New guy needs guidance.

Howdy!

God bless Google for allowing me to find this forum!

I need all the help I can get, and it looks like this is the place to get it.

My wife and I are going to Europe on Thursday, and I just purchased a used Canon G3 w/ 420 EX external flash. I am very green when it comes to photography, and I need a crash course.

I'm sure I can get good results from the auto setting, but I would like to know a little about manual settings (I imagine I can get better pictures in the manual modes).

Can someone explain the manual modes, and give me some good general settings for taking pictures outdoors (buildings and countryside) and indoors (people). I will also be taking photos inside the Louvre in Paris where no flashes are allowed. What are some good settings in that case?

This flash also has me confused. Seems like everything is way to bright.

Thanks for any help that you can give me, and I hope I'm not asking to much at once.

I look forward to taking some fantastic photos to remember our first trip to Europe.

Welcome to the forum... ok, you already know you should have bought the camera three months ago... but you didn't.

Here are a few quick thoughts. Check your manual for details or explanations of where these buttons are.

Exposure Compensation: I run my cameras (G1, G2, G5) regularly at -1/3 because of a slight tendency to overexpose. THEN... keep an eye on the scene you're shooting. Quite often you'll find that you want to change to -2/3 or even -1 for very bright scenes. Do not overexposure your photos or they will be "blown out" -- meaning you will lose details in the bright areas that simply cannot be recovered (there's nothing to recover: it's been blown).

Flash Exposure Compensation: With both the 420EX and the 550EX, I set flash exposure compensation to -2/3 for general use. You may have to adjust this for certain situations (usually related to the distance of your subject from the flash).

Consider buying an Omnibounce flash diffuser to leave on your flash at all times. Generally, you'll want to angle your flash toward the ceiling -- even if there is no ceiling. But the Omnibounce will also let you fire it straight ahead with decent results. To avoid people throwing shadows on walls, ask them to move away from the wall -- or make sure there's no wall at all.

Take several batteries for both the camera and the flash. And you'll need a way to download photos onto a laptop or other storage device, although you can hope to find places to burn CDs (but CDs don't hold very many).

White balance is critical if you're shooting JPGs. Make sure you adjust it (although you will forget and you will kick yourself and you will ruin photos). Considering shooting in RAW for this reason -- you can adjust white balance AFTER you take the shot. Like when you're back home weeks later.

I'll leave more guidance to other people.

Have a great trip.

Don

When travelling with a point and shoot camera, I find that outdoors in bright sunlight there are really no problems. Just go ahead and use auto mode. Most of your pictures will come out great and you will mainly only need to worry about backlight problems. With the 420 flash, you will be able to use it to fill the foreground subject if you need to.

Indoors is where you need to be careful. The small lenses on these camera struggle without loads of light, and the built in flashes just don't cut it from more than 5-10 feet away in typical indoor lighting, so again the 420 will really help here. Like Don said, try to bounce it off the ceiling whenever you can so you don't get blown out highlights, and only use the diffuser when you are shooting close.

The key is, practice as much as you can now before you leave, mainly inside the house at night using the bounce flash so you will see how that works compared to direct flash.

Enjoy your trip, and let us know how the pictures come out.

Oh, I forgot about the manual modes. In that situation where you will be indoors and cannot use a flash, you will probably want to use Av mode and select the widest aperture (lowest number). This will allow more light to get in, but at the expense of depth of field, meaning that objects further away from your subject will be more out of focus than with a narrower aperture. Alternately, you could try to rest the camera on something to help stabilize it, because you will probably be getting slow shutter speeds (<1/60) that will cause blur due to camera shake. Av mode is also good when you want to isolate your subject, and have the background be out of focus.

Outdoors, for landscapes, remember the sunny 16 rule, meaning when it is sunny out, you can set the aperture at f/16 in Av mode so you will have everything in focus.

Again, it would be good to experiment with Av mode at home before you go so you can see the results at the different apertures.

Thanks for the replies guys.

I really wish I had bought the camera earlier, but it just wasn't possible. Thankfully I found this forum atleast, so I can get some quick tips.

I was able to get an extra battery, and I also have 2 256mb compact flash cards. I'm going to the mall in a bit, so maybe I can get another CF card and the Omnibounce difusser (if they carry it at Wolf).

I don't think I quite get the white balance thing.

Thanks for the tips pcasciola for indoor photos, and the sunny 16 rule is awesome. I will have no problem remembering that one.

Well, except my G6 only goes to f8 and I think it's the same as the G3.

My recomendation is that you shoot flash on P mode and other shots in Av mode. This is quick and dirty but in Av, go lower (numericaly) in low light and higher in bright light. ISO 50 most of the time and 100 or even 200 in low light.

