S200 depth of field

[Merseault]

Hi all,

I recently got an s200, and I am wondering if anyone has been able to acertain the best ways to get specific depth of field results (shallow, not shallow,etc). ie: What settings (flash, ev, zoom, etc) tend to give the different results.

thanks for any help!

merseault

[klee]

What you are describing .. unfortunately is not available as a selectable 'program mode' on the camera. In the SLR world these would be the 'priority' modes - and the depth of field result you are after would be the Aperture Priority mode. The ultra compact IXUS' cannot do these ... yet. Not even the latest S230. The whole point of these compacts is that they are classed as 'point and shoot' cameras. I know, it would be a world class beater if Canon managed to include some of those Program Priority modes into the ultra compact IXUS range.

The closest you can achieve your desired effect is using the Macro mode where the subject in the middle is sharply focussed and background is blur/soft. But y'know thats macro mode - ie 10cm between camera and subject buddy. Also don't shake!

KLee

[JohnMN]

A wide angle will give you a wide depth of field, that's eveything from right in front of the camera to infinity should be in sharp focus. The opposite happens when you use the zoom and close in on say an object in the middle distance, this will throw the background out of focus. The f stop will go from say a f2.8 to an f4.8 or higher which means less light is also entering the camera. Every stop above f2.8 or whatever your lowest number is cuts the amount of light in half. You can also change the shutter speeds (choose faster ones) this has the same effect as closing down the aperture and again letting less light in.

JohnMN

[Tom W]

klee wrote:
What you are describing .. unfortunately is not available as a selectable 'program mode' on the camera. In the SLR world these would be the 'priority' modes - and the depth of field result you are after would be the Aperture Priority mode. The ultra compact IXUS' cannot do these ... yet. Not even the latest S230. The whole point of these compacts is that they are classed as 'point and shoot' cameras. I know, it would be a world class beater if Canon managed to include some of those Program Priority modes into the ultra compact IXUS range.

KLee

I am not sure how this applies to the S200 as I don't know the exact feature set. I have the S230 and while it has no direct control over aperture, you can indirectly affect the aperture, at least in well-lit situations, by changing the ASA film speed setting. That is, you can use a slower film speed to open up aperture (and slow the shutter - the camera seems to do a little of both) giving a somewhat smaller depth of field, while speeding the film equivalent to 200 will close the aperture a bit giving a larger depth of field. Since the camera seems to adjust both aperture and shutter speed, you can use this technique to help freeze action as well.

Keep in mind that faster ASA speeds result in more "noise" or graininess so use judiciously. Also keep in mind that the range of adjustment isn't all that large.

I haven't played with it much, but the +/- compensation may help with aperture as well. You can always make minor counter-adjustments with software. So, you may (and I haven't tried this yet) be able to underexpose with the compensation setting to raise your f-stop and increase depth of field. Then, you can brighten it back up with software afterwards. I may try this out myself soon.