OF DIGITAL CAMERAS AND GETTING CARELESS

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

I have found myself being careless in many occasions while using my digital camera - things I would almost never do if I were shooting with film.

The first problem can be blamed on the camera itself - leaving the camera in timer mode. I was out shooting birds last weekend, aimed at a bird and clicked and did not hear the sound of the shutter. When I looked at the LCD to check what is wrong, I saw the timer was activated and counting down. I was not a bit surprised because I was getting used to doing it pretty often. This happens sometimes because the timer button in the camera is placed such that you might accidentally press it. And the camera does not have a separate timer button, but a 3-way button that switches between continuous, single and timer modes. This may lead to leaving the camera accidentally in timer mode. This time my subject was still on its perch and I had time to setup the camera but there were occasions when I missed a likely good shot because of this.

The next one is the biggest error, and I commit it very often - I forget to set exposure compensation or forget to reset the exposure compensation that was set earlier. This habit developed in me with an attitude of "I can always fix it later on the computer". I would never have been so careless with film, knowing that exposing badly is as good as forgetting about the picture. But over time, I have come to understand that post processing is no substitute to shooting properly. The image quality of a picture taken well is far better than an image that is 'fixed' to look good.

Using higher ISOs is another sin I am committing very often. My Canon EOS 350D is very small and does not have a good grip, resulting in camera shake. This often prompts me to shoot at higher ISOs. The camera gives pretty good results in ISOs up to 400. Degradations in picture starts becoming visible at much higher ISOs and I have found that they can be fixed too with noise reduction software. But many times I have ended up with noisier pictures that do not match the quality of a picture taken at ISO 100. What I really need to learn is to practice holding the camera steadier.

As a corollary to previous problem, I sometimes leave the camera at higher ISO and shoot even at broad daylight and repent later!

I shoot raw most of the time. Sometimes the number of pictures I shoot becomes overwhelming(a few 100s, actually small by many standards). Owing to that, I often leave many unprocessed pictures in my computer. It has not been a problem so far, but I suspect that if I do that for a long time, number of untouched pictures may become too much and I may loose track of them, or may never find enough time to process all the pictures.