It pays to learn to use your equipment properly

I've been using my camera (a Canon Powershot S2 IS) since last December and have been really pleased with the results. For night photography, I'd got used to an ISO setting of 100, -0.66 exposure, and flash reduced by one or two notches, but was still suffering from a certain amount of bleaching of white areas.

Over the weekend I started to explore some of the settings a bit further. I started using the ISO 50 setting, and added in a 'low sharpener' setting. Eventually I've settled on those two as default, and have tended to up the exposure by one notch (to -0.33). The result of this is that the night photos are somewhat under-exposed, but the bleaching effect has been virtually eliminated unless I am very close to the subject. I'm able to adjust the under-exposure using gamma and mid-tone tweaks in PhotoImpact. I've also found less need to do post-processing sharpening.

I think the pictures are an improvement. Here's a few examples taken over the last couple of nights.

I like the last one which somehow seems to have captured a drop of saliva falling from the fox's mouth. I still haven't managed to avoid the eye-shine in some pictures caused by the reflection of the flash on the tapetum (the part of the eye behind the retina which allows for enhanced low-light vision). My main tools for eliminating eye-shine are either using the red-eye filter in PhotoImpact (but it doesn't always achieve a perfect fix). Angling the camera down at the fox works quite well though, but he's often on the higher ground (as in this photo).

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. volkuro

    11 Oct 2006

    I just find out that we have almost the same camera (I bought the S3). Since I have it for a little more than a week now, I only began to experiment.
    You might save me a few steps! 😀

    The saliva photo is amazing.

  2. Words

    11 Oct 2006

    You'll enjoy the camera. The S2 is really easy to use and very comfortable to hold. I just checked the S3 spec and it sounds like there are several improvements over the S2, especially on ISO rating (the S2 has a max of 400 but is very noisy at that rating). I also like the idea of live slow-motion video (the S3 can record at 60 fps for 30 fps playback).

    Looking forward to seeing the results!

  3. anonymous

    11 Oct 2006

    Flying Red Fox writes:

    Hes just drooling to have his pic taken lol 😛 great shots there i think when they see you they start salivating because you feed them tasty treats 😀

  4. SittingFox

    11 Oct 2006

    Nice photos, great clarity of the fur 🙂

  5. KayFour

    12 Oct 2006

    I can see the improvements in your photos! Very nice!

  6. paminhenan

    16 Oct 2006

    That fox has the cleanest teeth I've ever seen.

Comments are closed.

Close Menu