Manual Controls on Digital Cameras
 

What are they useful for? I'd like to step away from the point-and-click school of photography, but is there actually that much that can be done with a digicam's manual controls? How do you guys use yours?

You can get some really good effects by changing things; even things like the shutter speed will have a reasonably normal effect (allowing you to get time-lapse type shots). I often adjust things to change the 'warmth' of an image, hilight one thing or another. Of course, you can do a lot of adjustment in photoshop afterwards, but it's nice to be able to do it on the camera...

You can do all the stuff with digital manual controls that you can do with with traditional film cameras.

Best bet is go to the library and pick up some books on photography.

I still use a 33 year old Canon SLR camera that I found. Its photographer quality, and I bought some very good lenses for it.

It costs more, but I take my photography seriously.

I don't generally scan my images because I havent found a scanner that will really give me the depth that I want, but sometime Ill go and buy a high quality scanner and post anyway.

it all depends on the digicam, some can do most of what an SLR can do, some can't. Shutter lag is the biggest issue but if you don't do high speed photography its not a problem, second is writing speed, so how quickly you can fire off shots.

I use a Canon EOS10D these days, which was a VERY significant upgrade from my dead Olympus C700. I find that I have WAY more control over how the shot comes out. I am gradually weaning myself off autofocus, and moving closer and closer to mostly manual operation of the camera.

Right now, aside from focus, I manually set either the aperture or shutter speed, and let the camera decide the other. Setting both manually seems like overkill though, and may take too long, but in extreme and unusual situations it may my only hope.

As others have said, it depends on the camera.

Manual adjustments allow you to catch movement, increase depth of field, darken the background, tighten the focus to certain areas of the frame, adjust for low or too much light, and a hundred other combinations of things.

If you're interested in learning about such things, the shortcourses website has a bunch of stuff. I bought a shortcourses book for my Olympus 5050 and learned a lot.

http://www.shortcourses.com/

Regarding the Olympus 5050 what do you think so far? I am interestded in that camera if I don't step up and by the canon digital rebel, an SLR digital camera. I would love to hear reviews of either one...

-hal

I got a Canon A70 a few weeks back, and it is fantastic - very fast (ie. little lag), and fully manual operation.

Both aperture and shutter priority, manual focusing.

Its got a portrait mode that drops the depth of field as much as possible for that "3d" effect (ie. subject in focus, background out of focus), multi-spot focus/metering. All in all a fantastic purchase.

I'll still use my old 35mm SLR though (Canon AE-1), for those shots where I need some serious detail.

I think that 35mm is normally equivalent to 10 or 20 megpixels. And I had one guy say a few days back that 35mm with a top end SLR, scanned, is equivalent to a 40 (!!!!) megapixel camera.

I think the 5050 is an excellent camera. The only complaint from me would be shutter lag. It's an issue for me as I use the camera mostly for underwater photography and it's a 60/40 chance that I miss the shot I waited for due to the lag. Of course the solution to that is a digital SLR but I'm just not serious enough about photography to make that $ commitment.

Olympus is supposed to be coming out with the next model very soon. I believe it will be a 5060. Not sure what the advantages are but I know it's on the way.