Canon S3

[SplshMtn99]

I saw the distance thing after I took them. I'm going to try again tomorrow.

To tell ya the truth, I don't get all into using fancy stuff. But its been fun learning it by trying to copy...as long as we get the settings info.

I feel I took on too much at once with new camera, photoshop elements, tagging & organizing 5000+ photos, switching from paper to digital scrapping....a new PDA....and now I have to replace my obsolete cell phone since it won't work any longer starting next year. LOL I'm ready for a simple life again. Don't take away my GPS though. Geocaching with it is the only enjoyment I get.

 

[SplshMtn99]

No way they'll have any left at THAT price!

Love mine....at ALOT more $ than that.

 

[SplshMtn99]

Funny, I just saw that thread over there tonight. I always format my cards in the camera when I first get them. And again after downloading pictures -- even just a few pictures. Sandisk cards. I've never run batteries low -- yet. And I've never filled a card --- yet. I've also had no problems ..... yet.

Knock on wood.
Crossing fingers, arms, legs & toes.

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

These are some low-light pics I took of my Dread Pirate game. It's an exceptionally cool "bookcase" game with very high-quality game pieces: metal ships, metal "gold" coins, wooden dice, glass gems and a cloth map. I thought it would look good by candle-light...

This one has a little bit of extra light from above:

This one is just 4 tea light candles:

I used my mini tripod on the table, about 3.5' away and zoomed in. All Manual settings (including focus) with wide apertures (3.5, 3.2) to get the shallow DOF and slow shutters (5", 3.2") to get enough light, no other extras like Expose Compensation or My Colors (though if I do this again I might try Vivid mode to make the gems pop a little more).

Out of 15 shots I took, these are the clearest. Even using the tripod and the 2-second timer, I must have bumped the table or made it move a tiny bit!

 

[Amy]

Neat shots, Stitch! I need to develop my "eye" a little more and learn to look at things differently; that's probably the biggest part of getting good pictures.

Back to the water drop photos: when I took mine last night, I had to tone down my flash - I was only about 2.5 feet away from the faucet, so at full flash it was really getting washed out. I tried manual focus, but couldn't get it to work, so I let the camera focus and it turned out fine. Unless it was because I have a brass faucet and the rest of you have silver? Maybe there's more contrast with a brass faucet so the auto-focus works better?

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

fairestoneofall: Lovely ducks!! I really love the three little guys clustered around their mom!!

Amy: Nice one!! A little cropping with Photoshop (or, what I use, the GIMP 2.0 -- it's Open Source ... which means *legally* free!) and you don't have to worry about that toothbrush! I'd crop it just enough to see the Disney logo on the book and about where Goofy's sword crosses behind the faucet ... that way you won't have extraneous faucet parts (and toothbrushes) drawing your eye away from the cool droplet!

Maybe you're right ... perhaps the contrast between brass and chrome makes focusing easier. You have to hold the MF button the whole time you're manual focusing ... the camera will say MF in the LCD, but it only focuses when the button is held (you'll see a focus indicator bar on the right side of the display when it's working). Ansel Adams said something to the effect that "Good photography is knowing where to stand." Developing your eye is largely a matter of looking at good photos and determining for yourself *why* you think they're good. That's why threads like this (and the other one on the other forum) are so useful!

SplshMtn99: Nice faucet! It looks like the camera focused on the fixture and not the aerator. For my drop, I was using the kitchen faucet and had the full length of the counter to shoot it fully from the side. If you're shooting straight in, there's a lot more to confuse the focus or even make MF more difficult. The main reason to use MF is to fix your focus on the aerator and then move down to where the drop will be without losing the tight focus....

Just a quick warning note to anyone trying to get a nice water droplet photo; DON'T try to do it in Macro mode ... make sure your camera is a safe couple of feet away from the water and use the optical zoom!!

Pea-n-me -- "I like having these types of challenges, feels like we're in class.": The more we learn, the better our photography will get! I think it's a good thing to keep inspiring each other ... I can't wait to try capturing a face in a droplet like AndrewG did with the Disney princesses!!

 

[seashoreCM]

Before you go, format all of the memory cards. Memory cards should be formatted "periodically", after every three fillups seems to be a good time.

Keep the deleting of pictures to a minimum and preferably limit deletes to the last picture taken. Specifically do not go through the pictures and delete a picture here, a picture there in order to free up space for more pictures. Carry more memory cards so you don't have to edit or delete until you get back home.

Computer geeks will know what "fragmentation" is.

Disney hints: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/disney.htm

 

[Soccer Princess]

Oh! I kept saying if it got under $300 I would buy it! Thanks for the head up OP -- Off too Office Depot this afternoon!!!

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

I called around and found out that the $279 was real (something about an Instant Rebate) but because the Office Depot in our area had only ONE S3 in stock, it wouldn't qualify for BestBuy's Price Protection.

I guess it just goes back to the old joke:

Customer: "But the store down the street is selling them for $279?"
Shopkeeper: "Why didn't you get it there, then?"
Customer: "Well, they were all out...."
Shopkeeper: "OK, then ... when *I'm* out I'll sell them for $279, too."


Oh, well ... $330 still a good price for this great camera ... I was just hoping to get an extra SDCard for, essentially, the same price I paid!

 

[Groucho]

Also, just in general terms, you're probably better off NOT filling each card to it's absolute capacity....

I don't think that this is an issue at all... where did you hear that?

Computer geeks will know what "fragmentation" is.

