<totally unnecessary ramble whilst waiting for my AM coffee to brew>
"I'd love to but I'm more of a point and shoot kinda guy. I use "auto" pretty much all the time." (See Reply # 23)
I used to have (I'm not real big on photography anymore) a "full-auto" point-and-shoot 35mm camera and it had a method (hold the shutter button halfway down or something, I forget now) so that you could point the camera at a certain object, and be able to lock down the exposure and the focus for that subject. Then you could frame the whole scene in the viewfinder and shoot the pic. SInce the camera's settings were locked, the exposure and focus would be made for that subject alone, rather than for the whole scene.
Real handy for snow scenes, which are almost inevitably underexposed because the auto-exposure would be made according to all the light coming in from the snow, thereby decreasing the exposure from that cause, and therefore underexposing the whole shot.
I don't know how many folks know about how to use the photographer's "grey card." It is a small card which is (naturally) grey, but which is calibrated to reflect 50 percent of the (natural) light hitting it. The idea is to set your exposure by holding the meter (or the camera) up to the grey card, and setting the exposure to that amount of light for the actual picture --thereby giving you the exposure for an "average" scene. (Bracketing the exposure is always a good idea for critical shots, though.)
But it so happens that the palm of the human (fair-skinned) hand happens to have about the same characteristic --that is, it reflects about 50 percent of the (natural) light falling on it. Therefore the palm of the (fair-skinned person's) hand can be used as a quick-and-dirty grey card.
An analogous technique could be used for focusing with that camera. It had an infra-red distance meter for auto-focus, and some subjects would absorb the infrared beam and therefore the camera would think the subject was at infinity. I had a hell of a time taking decent pics of a really fuzzy long-haired calico cat for that reason. That cat was a virtual "black body" for the camera's IR focusimg system, and would set itself for infinity whenever I pointed the camera at her. I finally learned to point the camera at a nearby "solid" object, set the focus on that, and then swing the camera around to the cat and snap the pic that way.
Another fault I see, even in professional (or at least published) pictures, is taking a full-length shot of a woman from too high an angle. Women are supposed to be bigger on the lower end than a man, and with a short lens, if the shot is taken while the photographer is standing up, this de-emphasizes this (delightful) characteristic of women and makes them look sorta lumberjacky. This, due to the foreshortening that occurs, especially with shorter lenses and shorter women. So when doing a pic of a woman, always crouch down lower to de-emphasize that effect.
Ah! coffee's done.
</totally unnecessary ramble whilst waiting for my AM coffee to brew>
Terry, 230RN
