super CCD and its 8.3 megapixels.
Back (7.5)
This side looks very similar to other Fujifilm digital cameras with the 2.5-inch LCD screen on the left side and the buttons crunched to the right. The LCD screen is framed in black with a silver Fujifilm logo at the bottom. On the right side of the back, in a vertical strip of space less than an inch wide, are a bunch of controls. At the top is a mode dial that has a ribbed edge which protrudes from the top. An LED to the left of the dial indicates which mode is activated. Two buttons sit directly below the mode dial: playback on the left and "F" on the right ("F" calls up the menu of frequently used settings). There is a larger, round navigational control below these buttons with a central Menu/OK button. All of the directions on the control have a second function. The top of the multiselector brightens the LCD screen when shooting and deletes photos in playback. The right side chooses a flash mode, the bottom activates the self-timer, and the left side turns on the macro mode. Below the control are two more buttons that are identical in size to the upper buttons. The left button changes the display information on the LCD screen, and the button on the right activates the face detection system.
Left Side (7.5)
A chrome band wraps around the top and left sides of the camera. At the lower back of this side is a rubber cover that shields the USB and AV cable jacks, and a small black transparent window that lights up when the IrSimple technology is enabled.
Right Side (7.75)
The right side of the camera isn’t very interesting. It has only a few screws and a chrome wrist strap eyelet at the top.
Top (7.25)
The top is where the seams of the camera’s housing gather. A shiny chrome band runs down the middle with the FinePix F40fd logo on the left side and some buttons on the right side. On the far right side is the shutter release button surrounded by the tiny zoom ring. This zoom ring has a tiny knob on the front that is similar to those on the Canon SD-series cameras. Just left of the shutter release button is the smaller, oval-shaped power button.
Bottom (4.5)
The left side of the bottom has a friction grip battery compartment that users can push inward to open. Just right of the center are nine holes that make up the in-camera speaker, and the plastic tripod socket is located to the far right.
http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/content/Fujifilm-F40fd-Digital-Camera-Review-13027.htm
Front (7.75)
The F40fd is one of the most simply-styled FinePix models on the market, and that is a good thing. Its front conveys more elegance than most FinePix digital cameras. The left side of the front has a finger grip that curves inward toward the top of the camera where a Fujifilm logo is placed. The black line that runs up the left side is somewhat transparent and shows up red when the IrSimple technology is activated. A FinePix logo graces the center of the left side. The 3x zoom lens is placed near the right side, with specs rounding the end of the barrel: "Fujinon Zoom Lens, 3x, f=8-24mm, 1:2.8-5.1." To the upper right of the lens is the rectangular built-in flash, with the circular auto focus assist lamp below it. In the bottom right corner is the microphone and a few labels to flaunt the Super CCD and its 8.3 megapixels.
Back (7.5)
This side looks very similar to other Fujifilm digital cameras with the 2.5-inch LCD screen on the left side and the buttons crunched to the right. The LCD screen is framed in black with a silver Fujifilm logo at the bottom. On the right side of the back, in a vertical strip of space less than an inch wide, are a bunch of controls. At the top is a mode dial that has a ribbed edge which protrudes from the top. An LED to the left of the dial indicates which mode is activated. Two buttons sit directly below the mode dial: playback on the left and "F" on the right ("F" calls up the menu of frequently used settings). There is a larger, round navigational control below these buttons with a central Menu/OK button. All of the directions on the control have a second function. The top of the multiselector brightens the LCD screen when shooting and deletes photos in playback. The right side chooses a flash mode, the bottom activates the self-timer, and the left side turns on the macro mode. Below the control are two more buttons that are identical in size to the upper buttons. The left button changes the display information on the LCD screen, and the button on the right activates the face detection system.
Left Side (7.5)
A chrome band wraps around the top and left sides of the camera. At the lower back of this side is a rubber cover that shields the USB and AV cable jacks, and a small black transparent window that lights up when the IrSimple technology is enabled.
Right Side (7.75)
The right side of the camera isn’t very interesting. It has only a few screws and a chrome wrist strap eyelet at the top.
Top (7.25)
The top is where the seams of the camera’s housing gather. A shiny chrome band runs down the middle with the FinePix F40fd logo on the left side and some buttons on the right side. On the far right side is the shutter release button surrounded by the tiny zoom ring. This zoom ring has a tiny knob on the front that is similar to those on the Canon SD-series cameras. Just left of the shutter release button is the smaller, oval-shaped power button.
Bottom (4.5)
The left side of the bottom has a friction grip battery compartment that users can push inward to open. Just right of the center are nine holes that make up the in-camera speaker, and the plastic tripod socket is located to the far right.
http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/content/Fujifilm-F40fd-Digital-Camera-Review-13027.htm
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