Last week you heard me complain here that it’s time for a new camera.  And it really is. I’ve picked out a Nikon but I’ve  decided to wait until Christmas to splurge on this new camera  in hopes of some black Friday deals or may be Santa will drop it down the chimney.  (Ok, now I’m thinking ahead to winter… sheesh).   Anyways, I had a brilliant idea of what to do in the meantime (my Dad is going to roll his eyes when he reads this one) – I actually read the camera manual!

I’ve been blaming the measly 7.1 MP in my Canon PowerShot SD750 and today I apologize to my faithful little pocket friend.  The camera has been good to me.  And until this blog I didn’t let my two years of high school photography influence any shots I took.  But now that I see how awful things look on the web I’ve become embarrassed and have to take action.  Take this photo of the liquor cabinet from earlier this week.  Bluck.

Original Auto Flash

My usual solution when things don’t go well is to turn off the flash and try to move lights around the room.  But no flash usually yields a grainy photos like this.

No Flash

Flash and no flash settings = easy. It was time to learn how to use those manual settings.  Look at me now…. adjusting the lighting without moving lamps around! Hooray!

Bright Contrast

Low Contrast

In Between

The “In Between” photo looks a lot like the original but without the camera flash bouncing off of the glass.  I do also blame wordpress for compressing the files and making them grainy.  WordPress has a whole tutorial about saving space and who can tell the difference in photo quality but I digress…

Then I found out my camera also has a wide setting. This new found setting is by far the most fun to play with.  I can’t wait to shoot some new photos around the house for the photo gallery.

I also found some of the auto features that help the camera select which setting is correct.  The camera has snow, aquarium, indoor, outdoor… and a billion more settings.  Is this common sense to everyone but me? Or does everyone else just aim and shoot too?

Daytime Setting

Nighttime Setting

I do need to get a tripod for some of my photos.  I usually try to balance my camera on my knee or against the wall if it indicates there is too much shaking but sometimes I can’t seem to hold still enough. Now I’m not only embarrassed of my poor photos but also that it took about five years to read the camera manual!  In my Dad’s words “What a dope?!”  Here’s hoping that my posts in the future will look better!