ranting abit(complete with story!)

I don’t understand why, but my friend and I went shooting for a friends bday photo shoot. Well she is blaming me for all her pictures coming out terrible. Mostly she doesn’t like the colors. She has a 40d and I have a XTI, so her pictures should automatically be better. I had my sigma 17-70 2.8-4.5 and she had my 50 f1.8 and was switching with her kit lenses 28 to something. I see her shooting in AUTO mode, and I ask why does she shoot in the auto modes? She responds “it’s because when I went to a canon seminar the person running it said they shoot in full auto all the times!” I was thinking in my mind who the heck does that? I remember myself shooting in only M mode until my photo teacher suggested that I shoot in AV when I started to feel overwhelmed with trying to get the exposure correct. I now do M and AV mode. I tell my friend you should try to go to AV mode, and she just surged at my suggestion.
She hands me her camera with my lens and tells me that she wants to be in at least one of the pictures. I take it and put it in M and take the shot. I forget to put it back in portrait mode (the one it was in when she gave it to me). She goes and takes couple pictures and wonders how come there too dark or too light. I tell her “forgot to put it back to auto, sry.” Then she goes on without saying anything to me. So iam shooting happily and I assumed she is also.
Well we get to night and my xti doesn’t do well in the given conditions (on the beach at 830pm) (even with flash AF assist, it kills the flash too fast); I had to switch to manual focus. She is still shooting I assume happily. My friends like to do jumping shots and I usually get good results with these. As I start shooting I get some good ones, and she is looking frustrated at her 40d in sport mode thinking out loud “what the heck is going on, an xti shouldn’t be getting better pictures in this situation then my 40d.” I showed her my settings and she still didn’t want to go to M mode and tells me “I shouldn’t have to do that!”
So the next day one of our friends is telling me that she is disappointed with all her pictures because I touched her camera. She claimed that she had to use the user manual to get it back to normal, I don’t know what I did, and all I did was change it to M mode. Now she is saying that I sabotaged her camera so my pictures will look better. Now she is being over critical of all my pictures saying they suck and stuff like that!
What should I do?
Have any stories like this?


we all went to eat and i brought my XTI with me, she wanted to see it, so i just hand it over. well when i get it back i shoot once and notice some "changes," she comments "how does it feel to have your settings changed?" I quickly changed them back (she only changed af point, wb, and af servo) i said "what changes?"
she was clearly disappointed!

glad to get this off my chest! dang auto shooters! i uploaded the jumping pics i was talking about the first one is mine, there both straight from the camera!

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New model girlfriend. Easy.

A bad workmen always blames there tools/partner ! Look before you leap ! hey I could go on, if I lend my camera to someone I always check the settings before I start shooting. To me you did nothing wrong, but that's my slant on it. What should you do stick your fingers in your ear's, and anyway if you are happy with your shot's S*D everyone else. Keep shooting, poss. new girlfriend !!!

To me it sounds like she has absolutely NO clue whatsoever on what she is doing or how to use her equipment and is now trashing you because of it. If I were you, I wouldn't go on a shoot with her again especially after her failed attempt to ""mess"" with your camera. Who knows what she may do to sabotage you in the future.

As for the Canon rep saying auto modes, he/she may have been referring to using AV/TV/P modes as those are considered auto modes instead of green box auto mode and she misunderstood.

The first shot you posted is a little too "flashed" for my tastes but the second one is terrific. Very cool shot.

My philosophy has been and still is - never lend any equipment to anyone. That may seem selfish, but at least you now understand why.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

Borrows your lens
takes your advice
then refuses advice
asks you to take photos of her
blanks you
bad mouths you behind your back
says you messed up her camera
Critisises your shots
Tries to mess up your camera
acts like a dick

Hmmmm - new friend for me!

I hope she is just a "friend", and you have no plan develop the relationship further.

Wait, she had to read the manual to "fix" her camera, but messes with 3 or 4 settings on your camera without a manual?
It isn't a question of equipment, rather photographer ability.

She might have decided that she needed the manual to find a "master reset" for her camera, since she suspected something deep down was changed.

J-Guy wrote in post #8680349
Wait, she had to read the manual to "fix" her camera, but messes with 3 or 4 settings on your camera without a manual?
It isn't a question of equipment, rather photographer ability.

I'm guessing she didn't even know what she changed and just button mashed and spun the control wheel like crazy .

wait she has a 40 and she doesn't know how to use it?

wow...

why argue with someone who obviously doesn't know her elbows from her... well you know...

Wow, in no uncertain terms you should tell her to grow up and that spending money on equipment doesn't mean she can take a picture!

ROFL!

The only thing that a 40D will automatically do better than an XTI is show-up the fleshy-bit behind the viewfinder as an ignoramus of epic proportion.

Someone who thinks (any type of) Auto mode is always the best way to get the best out of their equipment clearly doesn't have a clue.

There are so many questions one could level, or observations one might make that I'm spoiled for choice...

I'd muse that if she was so pee'd off that you'd taken her camera out of sandbox mode, why was she so pee'd off that it wasn't taking great pictures in said mode before you touched it?

If I was to take pity and lean towards enlightening her, I'd recommend a copy of 'Understanding Exposure' - or even just reading any of the 1,000,000+ 'easy to digest' brief guides on the relationship between aperture, shutter and sensitivity which are littered all over the web.

Then it sounds like it's probably worth her doing a little reading about White Balance too; and of course if she's prepared to take a 10% cut in moaning/blame-shifting time, she'd probably have enough time to get a basic understanding of the benefits of shooting RAW, and what can be done within a few seconds in ACR/DPP to make even the most technique-free shots look vastly improved.

Or, you could just play devil's advocate and say something along the lines of "Well, if my XTI takes such better shots than your 40D, lets swap!"

Regards,

Rob.

One shouldn't make fun of a noob - even a noob with malplaced attitude.

Look at her photos, and tell her why some of her photos didn't come out as good as yours. Explain why she has to think about aperture. Explain what happens with too long shutter time. Explain why ISO must be changed. Explain why the camera may get a little - or a lot - of the light from the flash, in relation to the amount of light from the background.

The problem with knowing to little, is that you often don't know exactly how little you know.