Canon S3

[hopemax]

As for the night-time parade, it's almost impossible. This is the ONLY photo that turned out good for me; you just don't have a wide enough aperture on the S3 to capture moving objects.

I've taken plenty of good shots of Specto with the S1. I have an S5 now, but I don't get to see Spectro for another 13 days.

My tricks are

1. Get a good location. I like to sit where the floats are changing direction. So around the hub, or Town Square, makes the corner in Frontierland.

2. I don't wait until the float gets right in front of me, then I get the blurry shots. I take it farther a way, and zoom in. And I try to take them more "head on" than from the side.

These are unedited photos. If I were getting ready to print, I would sharpen it a bit, do the noise filter, and look at the histogram.

Looking at my settings shot in aperture priority, f/2.8, 1/30s, ISO 400 and I had the exposure bias to +2. I'm sure more experienced photographers are screaming, but I'm happy with the pic for my scrapbook.

 

[zackiedawg]

I've got two suggestions...one for the quick-n-easy method, and one for the ever-so-slightly more advanced method.

First off, your camera is fine for night shots - very good in fact. There are two different kinds of night shots and people sometimes confuse the two: Night shots with slow shutters, and hand-held night shots. For the first, any P&S camera can produce a very nice, printable result that should make anyone happy and look like a pro took it. For the second, your camera won't be capable, and you'd need a DSLR with a good low light lens.

Fortunately, when most people think of night shots, they think of the first variety.

For the super-simple method, turn your camera dial on top to the 'Night Scene' mode - it's the one that looks like a silhouette of a person in a box with a star in it. This mode will automatically set the camera to slow shutter speeds to capture more ambient light. It will also fire the flash if you don't disable it - so either turn the flash off if you know how, or just let it fire and make sure noone is in front of you. The most important thing is: Do not move the camera at all! Lay it down on a flat surface, or a tripod if you have one, and use the self-timer to trigger the shutter (even your finger pressing the button can move the camera).

Now, if you're willing to just try to play with the settings a little bit...the best thing to do would be to manually set your ISO to the lowest possible setting (there's an ISO button on the camera...press it, then use the 4-way selector to choose '80'...that's the lowest ISO, which means less noise in the shot). You will need to at least be in 'P' mode on the dial on top of the camera (Auto mode doesn't let you change any settings, whereas P mode works exactly the same as Auto mode, but allows you to override some of the settings). Don't worry - the camera will still make all the decisions and set everything except that one thing you changed (ISO).

From here, you can actually just lay the camera on a surface, aim, use the self timer, and press the shutter - the camera will take the picture and automatically use a longer shutter speed to get enough light to compensate for the low ISO. That's when you get those lovely, smooth, bright night shots that look so good.

As you get more brave, you can start to experiment with Tv mode - that will allow you to manually choose a shutter speed of several seconds to get just the shots you want. It's not as hard as it sounds!

 

[bob100]

To MA toes

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

Hummingbirds finally found my feeder! I put out a hummingbird feeder in April and kept it clean and filled all summer and had no luck.

Then, about two weeks ago I visited a local nature area where they had well-visited hummingbird feeders and the lady in charge let me in on their "secret". She suggested that I try hanging a basket of red flowers (like impatiens) near the feeder. The birds would see the bright red blooms, come to investigate and then find the feeder. She was right!! I first saw them showing up about three days after hanging the flowerbasket and they've been drinking the feeder dry ever since!!

Here's two decent pics of my tiny visitors. The feeder's in a fairly shady spot so I had to use higher ISOs (200) to get a fast-enough shutter speed even shooting wide open at 3.5 (full zoom). The bokeh is pretty good on the first one and you can see the reflection of my house in the glass of the feeder, too....

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

Here's a couple more S3 night shots:

Spectromagic:

Fantasmic! This one is taken at full zoom from as far back as you can get:

I usually set my S3's Custom mode based on Av mode with max. aperture (2.7-3.5 depending on zoom -- try not to zoom if you can help it to get the wider aperture), ISO 400 and Spot metering. This way I don't have to muck about with too many settings when going from dark to light.

The pictures are a little grainy, but Noiseware can clean them up nice for display on a monitor, and you won't even notice ISO 400 noise on a 4x6 print.

There's LOTS of tips about using S3/S5's in all sorts of shooting environments on our mammoth thread: CANON S3 IS / S5 IS- Post Your Shots & Join The S3/S5 Family!

 

[Amy]

Great photos, Stitch! I esp. like the colors in the first one, really pops.

 

[dwelty]

Hi everyone, I am subscribing. I have a Powershot S5 and really want to learn the setting beyond auto mode. I am hoping I can get some great tips here!

 

[dwelty]

Here are a few of my favorites from our trip to WDW in March of this year...

Animal Kingdom Lodge Flower (Used auto mode, hand held it was up in a tree, had to zoom pretty far, but I am happy with the results.

Another at AKL, this one was the only photo taken out this window that worked well. It is hard taking photos in that lobby. It was early morning using scenery mode.

Italy Pavilion auto mode

Italy pavilion glassware used macro mode

 

[bob100]

I like the first (bokeh!) and the last - color !

 

[bigAWL]

This shot was not posed, we were just walking down the alley and found these shoes sitting on this pipe, exactly as shown.

So that's where I left them!!!

 

[bob100]

for this indoors shot I purposely left the flash off, sure it's very underexposed but I liked the silhouette effect. (clue in the pic where it's taken)

 

[Mom2Lindsey]

 

[madbrad76]

I've had my S3 for a little over a year now & I'm leaviing in over a week to go back to WDW. I took it on our trip last year to WDW after only having it a couple of weeks. I didn't have much time to experiment with the different settings so I just used AUTO for most of my pics. Needless to say, my fireworks pics didn't turn out that good at all. Do any of you have any suggestions on what Manual Settings (AV, Shutter, Aperture, ISO, etc.) to use to take good fireworks pics? Also, do I need to get a tripod (such as a Gorillapod? I would appreciate any advice!

 

[SA53]

My S5 has a fireworks mode that takes great pictures. Does the S3 have it? I am too new with my S5 to tell you much about more manual settings but I know there are a lot of really wise people on this thread that will know what to do if there is no fireworks mode.

K in Sa

 

[bob100]

If your S3 does not have a fireworks setting you can use a manual setting of f8, 2 sec. ISO 80 or 100. You could experiment and use longer shutter settings. You need to use a gorilla pod or tripod and turn off the review mode for faster shots. Some people have used the CHDK time-lapse feature to shoot continuously. For more hints and techniques you could do a search on Flickr.

 

[red1der1]

Hi all!! I just got my S5 today and I am so excited!!! I have read about 5 pages of this thread and found so much useful info already. Of course I haven't tried them all yet. But you all seem very knowledgable and I am sure I will have lots of questions for you as I start to figure it all out.

 

[bob100]

nighttime looking out over the York river

 

[Pea-n-Me]

A couple of tips:

You have a grid that's handy to use when shooting. It helps keep your horizons straight and also helps with composition.

Also, don't forget you have a swivel mirror to help with difficult-angled shots.

Have fun learning your cameras!

 

[awoltoday]

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0809/08091703canon_sx1is_sx10is.asp

Canon brings HD moviemaking and 4.0fps shooting
to its PowerShot super zoom series

Also, for anybody that's running chdk, they are merging the allbest build with the morebest/JuciPhoX and back into the main branch where it will just be called CHDK. I think I'll give them a few weeks to work out any gotcha's before I go get it (and have to learn all of the JuciPhoX features!).

 

[bob100]

subway arriving at Washington DC metro stop
I like the ceiling perspective !