A40 Questions - Battery and Red-Eye

[jpan]

I am a new user to both Digital photography as well as the A40. I have had mine for about a month now and I have a couple of questions.

1) Battery life - On my first day, I went through the batteries that were supplied with the camera... that is roughly 30-40 pictures and maybe 5 or 6 video clips. I have since been using rechargable alkalines ( not expensive ones ), but the results seem to be about the same.... This does not seem in line with what the manual says to expect... Have other people had the sam experience?

2) Red Eye reduction. Most of my indoor photo have red-eye. Is this unusual or do other see the same?

Thanks for you help.

john

[jgillard]

1) Battery life - Alkalines will not cut it. They die very quickly in high drain devices, not just digital cameras. Get yourself a set of Nimh batteries of at least 1600mah and a charger. You will not be disappointed with their performance. Remember though that it will take a few charge cycles for the batteries to reach their peak performance. You should get at least 100+ shots out of a charge cycle.

2) Red eye - Have you tried the redeye reduction flash option? This will fire a preflash to close the eyes iris, before firing a second flash to take the picture. This is a problem with most compacts as the flash is pointed directly at the subjects eyes.

[JohnMN]

As the previous contributor said red eye is a problem with compact cameras. Try and stand back further and maybe use the zoom to fill the frame with your subject rather than standing really near to them. You could also try framing them from an angle rather than a full frontal picture. If you have PhotoImpression version 3.0 which I got along with my camera you might like to try the following:

CORRECTING RED EYE USING ARCSOFT PHOTOIMPRESSION.

1. Install the Arcsoft Camera Suite software from the disk.

2. When installation is complete, click on the START button, PROGRAMS,
ARCSOFT CAMERA SUITE, PHOTOIMPRESSION 3.0

3. When the software appears onscreen, you will be in the GET PHOTO
mode, (green button top left corner). In the lower half of the screen,
click on the 'From File' button.

4. Click on the 'Browse' button and you will be able to go to wherever
you have the image stored that you want to work on. Hard disk, CD-Rom,
Zip etc.

5. Find the image, click on it and then click on the 'Open' button.
The image will now appear in PHOTOIMPRESSION in the centre of the black
screen.

6. Click on the 'Edit' button, then click on the 'Retouch' button.
The screen will change and a row of 15 buttons will appear under the
photo window. Red eye removal is the seventh button along from the left.

7. Click on this button to select it and then move up to where the
magnification tool is (near the top right corner) and click a number of
times on the plus sign to 'zoom in' on your image, keep clicking until
you reach 100%. That should be good enough unless your image is really small.

8. Above the magnification tools is a thumbnail window of your selected
image with a blue rectangular box in it. This shows you the area you
are currently seeing in the large picture.

9. Move the mouse pointer into the centre of this blue rectangular box
and click and drag it around to get the area where the red eye problem
is located.

10. When you are happy with this, move into the large image and click
drag from one corner of the red eye problem to the other corner and it
will disappear right before your very eyes.

11. Repeat steps 9 and 10 for all other problem red eye in your image
and possibly increase the magnification to get more accurate results.

12. When you are happy with the results click on the 'Save' button.
Click on Save As, a Save As dialog box appears and allows you to save
the new image in a number of formats. I would choose either the BMP,
TIF or JPEG formats, also be sure to give the file a different name to
the one it had when you loaded it in. This is to make sure you don't
overwrite the original.

Let me know how you get on.

JohnMN

[jpan]

I have gathered from some of the discussions on this form that NiMH seems to be the way to go for rechargeables... so I intend to go that way... My concern stems from the fact that I have also read that I should expect 150-200 shots on a set of quality non-rechargeable alkalines ( Duracel ). There has been some mention in some places that if you get alot less than that there may be something wrong with the camera... I have heard suggestions that this may be due to the "patch" that was available and I have also heard suggestions that this may be due to a faulty batter compartment cover... My cover does not not seem to line up exactly with the rest of the camera body when the batteries are in... Should I be concerned about this..?

jgillard wrote:
1) Battery life - Alkalines will not cut it. They die very quickly in high drain devices, not just digital cameras. Get yourself a set of Nimh batteries of at least 1600mah and a charger. You will not be disappointed with their performance. Remember though that it will take a few charge cycles for the batteries to reach their peak performance. You should get at least 100+ shots out of a charge cycle.

2) Red eye - Have you tried the redeye reduction flash option? This will fire a preflash to close the eyes iris, before firing a second flash to take the picture. This is a problem with most compacts as the flash is pointed directly at the subjects eyes.

[jpan]

Thanks for the tip.. I had not had a chance to play with the Arcsoft camera suite and i was wondering whether to use it or to load up an old copy of MS Picture It, which I have had since I bought a scanner but have not really needed to play with yet... It is good to know that the Acrsoft can clean up red-eye....


JohnMN wrote:
As the previous contributor said red eye is a problem with compact cameras. Try and stand back further and maybe use the zoom to fill the frame with your subject rather than standing really near to them. You could also try framing them from an angle rather than a full frontal picture. If you have PhotoImpression version 3.0 which I got along with my camera you might like to try the following:

CORRECTING RED EYE USING ARCSOFT PHOTOIMPRESSION.

1. Install the Arcsoft Camera Suite software from the disk.

2. When installation is complete, click on the START button, PROGRAMS,
ARCSOFT CAMERA SUITE, PHOTOIMPRESSION 3.0

3. When the software appears onscreen, you will be in the GET PHOTO
mode, (green button top left corner). In the lower half of the screen,
click on the 'From File' button.

4. Click on the 'Browse' button and you will be able to go to wherever
you have the image stored that you want to work on. Hard disk, CD-Rom,
Zip etc.

5. Find the image, click on it and then click on the 'Open' button.
The image will now appear in PHOTOIMPRESSION in the centre of the black
screen.

6. Click on the 'Edit' button, then click on the 'Retouch' button.
The screen will change and a row of 15 buttons will appear under the
photo window. Red eye removal is the seventh button along from the left.

7. Click on this button to select it and then move up to where the
magnification tool is (near the top right corner) and click a number of
times on the plus sign to 'zoom in' on your image, keep clicking until
you reach 100%. That should be good enough unless your image is really small.

8. Above the magnification tools is a thumbnail window of your selected
image with a blue rectangular box in it. This shows you the area you
are currently seeing in the large picture.

9. Move the mouse pointer into the centre of this blue rectangular box
and click and drag it around to get the area where the red eye problem
is located.

10. When you are happy with this, move into the large image and click
drag from one corner of the red eye problem to the other corner and it
will disappear right before your very eyes.

11. Repeat steps 9 and 10 for all other problem red eye in your image
and possibly increase the magnification to get more accurate results.

12. When you are happy with the results click on the 'Save' button.
Click on Save As, a Save As dialog box appears and allows you to save
the new image in a number of formats. I would choose either the BMP,
TIF or JPEG formats, also be sure to give the file a different name to
the one it had when you loaded it in. This is to make sure you don't
overwrite the original.

Let me know how you get on.

JohnMN