My wife bought me a new Canon “Powershot A640” 10meg camera today. Its got a bunch of neat features that I’m trying to get used to. I took a bunch of pics today, trying to get the focus, depth of field, and shutter speed right. I think the practice pics came out OK, but I would like to perfect my photo skills in order to take magazine quality photos. I welcome any comments, tips, and advise from the “experts” on how to shoot better pics. Thanks in advance…
I’ve always admired your work, and the new camera really makes everything pop, including the colors. I like the last shot at ground level; it really makes you feel involved in the scene. I don’t where you find the time to pack so much detail, signage, and vignettes into your layout, but I’d like to try living there for a while. [8D]
Bob excellent choice, I have the Cannon PowerShot A540 and It takes great photos for a $179.00 camera. You can shoot in auto, shutter speed priority, aperture priority, manual, macro and change your photos to black & white. I have the 1 gig card & thats 300+ pics at the highest resolution. I have had this camera since before Thanksgiving and still learning more things it can do. So we all look forward to some of your great railroad photos!
Save image to your computer. Right click it, left click properties, left click summary, left click advanced. Voila!
I see F8.0 at 1/2 second for the loading dock image. It also shows a date of 4/24/06 at 11:57 PM.
Bob, maybe you should check the date in the camera.
My only other suggestion is to take the exact same photo at several F stop settings and compare them. Then you decide which one best achieves the desired effect. Depth of field is something very important to play with.
Thanks for the tip. I’ve been reading the owners manual on changing the F-stop setting. However, i’m having trouble getting the auto flash feature to turn-off. Will a higher shutter speed eliminate the need of the auto flash?
Yea, but you should still be able to override the flash function of the camera somehow. On SLRs, there’s usually a button on the front side of the camera that has a “lightning bolt” icon on it. This is how you usually override the automatic flash. On digital cameras, the override feature can also be found through menu screen selection.
OK. After reviewing the owners manual on F-stop and aperture settings, i was able to raise the F-stop to F-8.0. Here’s how the new pic came out. Now I need to practice / work on setting the right color balance.
You may find that all you need is more light, perhaps of a certain colour/hue/saturation. Certainly the colour balance will be important in many cases, but not entirely. As it goes, that last photo is darned good, just dark.