In bright, well lit areas you will be ok in Auto.

Yes, that's correct. I forgot most P&S's are limited to f/8 to avoid diffraction problems. I guess it's the sunny-up-to-16 rule then.

Lessee...

As others have said, white balance is critical. Press the down arrow ("WB") button on the four-way rocker, and then right-arrow over to choose the one you want. "Auto" is roughly the same as sunlight, which is rarely good indoors. Going to the right, you have sunlight, cloudy, tungsten (ordinary light bulbs), fluorescent, "H" fluorescent (never been quite sure what that is), flash (which is pretty close to sunlight), and two custom settings. Pick the one that best matches where you are, and don't forget to put it back later.

For museums, WB is a huge problem because they use special lights. Carry a white piece of paper, choose the custom setting, and point the camera at the paper. Zoom in so it fills the frame (focus doesn't matter) and press the "*" button. The paper should turn white in the display. You're now set up for the light that was falling on that paper. In a pinch, I often use the G3 lens cap, which is a reasonably good gray. Zoomed in and held close, it gives me good balance.

I go up to ISO 400 in most indoor settings. Let's face it: you aren't going to get super-quality photos in the Louvre. There are rules against using tripods, so the best you can do is a "hey, I was really there" shot. If you use 400, you're less likely to get motion blur. You can also shoot a bunch of shots in a row and then pick the best one when you see it on your computer screen. (The camera LCD isn't useful for this purpose, sigh.)

I'm going to vote against shooting in raw mode. The problem is that it'll fill up your card really fast, and with only 0.5 GB available, you'll run out of space. In JPEG mode, I can get about 800 shots on my 1 GB card, which was enough to last through a 10-day trip to Italy, but I used more than half of it.

Finally, a bit of non-photo European advice: get a cheap compass. I got mine at a toy store. It'll pay for itself over and over when you come up out of a subway and can't make sense of map.

Check your manual and set for maximum resolution and minimum compression. That will put you a long way toward better work as compared to the "factory" settings. You will need more memory cards but memory is cheap these days. With my G2 I get about half the memory card size in pictures at these settings - 128 meg card yields about 61 pictures. If you are getting substantially more than that then you are using setting that will never deliver optimum resolution. Remember that if the "best" resolution isn't in the original because you've compromised on settings then it can never be recovered in the end. And forget cropping out a highly desirable portion of a picture and retaining any degree of resolution.

Thanks for the white balance explanation there gkuenning!
That's really helpful as I don't have the manual.
I 've got another question. I've been looking at a magazine I picked up, and it says to sometimes use a burst of fill-in flash. How do I setup this 420 EX for fill-in?
Oh! I did pick up another compact flash card. I got a 512mb.

If you have no manual, download a PDF from the Canon site, you're not ever going to figure all the tricks out yourself!

With my G2, my standard setting was pretty much Aperture priority mode with the aperture set to f/5.6 to get sharp images where everything is in focus. Actually, f/5.6 is the 'sweet spot' of the camera, at f/8, images are not as sharp.

Do NOT user the 'preset' mode (Green box, Auto, ...), but 'P', 'A', 'T' and 'M'. 'P' does the same as 'Auto', but you have a lot of additional settings there.

Use ISO 50 where you can get away with it. Brace the camera to avoid shake, if necessary. Everything above ISO 100 gives horrible noise. Some of it can be cleared up with tools like Noiseware community edition, but I'd rather avoid it in the first place.

Understanding how focusing works is important ... read up on it!
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=17583

And finally, read all the interesting threads on the forum ... start with those marked 'sticky' or with a high rating (you can sort them by rating). It'll jump-start you. Most information that is given for the G2 and G5 also applies to the G3, as the cameras had more in common then was different. It's a very competent little camera.

Best regards,
Andy

Look. You're going on vacation and you will forget all that was explained above. You'll break into a sweat trying to set up different modes, and you'll screw up half your shots.
As suggested above, use P mode and use the flash where you think you'll need it. Turn off the flash when you don't need it. Also as suggested, if you don't have a manual, download it where it was suggested. Keep it with you when you go out and when you need help refer to it. When you're relaxing at night, take out the manual and try to remember one function, and try it the next day. By the time you get home you'll have an idea of how the camera works, and most of your shots will be keepers. Have fun.......

Use the link http://www.shortcourse​s.com/guides/canon/g3g​uide.pdf to get yourself a short pocket guide to take on the trip. Give everything a try, what the heck blowing it away doesn't cost anything.

Hay peeps, am new to this Camera thing too. I have a Rebel XT & is just want to know is there a good book out there where I can learn more about my camera & learn how to use the settings?