N00b with a A95 [Archive] - Canon Digital Photography Forums

thatonedude

13th of June 2005 (Mon), 21:21

Hello Peoples:D

I just bought a A95 and love it so far. I have wanted to get into Photograpgy for a while now and finally got a camera. I Post on some other forums (no other photography forums though) and i decided i wanted to find one that would hopefully help me in any when it comes to this.

So I am just stopping by to say Hi and making a intro thread:p

Leorooster

13th of June 2005 (Mon), 22:03

Hi Dude, welcome to the forum. I am sure that you will get as much help as you need here in this forum. People here are nice and knowledgeable. At least that's what I've expreienced.

yendikeno

14th of June 2005 (Tue), 17:01

Welcome! Hope you enjoy your A95 as much as I do mine. :)

Moniphoto

14th of June 2005 (Tue), 17:51

I love my cam A95 . I hope that you enjoy your cam. This weekend I buy a memory :)card.

Moniphoto

frazzm737

14th of June 2005 (Tue), 19:19

Congratulations and Good Luck! I'm sure you will like your new camera. I love my A95!

mycanon

14th of June 2005 (Tue), 22:03

Welcome to the group! I myself am new to thr group. I bought a A95 two weeks ago and still trying to make some experiments with it. I am thinking of buying those lens attachments (wide and telephoto). Are those being sold at eBay good enough? Any suggestions guys. Thanks.

iharding160

15th of June 2005 (Wed), 04:02

I bought a set of 0.4x, 2x, and macro for ~UKP75 from an ebay seller. Very pleased with them, considering the price. There is a slight drop in quality which is noticeble if you magnify the picture - mainly manifests itself as small areas of softness on the 2x and general softness around the edge of the 0.4x. I guess you're always going to get some kind of image degradation with conversion lenses just because there's extra glass in between the subject and the sensor. If you view full screen on the monitor or print out on a decent printer the images look absolutely fine though.

If I get time this evening I'll try to post up some of the images I took with the conversion lenses if anyone is interested.

Ian

mycanon

15th of June 2005 (Wed), 04:08

Thanks Ian. I will be eagerly awaiting for those sample shots.

pay_the _piper

15th of June 2005 (Wed), 06:58

Hi out there:

I’ve been lurking for a while and finally signed on a couple of months ago. A few days after that I bought an A95 - I live right around the corner from Beach Camera. Quite a machine!!! Before that I owned a Pro70 for about four years which paid for itself recording data at site reviews for cellular radio. Before that I owned a series of SLRs beginning with a Petri-flex5 in the late 50s and ending with a Ricoh in the early 90s and a couple of Minoltas and a 200mm lens in between. With the SLRs you didn’t realize how much you were shaking until you started printing your own larger blow-ups. With this machine you see the shake when you get in the computer. Although it would be nice to own a S2, I think this guy is going to do me for a while. Image Stabilization and 12X would be wonderful, but…..

As an aside, once I leave the safety of -AUTO- I encounter a raft of complexity which will take a quite a while to conquer. The frames that most of you have been showing puts mine to shame so I won’t bore you with views of my grandchildren and other mundane recordings. Just suffice it to say that I’m quite happy with the results so far. I’m using the 64M CF from the Pro70 that I gave to my grandson along with the 32 M CF and plain old AA batteries that came with the A95. I expect to get a 1g CF card (but I may change my mind and get two 512’s) and a NiMH battery set along with some kind of tripod or other support thing before a planned trip to Scotland in August. Your discussions have been quite helpful in showing some of the issues involved with the technology. I may also get the LensMate extension and an extender lens later (much later).

I note that when all is said and done, its still the eye that selects the view and pushes the button that makes the difference!!!

Moniphoto

15th of June 2005 (Wed), 07:55

In porters 52 mm $15.49.

Moniphoto

Moniphoto

15th of June 2005 (Wed), 08:16

porters.com

lol

lgvelez

15th of June 2005 (Wed), 18:33

I adore my A95 .. and I also keep looking at new Canons, and then realize that I only need what I have! I am always experimenting with new settings! I realize that I will never know that much about photo settings, so I enjoy the large quantity of scenes. My A95 is reliable and easy to use.

Laura in TX

Learner

15th of June 2005 (Wed), 19:45

He Dude and welcome,

im very new too, and luv my a95. I like taking close up pictures with it:) Im still learning sooo much and glad im here to learn as well.

Cant wait to see some stuff from more of the a95 users with settings and how shots were set up, so we can all learn together how to master this cool little cam!

Cheers!

Learner

bachscuttler

16th of June 2005 (Thu), 00:59

I've just bought the Rebel XT (350d) but used an A95 for a year and its a great introduction to manual control.

The swivelling LCD is a real winner and I still use it for macros until I can afford a macro lens.

Have a look at what the A95 is capable of at my A95 gallery:

http://steve120.fotopic.net

iharding160

16th of June 2005 (Thu), 03:57

I don't have any webspace at the moment, so I can't upload the full-size uncompressed images as I'd hoped to do. I've created an album here (http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/1503278)which will hopefully give some idea of what the conversion lenses can do, all pictures are unedited apart from the resizing and compression imposed by the album website. The 2x is good enough to be useful, the 0.4x is more for novelty value IMO as only the centre of the picture is sharp (and if you only want the centre, why use a wide-converter?). Haven't tried the macro yet. The lenses are made by Bower, and are 46mm thread with a step-down converter from the 52mm camera mount.

iharding160

16th of June 2005 (Thu), 04:01

Just realised, after posting my last message: If you click on the picture in album view, it opens up the original full-size image, which is more useful.

