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< Esato Forum Index > Sony Ericsson / Sony > General > cmc0 goes "Snapshot Crazy" with his S700i Picture Taking Guide! Bookmark topic

A couple of corrections:

The white balance mode discussion is entirely incorrect. It has nothing to do with "low light". It simply controls the "colour temperature" of the photo (or the "tint" if you like). Our eyes and brains cope with viewing a white object under a yellow or blue light, but the camera cannot, without help. In Auto, it takes a stab at the colour temperature, but if you manually set it you will get better results. It will stop pictures indoors looking orange, and so on. If you forget to set it, or use Auto and get poor results, an image manipulation program can fix the error.

Spot photometry just meters the light level at the centre of the screen, as opposed to an average over the whole image. Trouble is you can't "hold" the exposure with a shutter half-press, so the correctly exposed subject has to be in the centre of the frame.

Without spot (identity removed owing to no permission):



With spot:



You have not discussed the big gotcha with this camera - Auto ISO mode. It is stuck in Auto ISO mode, and you have no real idea about how it's increasing the ISO, and the grain that goes with it. The aperture is fixed at f4. So it adjusts exposure time and ISO. Typical figures are (shutter - ISO):

Bright outdoors 1/288 - 160 (up to 1/1231)
Murky outdoors 1/25 - 200
Indoors (daylight) 1/13 - 1600
Indoors dim 1/5 - 3200
Indoors lit by incandescent 1/17 - 2000
Night club 1/5 - 4000

High ISO = grainy image
Slow exposure = blurry image.

On my real camera, I would only go to ISO 400 in a real emergency, 100 is normally my limit. Here we are going grainy when the sun goes in. Likewise we are breaking the "slowest shutter when handheld" rule at all times when indoors.

Because the aperture is fixed, you will always get the lens aberration (blurring) at the edges, regardless of light level.

So, light it well, and hold it steady. Understand that you will get grainy pics at anything but high light levels. Likewise you will get blurry shots inside. Put the camera down and use the self timer to eliminate camera shake. You may notice there are some very good shots lurking around here - all are taken at very high light levels.

Have a look at the hole the light has to go through. Pinhead, at most!

PS [edit] You can't have a macro mode - this is a fixed focus lens, with no moving parts, so you can't shift any optics to get a very close focus (macro).

Finally - the challenge is on! Given such a basic camera, are you good enough to take a good photo with it? When I was learning, we were given a box brownie and told to try and get something "interesting" out of it. We used its limitations to generate "interesting".

[ This Message was edited by: apotts on 2004-10-28 00:16 ]
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Posted: 2004-10-28 00:55:42
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Quote:
On 2004-10-27 20:55:08, cmc0 wrote:
Quote:
On 2004-10-27 19:43:58, manunitedfan wrote:
crap review


If you don't like it, it doesn't help you to be rude. Let's see you post a better and more detailed guide before you judge, otherwise as the saying goes "put up or shut up"



I actually think he was joking... it smacks of Brit humour... don't worry about it.

It's a great review
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Posted: 2004-10-28 00:59:42
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apotts,

thanks for the input. I'm sorry I did'nt go into more detail on the white balance. I actually know that it adds a certain color tint to the photo(which is what I meant by artifical lightning). ,just that I was going for a "beginner's guide" method by describing what the average person would notice from using the white balance. I'm sorry I wasn't more descriptive. Same with the Spot Phometery, I knew it measures the light level at the center of the screen (I thought that's what I said, sorry again if my wording is difficult to understand!)

Good point about the fixed aperature and the Auto ISO. I guess SE did't bother to think the user needed that much control for their S700i pics so it was'nt added. I guess since the lens is a fixed focus lens, that also may be why SE wanted to keep more things auto, not just forget to add a macro mode.

Thanks for the input as it's always apprieciated apotts and everyone here at Esato, if my dialect or wording is diffcult to understand, feel free to let me know


[ This Message was edited by: cmc0 on 2004-10-28 01:58 ]

[ This Message was edited by: cmc0 on 2004-10-28 02:04 ]
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Posted: 2004-10-28 02:56:46
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nice review
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Posted: 2004-10-28 22:30:47
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Can anybody tell me the examples of when i should pick one of the white balance settings in the camera? I usually take pics in the club. I dont know much about digital cameras or any cameras . Thanks u guys.
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Posted: 2004-10-29 01:20:35
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very nice review. congrats for the effort.
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Posted: 2005-06-12 11:33:07
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[b]thanks[/b] [url]http://esato.com[/url]
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Posted: 2008-09-28 02:18:50
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