A Testament to Youth in Pixels
I borrowed Chris' little Canon digital camera for my trip to Boston a month ago. I didn't want to cary my old Sony Cybershot that is about twice the size of the little thing I managed to take almost 400 photos on my week-long trip. I still haven't uploaded all of them, but I did know that I liked his camera.
Once I got home I found a Canon Elph Powershot 500 on sale and quickly grabbed it up off of Amazon. Apparently Cannon's been updating their line, but my new little camera has 7 megapixels and fits very easily in my pocket, much better than the old Sony. It also uses a memory card that will let me keep on shooting for ages.
I was happy to give my camera it's first real workout in last weekend's ACL Festival. Chris took his as well, and he seemed to come out with much clearer, sharper photos than I did.
You've already seen a few examples in my ACL recaps, but if you want to see the full photo sets, click HERE for mine, and click HERE for Chris's.
There are three types of photos that were taken at ACL. They are:
Photos of Friends
Photos of the Event (Stages, Crowds, Atmosphere, Bands)
Bear Snipeage
Photos of friends is easy to understand, and can be easy to take. They usually will be close and are not necessarily running away from the camera, depending on your friends. Sometimes those pictures are set up and posed, other times you capture a random moment with varying degrees of quality.
The thing is, I'm not really good at taking a picture, and I'm even worse at being patient and waiting for the camera to focus and take the picture. I missed several shots thinking the camera had captures what I was seeing, but it was just getting started, and I needed to hold in the button for longer to actually get the image.
Let's look at two illustrated examples of bad photography from yours truly. First a photo of the event.
Do you see the band? No, of course you don't. Even though I have the zoom on, you still see more sky than band, and the focus is better on the guy with the red T-Shirt than the stage. This has been a common problem not only with the new camera, but with the old one as well.
Of course, I could do better about getting closer. Now let's look at an example of many, many failed attempts at random hottie bear snipage:
Do you see the bear? Nope, I didn't get the shot before he went behind the other person. I couldn't get the camera set for another shot. Still, the photo is blurry, as many of my snipage photos are. Both Chris and Ben (qualitykill) did a much better job of getting the hottie photos.
I guess that you're going to go through several bad photos to try to get a few good shots. I think there's an old mentality, one where you were still using your old instamatic and you only had 26 chances to get good photos, so you had to make every shot count. Now with a gig of storage you can waste away. It's only pixels, you know? Still, it's the matter of being patient and learning how to truly USE the camera's abilities.
Chris is taking a photography class this semester, but it's geared to self focus cameras like Chris' big Rebel XT. I wonder if there's a class for us little auto focus camera guys who just want to get that shot of the band, or the hottie pocket bear.
Once I got home I found a Canon Elph Powershot 500 on sale and quickly grabbed it up off of Amazon. Apparently Cannon's been updating their line, but my new little camera has 7 megapixels and fits very easily in my pocket, much better than the old Sony. It also uses a memory card that will let me keep on shooting for ages.
I was happy to give my camera it's first real workout in last weekend's ACL Festival. Chris took his as well, and he seemed to come out with much clearer, sharper photos than I did.
You've already seen a few examples in my ACL recaps, but if you want to see the full photo sets, click HERE for mine, and click HERE for Chris's.
There are three types of photos that were taken at ACL. They are:
Photos of Friends
Photos of the Event (Stages, Crowds, Atmosphere, Bands)
Bear Snipeage
Photos of friends is easy to understand, and can be easy to take. They usually will be close and are not necessarily running away from the camera, depending on your friends. Sometimes those pictures are set up and posed, other times you capture a random moment with varying degrees of quality.
The thing is, I'm not really good at taking a picture, and I'm even worse at being patient and waiting for the camera to focus and take the picture. I missed several shots thinking the camera had captures what I was seeing, but it was just getting started, and I needed to hold in the button for longer to actually get the image.
Let's look at two illustrated examples of bad photography from yours truly. First a photo of the event.
Do you see the band? No, of course you don't. Even though I have the zoom on, you still see more sky than band, and the focus is better on the guy with the red T-Shirt than the stage. This has been a common problem not only with the new camera, but with the old one as well.
Of course, I could do better about getting closer. Now let's look at an example of many, many failed attempts at random hottie bear snipage:
Do you see the bear? Nope, I didn't get the shot before he went behind the other person. I couldn't get the camera set for another shot. Still, the photo is blurry, as many of my snipage photos are. Both Chris and Ben (qualitykill) did a much better job of getting the hottie photos.
I guess that you're going to go through several bad photos to try to get a few good shots. I think there's an old mentality, one where you were still using your old instamatic and you only had 26 chances to get good photos, so you had to make every shot count. Now with a gig of storage you can waste away. It's only pixels, you know? Still, it's the matter of being patient and learning how to truly USE the camera's abilities.
Chris is taking a photography class this semester, but it's geared to self focus cameras like Chris' big Rebel XT. I wonder if there's a class for us little auto focus camera guys who just want to get that shot of the band, or the hottie pocket bear.