Just got an A700..

[Boxer_kidd]

Is it a good cam, in your proffesional opinions? What are some of the features?

[AutoXer]

I shoot weddings and events "semi-professionally", if that means anything, and I got an A700 for my "carry it anywhere snapshot camera" to replace an older Fuji. Gives nice results once you get used to its quirks: 1) the optical viewfinder is way off in accuracy compared to the LCD. Because of that 2) don't think if you set the camera to center focus spot that centering your subject in the optical finder will get good focus. 3) On auto ISO, it shifts to a high and rather noisy ISO pretty quickly.

Ok, now for the good:

1) Terrific image sharpness (watch that 6x zoom though - its hard to hand-hold in low-light).

2) Excellent exposure accuracy, including awesome low-light exposure accuracy.

3) Very accurate color

4) All the "pro" features you could want. I use shutter priority and aperture priority a lot, so its nice to have it available.

It also takes a very nice black & white image, and its wonderfully compact - the Canon case for it is as small as it can be, and a steal at under $10.

Other stuff: turn down the in-camera sharpening if you want to make good 8x10's (i.e. do your sharpening in photoshop). And investing in a faster SD card is worth it - for example, the Sandisk Ultra II card writes an image over 3 times faster than the standard Sandisk card (by my timing, under 1.5 seconds versus 4.8).

Jim

[Transit]

I've had the A700 for a week :)
Interesting comments AutoXer.
All user tips greatfully accepted :)
Are there prefered settings that you leave each mod in ?

I'm taking lots of test shots to learn its settings.
Enjoying the B&W hugely...
Concentrating on Manual at the moment.
tripod use with low light is very interesting.
How can I get spot metering to stay on rather than defaulting to evaluative ?

Cheers
Pete

[AutoXer]

Hi Transit -

One correction on my post, that smiley face at the end of the very last sentence crept in accidently, and the time should have read 4.8 seconds (vice less than 1.5 seconds with the Sandisk Ultra II card). So the fast card is worth it to me.

On the metering, I almost never use spot. The evaluative metering is incredibly accurate, and unless you can make a really good judgement about relative brightness of different things in the scene, the spot metering will just give more bad shots than good. I would guess that is why the camera defaults back to evaluative - its trying to "help" you. With spot you obviously can meter several things to get a good overall average, but really, its so much faster to use evaluative. Canon's evaluative is truly excellent - I even use evaluative with my "pro" Canon camera when shooting weddings, for the same reason ... speed and accuracy. So don't get hung up thinking "pro's use spot" - pro's use what works best, and Canon's evaluative flat works. Results matter, not metering mode.

That said, if you do a little reading on the zone system to get a basic understanding of it, you can literally use this camera on manual to shoot black & white using a partial zone system. You'd just pick the darkest shade where you want to have some detail, meter that, then underexpose two f-stops from what the meter says to put that tone on zone 3. Then adjust contrast in Photoshop (accomplishes much the same as varying the processing time for film). It works! Have some fun with that.

The A700 has proven quite amazing on long-exposure night shots - I simply let the metering system make the decisions because I wasn't doing any better making my own decisions. There aren't a lot of cameras I've ever used that could pull it off so consistently (and I have, uh, let's say, a LOT of years of experience), but the A700 sure does! Its small size and light weight make using "available tripods" easy (that being bracing it against a tree, on a railing, on a trash can, against a light post, whatever - I used 'em all on a recent Florida trip and as long as I was working at the wide angle end the results were amazing). I know, the rules says "use a tripod" ... well, I never was much for rules ...

I have Program, TV, and AV modes all set the same - the lowest setting for sharpening, contrast, and saturation, then I adjust these in Photoshop Elements (yes, I'm not afraid to use Program in normal, sunlit conditions when not shooting action shots). Its just my opinion that, when making corrections to jpeg images, you can add contrast, and especially saturation & sharpening into the image nicely, but if it was shot with these overdone you simply cannot back these settings off in Photoshop and get as good a result, ESPECIALLY the sharpness (there is no fixing an oversharpened-in-the-camera jpeg). I'd rather control how much goes in.

Some other tips: I mentioned the camera switches to a faster, but also fairly noisy ISO speed a lot. You can avoid this in the night shots by manually setting the ISO speed so it stays at 100 - this will avoid the noise. Also, while that optical viewfinder may not be all that accurate, I found I could hand-hold the camera down to around 1/8 second and get a majority of my shots sharp by shooting that way. But if I used the "hold-the-camera-out-so-I-look-like-Frankenstein" technique of using the LCD to view I rarely could shoot below about 1/60th.

Else than that, you are doing exactly what you should do - shooting lots of test shots and seeing how they come out. When you find something you want to photograph, shoot it many times from many different angles, and don't forget to go back at different times in different light and shoot it again. Most of all, don't be afraid to experiment or try something different - you don't have to always follow the "rules".


JimZ

[Boxer_kidd]

I didn't know that there was a b&w setting where is htat?

[Transit]

Great points thanks AutoXer :)
Will keep shooting !
Particularly interesting the metering for b&w idea .

Boxer there is a b&w setting
open shooting info with Funcset
look in 'my colours'
page 60 in the manual :)
My recent attempts with b&w, in low light , 15sec exposure on tripod further convinced me I bought a good camera :)

As far as know it is better to shoot in colour then convert to greyscale off camera.
I found this site helpful... http://www.blackandwhitedigital.com/

Pete

[AutoXer]

Actually, I agree with shooting color and converting in general, but if you are just learning black & white doing it in-camera means you see the image on the LCD screen and can learn how colors translate to tones in B&W. Two colors that are clearly different in color may be the same gray tone in black & white and look awful - but you'd see that on the LCD and perhaps add a filter over the lens to change the tonal rendition. So as a learning tool, to use until you learn to see and think in B&W, I think in-camera is great. I'd have killed to have the capability to view scenes in Black & White while I was learning years (and years) ago ...

jZ

[Transit]

I have Program, TV, and AV modes all set the same - the lowest setting for sharpening, contrast, and saturation, then I adjust these in Photoshop Elements (yes, I'm not afraid to use Program in normal, sunlit conditions when not shooting action shots).

Does this mean you shot in 'custom colours' and you set all the sliders hard left ?
I agree with your comment about in cam b&w giving preview and learning chance
:)
Pete

[AutoXer]

Exactly Pete - custom colors, all settings hard left. That way I can control how much of each goes in with Photoshop. But remember, that's my way - don't be afraid to see if you like something different, or if you like letting the camera add some or all of it in. There is no "right" way.

Jim