Ian

agent007

16th of June 2005 (Thu), 06:58

Trouble is the A80/95 performs badly under low light conditions..The S2 looks good with IS. Can be be a substitute for the A80/95?

KnobCreek

16th of June 2005 (Thu), 08:20

The A95 is a potent little camera and I absolutely love mine; I'm sure you'll love yous as well!

mrclark321

16th of June 2005 (Thu), 08:41

Welcome to the forum and enjoy, there is lots of help here!!

Dan

Moniphoto

16th of June 2005 (Thu), 10:35

Steve great photos.

enjoy the A95

thatonedude

16th of June 2005 (Thu), 15:19

wow, you gusy are pretty cool. Some of the other forums i post on are...well not excatly loving :p

Yea, I love the camera so far, i have so so much to learn. But i take alot of pics. More and more every day.

Unfortunitly i need to get some re-chargable battery's, I have gone through about 16 AA's so far and i have only had the camera for a week.

KnobCreek

16th of June 2005 (Thu), 15:31

Rechargable NiMH batteries are what I use most and they tend to last quite a long time... around 300+ pictures.

Moniphoto

16th of June 2005 (Thu), 18:33

lol I am thinking of buying one for about $40.00.....

astroltina

16th of June 2005 (Thu), 19:35

mycanon

16th of June 2005 (Thu), 23:24

Great photos Steve. Did you use any lens attachments or lens converters?

mycanon

16th of June 2005 (Thu), 23:28

I have 2 sets of 4 rechargeable batteries. A95, like my old A40, does not have a battery meter. It only gives you a warning when it's almost running out of juice. I bought a Panasonic charger and NiMH battery set from Costco and some extra batteries from Frys.

bachscuttler

17th of June 2005 (Fri), 00:28

Great photos Steve. Did you use any lens attachments or lens converters?

Cheers!

No, I didn't use any attachments....they were all straight off the camera but with a little help from Photoshop. I was saving for the DSLR so didn't see any point in adding any more accessories to the A95

I also invested in 2 sets of nimh's and a charger.
With those and a 1gb CF card I never had to worry about capacity of any kind and rarely had to switch batteries mid-session.

I always shot exclusively in manual mode.

My only beef was noise at higher ISO settings, some of which I found unusable.

rich_yau

18th of June 2005 (Sat), 00:57

Monarque1972

20th of June 2005 (Mon), 07:30

I also have the A95 and it's an amazing camera. But I suggest you to edit your pictures in some photo editing program (I'm using paint shop pro v. 8) . Even if the pictures straight out of the A95 are great, I think most of them can use some "contrast boosting" and especially some sharpening (as the conversion into JPEG format makes them a little smooth).

Some of my pictures, after sharpenning, look like they were taken by a high hand camera. I'm telling you, a little editing is the way to go for stunning pictures and the A95 will do the rest!!!!

enjoy your camera my friend!!!

Ryan184

21st of June 2005 (Tue), 08:48

Hello from Sydney, Australia. Im also new to this forum.

I purchased my A95 a week ago, and im so impressed by it. It's a great camera. The AA batteries that came with it died after the first day of use. So i bought energizer rechargeables 2500mAh, they have lasted me all week.

seeing as i know nothing about photography, i have been sticking to the AUTO mode.

I'd be interested to know what modes/settings other uses find useful on this camera.

Also, can you help with this-

ive been taking some night outdoor photos of my pet cat, and his eyes come out bright white in every shot. ive been using the auto setting with the flash on. is there another setting i can use to avoid this?

thankyou

tina
Hi Tina,

I'm not a photographer and I know less then little about photography and cameras.....but I do know Cats!
Cat's have a special reflective layer in their eyes that they use for seeing in low light conditions. They only way I know of to get good color and not get reflected light is to have a good natural light source. The more closed the pupil the better. At night the cats pupil is blown fully open. You could try taking your photo from farther away or in profile only. I did get a shot once of a cat on the back yard with no reflection. The porch light was on and I moved away from the light until I didn't see the reflection and took six pictures. One out of the six did not reflect.I'm sure it had to do with where the cats eyes were looking, not at me. I believe any "head on" shot will reflect back. If there is a way........ I will be watching to see if any of the experts can enlighten us. ;)

Another way to get rid of the reflection is to paint (edit) it away. I use Paint Shop Pro, and I am sure there are other programs too, that allow you to remove red eye in people and in animals. Some times it works out better just to just retouch the pupil color.

Examples:
This first photo had nice natural eye color but has that pesky red eye. I retouched the pupil using a black setting.

http://webpages.charter.net/file/blueeye.jpg[\img]

In this second photo the pupil was wide open so touching up the pupil would have made the whole eye look gray and not natural. I did the next best thing and selected the blue from the corner of the eye and retouched the whole eye to be blue. It still doesn't look quite right but it sure looks less demonic.
[img]http://webpages.charter.net/file/redeye.jpg

Kindest Regards,
Nan

Ryan184

21st of June 2005 (Tue), 08:51

Can someone tell me why I can't get that first photo to show up?
I went back and cut its dimentions down and shrunk the pixel size and still couldn't get it to post?
You can click it like a link.
Thanks,
Nan

supes

24th of June 2005 (Fri), 19:49

I got my A95 two weeks ago also and would love to know what settings you guys use for what stuff. I have taken as many pics I can but it is boring around here. I took some of a neighbors garden and some clouds but not much else here.

I would love to know a resource that can help me use the manual mode to the fullest though. I am dying to learn. :)

BTW I love the camera!