Jock Elliott
Hall of Famer
- Location
- Troy, NY
With digital cameras, the number of combinations and permutations of settings has gone through the roof.
When I took photography in college (shortly after the Civil War), you had aperture, shutter speed, choice of film, and choice of lens; that was it. And you needed to be a Jedi Master to have a precise idea of the results you would get when you clicked the shutter.
With digital cameras that offer a high degree of user control, you have aperture, shutter speed, ISO, choice of lens (or focal length, in the case of a zoom), plus drive mode, metering mode, focusing mode, creative effects, and so on. Some are controlled software settings; others by hardware switches. The settings can be hard to keep track of.
Hold that thought for a moment.
I arise very early most mornings, do a few chores, and take care of a couple of things that I deem necessary for my physical and spiritual health. After that, I usually read or experiment with my cameras, testing various settings to make sure I know what they do.
Yesterday I was admiring the heron photos taken by The Smoking Camera (here Featured: 'Herons (some BIF) with Nikon V3 and 70-300CX' by The Smoking Camera ) when I thought I would re-check the image degradation effect of extended digital zoom on my FZ200. I intended to take a picture of our bird feeder at full optical zoom, full iZoom, and full digital zoom and compare the results at 100%.
So imagine my dismay when the FZ200 refused to focus on the bird feeder outside the window but instead focused – no matter what I did – on the dust on the window pane. Muttering Dark Things under my breath, I was about to send the camera into manual focus mode when I noticed that I had left it in Macro mode when shooting a flower the previous day. I switched the camera to normal autofocus mode, and all was well.
The moral of the story – for me, anyway – is that if you have a normal setup that you typically use, and you switch out of that “normal” setting for whatever reason, be sure to return your camera to “normal” mode before putting it away.
Of course, if you are really sophisticated, you could actually check your camera’s setting before you take that first shot, but that’s way above my level of typical suaveness.
Cheers, Jock
When I took photography in college (shortly after the Civil War), you had aperture, shutter speed, choice of film, and choice of lens; that was it. And you needed to be a Jedi Master to have a precise idea of the results you would get when you clicked the shutter.
With digital cameras that offer a high degree of user control, you have aperture, shutter speed, ISO, choice of lens (or focal length, in the case of a zoom), plus drive mode, metering mode, focusing mode, creative effects, and so on. Some are controlled software settings; others by hardware switches. The settings can be hard to keep track of.
Hold that thought for a moment.
I arise very early most mornings, do a few chores, and take care of a couple of things that I deem necessary for my physical and spiritual health. After that, I usually read or experiment with my cameras, testing various settings to make sure I know what they do.
Yesterday I was admiring the heron photos taken by The Smoking Camera (here Featured: 'Herons (some BIF) with Nikon V3 and 70-300CX' by The Smoking Camera ) when I thought I would re-check the image degradation effect of extended digital zoom on my FZ200. I intended to take a picture of our bird feeder at full optical zoom, full iZoom, and full digital zoom and compare the results at 100%.
So imagine my dismay when the FZ200 refused to focus on the bird feeder outside the window but instead focused – no matter what I did – on the dust on the window pane. Muttering Dark Things under my breath, I was about to send the camera into manual focus mode when I noticed that I had left it in Macro mode when shooting a flower the previous day. I switched the camera to normal autofocus mode, and all was well.
The moral of the story – for me, anyway – is that if you have a normal setup that you typically use, and you switch out of that “normal” setting for whatever reason, be sure to return your camera to “normal” mode before putting it away.
Of course, if you are really sophisticated, you could actually check your camera’s setting before you take that first shot, but that’s way above my level of typical suaveness.
Cheers, Jock