Good photos from a canon S30?

[dilla]

Hello,

I was just wondering if its possibel to take good qualty photos from a mid to low level digital camera. I have the canon s30 it has a lot of features to adjust exposure, aperture, flash etc. it is 3 megapixels. Is it possible to take great photos with a camera like this i plan on buying a better camea in the near future but i'd like to learn to take good photos before I upgrade.

I was thinking of purchasing the book Understandig Exposure by Bryan peterson to help me learn to take better photos just hoping my camera is descent enough to learn on.

Thanks

[Moppie]

Its possible to take good photos with any camera, even a disposable.

As long as you know what your doing, and know the limits of your equipement, and shoot with in them then your only barrier is your own knowledge and skill.

Of course the more equipement you have the fewer restrictions you have on what photos you can take, but the greater the knowledge and skill level needed to take them.

[Jesper]

What Moppie said - you can make great photos with almost any camera, you don't need a very fancy or expensive camera. How good a photo is depends more on the photographer than on the equipment!

The S30 is certainly decent enough to help you learn to take better photos. You can put it on manual control so that you can set shutter speed, aperture etc. yourself and learn how exposure works. Buy the book first instead of a new camera and use your S30.

[dilla]

What Moppie said - you can make great photos with almost any camera, you don't need a very fancy or expensive camera. How good a photo is depends more on the photographer than on the equipment!

The S30 is certainly decent enough to help you learn to take better photos. You can put it on manual control so that you can set shutter speed, aperture etc. yourself and learn how exposure works. Buy the book first instead of a new camera and use your S30.

Thanks for the advice guys, I got the book and have been experimenting, but my question now is are aperture values on film cameras the same as on digital cameras? I Have been trying to take a photo with a sharp foreground subject and a blurred background but have been unsuccessful my aperture range is from f2.8-f8.0 and i was wondering if it is my aperture or if it is someting else that im not doing correctly.

from what i've read an aperture around f2.8 would produce the sharp foreground focused subject with blurred baground while an aperture of f22 would produce a sharp picture throughout.

any advice would be great thanks :wink:

[Jesper]

Thanks for the advice guys, I got the book and have been experimenting, but my question now is are aperture values on film cameras the same as on digital cameras? I Have been trying to take a photo with a sharp foreground subject and a blurred background but have been unsuccessful my aperture range is from f2.8-f8.0 and i was wondering if it is my aperture or if it is someting else that im not doing correctly.

from what i've read an aperture around f2.8 would produce the sharp foreground focused subject with blurred baground while an aperture of f22 would produce a sharp picture throughout.

any advice would be great thanks :wink:

OK, you've already found one of the differences between compact digital cameras and film cameras. The answer to your question "are aperture values on film cameras the same as on digital cameras" is not simply "yes" or "no".

For the exposure, yes they are the same. So a photo taken at f/5.6, 1/100s will be exposed exactly the same, whether it is on film or on a digital sensor.

For depth of field (which determines what part of the photo will be in focus and what won't), it is not the same. Compact digital cameras will have a much larger depth of field, so that even at large apertures (smaller f-stop numbers), the background will still be sharp. The reason for this is that the sensor of your camera is much smaller than a film negative. The exact details are a bit difficult to explain in simple terms, but here is an article that explains it: Depth of Field and the Digital Domain (http://www.photo.net/learn/optics/dofdigital/). The article talks about the 10D and is a bit mathematical, but it applies to your S30 as well. (The crop factor of the S30 is about 5x).

To get the same depth of field with a digital camera as with a 35mm film camera, you would need to have a camera with a sensor which is just as large as a film frame. There are only very few full frame cameras available, and they are very expensive, professional cameras, for example the Canon EOS 1Ds (11 megapixels).

Cameras like the 300D, 10D and 20D all have a sensor of about 22.5 x 15 mm, which is 1.6x smaller than a film frame (36 x 24 mm). Even on those cameras the depth-of-field will be a little bit larger than on a film camera (with the same settings), but it's still possible to blur out the background.

With compact digital cameras like the S30, the sensor is so small that even at the largest aperture (f/2.0) it's hard to get the background blurred.

[Moppie]

.........With compact digital cameras like the S30, the sensor is so small that even at the largest aperture (f/2.0) it's hard to get the background blurred.


Aha! What a great post, it explains some of the problems Iv been having with my A80 and getting a good DOF, and also what it is that makes the 1D better than the other Canon DSLR's.

Thank you.

[dilla]

Thanks for the reply Jesp,

I was starting to come to the same conclusion after doing some searching on the internet. So basically I can't get the blur effect I want with a digital camera unless I get an expensive pro camera, I guess the only way of getting the desired look is to cheat and edit on photoshop.

[Jesper]

Thanks for the reply Jesp,

I was starting to come to the same conclusion after doing some searching on the internet. So basically I can't get the blur effect I want with a digital camera unless I get an expensive pro camera, I guess the only way of getting the desired look is to cheat and edit on photoshop.

Well, you don't really need an EOS 1Ds, you can also do it with the Digital Rebel (300D).