As I understand it, fragmentation is not really an issue because the memory is not used linearly anyway, so it really doesn't matter if it's fragmented or not - it starts out that way every time it's formatted. Regardless, the flash memory is so fast that fragmentation is really a non-issue, fragmentation comes into play with hard drives because of the mechanical heads having to move back and forth, which causes the slowdown... and even then, I don't subscribe to the "must fragment" mindset as fragmentation is harmless and has a very minor effect on performance with the fast hard drives of the past few years. I rarely if ever fragment.

I have a friend who used to work for one of the companies that makes a very well-known fragmentation tool and challenged him to come up with an example of where fragmentation actually hurts anything other than a minor performance hit, and he couldn't do it... yet those companies will happily tell you that it will do all sorts of wonderful things to make your PC run better.

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

Welcome to the "family," Baghdad Bob!

S3 users seem to be really well represented here on the DIS.

Feel free to snag the image tag from my sig., if you want....

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

I don't think that this is an issue at all... where did you hear that?

Nothing concrete, just several people posting in threads on other forums seem to be describing this problem as occurring when their cards are very full, or after taking a lot of video.

I don't think I've read one where the user's card was nearly empty and they lost pictures ... just full/nearly-full ones.

I don't think there's really enough evidence to point a finger at either a particular brand of card OR the camera, yet.

If you're afraid of losing pictures, it's probably best not to fill your cards; spreading your shots out across a number of cards means less to lose if there IS a problem....

 

[Groucho]

I can't agree on the filling-the-card thing. It's a waste to have a card and not use it to its full capacity.

All the memory card is doing is storing 0s and 1s... and it stores exactly the same number no matter how many pictures you have on there. And because (so I've been told) a memory card does not store data sequentially, but randomly across all the memory, the card is still having all its data used whether or not you consistently don't fill it.

I do agree that it's probably not right to blame a specific camera or card. Generally speaking, most any camera and most any card should not lose photos, as long as you follow proper procedures (don't remove card when it's being written to, and if in doubt, format), the main problem being when the memory card itself begins to fail, which any of them can do, no matter who makes them.

 

[SplshMtn99]

Thanks. If I get time to play again today, I'll set up the tri-pod to get a little more distance. Also, I was focusing higher than where the water comes out. I didn't have access to the computer to see this thread & info while trying since DH was trying to fix something for work.

 

[AndrewWG]

Generally speaking, most any camera and most any card should not lose photos, as long as you follow proper procedures (don't remove card when it's being written to, and if in doubt, format), the main problem being when the memory card itself begins to fail, which any of them can do, no matter who makes them.

About this...

I was wondering if the S3 has a small fault that when the batteries die, it is almost like removing the memory card when it is being written to. The S2 just doesn't register the shot at all, but is it possible that the S3 starts to write the file then shuts off? Seemed to me that people were mostly complaining that when the battery died, the card was having the problems reading. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Andy

 

[Soccer Princess]

Okay I just went to Office Depot and I am now the proud owner of the S3!!!! Be prepared for lots of questions!!

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

I was wondering if the S3 has a small fault that when the batteries die, it is almost like removing the memory card when it is being written to. The S2 just doesn't register the shot at all, but is it possible that the S3 starts to write the file then shuts off? Seemed to me that people were mostly complaining that when the battery died, the card was having the problems reading. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Eh, Groucho is probably right about not wasting card capacity. All I've got is some anecdotal evidence. I don't know enough about what's actually going on on an SDCard to make any sort of educated guess.

I wonder if you're on to something, though, AndrewWG ... so far, I've changed my batteries as soon as I saw the indicator and didn't try to "push" the charge to get a couple more shots or minutes of video. That might account for the complaints of "after lots of video" or a "run of continuous shots". Not the card, but the batteries messing it up.

Does anyone have any idea how long of an interval between appearance of the battery-low indicator and death of the batteries?

 

[AndrewWG]

Eh, Groucho is probably right about not wasting card capacity. All I've got is some anecdotal evidence. I don't know enough about what's actually going on on an SDCard to make any sort of educated guess.

I wonder if you're on to something, though, AndrewWG ... so far, I've changed my batteries as soon as I saw the indicator and didn't try to "push" the charge to get a couple more shots or minutes of video. That might account for the complaints of "after lots of video" or a "run of continuous shots". Not the card, but the batteries messing it up.

Does anyone have any idea how long of an interval between appearance of the battery-low indicator and death of the batteries?

I think (I really have no idea, but it is a guess) that the S3 may have a fault of not being able to notice batteries being totally dead before shutting itself off. I am guessing that it should shut down before the batteries are completely spent, giving it enough juice to totally write the whole file or just not trying to write it at all. The S2 has had no problems with this. I have killed numerous sets of batteries in it, mid-shot, and had no problems. On the S2, the battery light will be flashing for about 10-20 more shots, without flash, before it shuts off. It usually will shut off just after hitting the shutter, but that picture is never registered on the camera. Also, the battery is not TOTALLY dead yet either, as I can usually turn on the camera to view photos still (at least I did a couple times that I can remember).

If this is the problem with the S3 (we may never know), it would seem that it has a problem with power management that the S2 does not have.

Andy

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

I checked out that thread, and there's some more posts ... the pattern of dead batteries = dead SDCard pics seems to be holding up.

Part of the problem, for one user, was also a PC card reader....

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

Just thought I'd share this site with my fellow S3 DISers: Canon S3IS Users Group.

A whole forum for Canon S3 (and S1 and S3, too) users!

BTW, I'm DirePenguin over there, as well as on the Digital Camera Resource Page forums.