We have a fairly simple digital camera - a Canon PowerShot A520 (specs). It takes nice little snapshots and short videos with sound.
Quite often I can get the picture I want (99% of the time the subject is BabyStainz), but sometimes it just goes wrong. The most common problem is a distortion - whatever is closest to the lens appears out of proportion - kind of like a fishbowl effect.
Here is an example - see how her hands appear so big? Yet if I try to take the photo from a different angle, then it’s her head that appears huge! I just want a shot that represents exactly what I am seeing.
Is there anything I can do to minimize this distortion / effect? I’ve read through the manual but it hasn’t helped.
I’d also like to open up this thread to any questions / tips that anyone else might feel like sharing.
(PS please don’t tell me to get a digital SLR - I would love one but it is just not in our budget).
The way to get rid of that kind of distortion is to move away from the subject, then zoom in to fill the picture with the subject. Note, that if you’re doing that with available light, without a flash, you might need to be careful not to shake the camera – but that’s not a problem in brighter light, or using a flash.
Optical zoom is achieved by moving the parts of the lens around, with (in technical terms) changes the focal length of the lens, but (in terms that you need to understand) enlarges the image on the film or on the sensor inside digital camera. So it works just like a zoom lens does on a non-dital camera.
Digital zoom just takes part of what’s on the sensor and enlarges it to make it the whole image. It’s the equivalent of using an enlarger to blow up just part of what’s on a film negative. It gets you in closer, but at the expense of losing resolution.
I have another camera in the same series (the A610), and it uses all the optical zoom before starting the digital zoom, which is as you’d want it. However, it also gives you the option of turning off digital zoom, and I’ve done that, because if Iwant to blow up part of an image, I can do that later, on my computer. The only gain on the camera would be that the image would take up less storage space – but since I have a 1 gigabyte card, that can hold about 700 pictures, I don’t wrry too much abouit running out of storage space on the camera.
