I was going to say, perhaps in LiveView mode, but I suspect that may act like video mode, where the star seems to be reserved for autofocus. I don’t know, as I don’t have that camera.
To be honest, you’re best off learning proper exposure. It’s exceedingly easy to get a good exposure with a digital camera. You get a preview on the LCD right there! Too bright? Adjust with the exposure compensation dial to exposure darker. To dark? The other way around.
I shoot almost exclusively in manual exposure mode, with the occasional foray into aperture priority. I also almost always shoot in auto-focus mode, so I’m not against auto modes or anything like that. With manual exposure, it’s just completely predictable. If I meter a scene, and it’s too dark, I know all I have to do is bump the exposure up or down. If it’s in an automatic mode, I might get a slightly different meter reading if my framing of the scene isn’t exactly the same. Some photographers are really good at just riding the exposure compensation dial and know instinctively when and how much the camera is going to be fooled by certain shooting situations and adjust accordingly without ever taking their eye from the viewfinder. I work similarly, just in manual exposure mode using the viewfinder exposure meter as a guide.
My caveat to the above of “exceedingly easy to get a good exposure” is that I mean it’s a hell of a lot easier than in film days. You have an opportunity to review your image before heading into the darkroom. You do need to know how to read the histogram, though, if you want a good exposure. Depending on the lighting situation, the image on the LCD can be deceiving. If it’s really bright outside with direct sunlight, I never go by the image on the LCD. I look at the histogram and see where my blown highlights are, if any, and adjust accordingly. So, it takes some experience to do this well, but you have instant feedback, something you didn’t in the film days (unless you’re counting Polaroid proofs, and that wasn’t as instant.)
But exposure compensation does not require fiddling through menus or anything like that on dSLRs. It’s just a roll of the control dial, sometimes in conjunction with holding down another button, depending on the dSLR.
Ah, a new skill to learn. My previous method is nice because (to me anyway) it’s simple and I have a preview of what I will shoot before I shoot it.
To me it isn’t just about “proper exposure” because a proper exposure of the inside of a cabin and outside a window isn’t likely. (I am guessing at this since I took no notice of the exposure when I took that picture, I just WAGged it through the viewfinder until it looked right to me.)
You’re right in that I can do it with Live View, but I’m trying to avoid taking my face from the viewfinder. (Never know when Bigfoot will wander into frame.)
I think I’m looking for the camera to magically send the about-to-be-exposed picture up into the viewfinder, though, and that’s not the way it works. A P&S can do it, but the very definition of an SLR precludes it.
With my T1i, I sometimes get bad exposures, so I re-shoot, using the exposure lock until I get the exposure that I want. This is typically only a problem in high-contrast scenes. In really bad situations, I stop up or down the exposure manually.
In the view finder, there’s an exposure indicator. I now know that for certain shots, I want it to be -1/3 ev, for example, and it’s good. The exposure indicator is also influenced by the many different metering modes. You’ll get an instinct for the metering modes you want.
For example when contrast is an issue, I typically like spot metering so that I can lock exposure on a single point, then re-compose.
I typically shoot in aperture priority mode, but will foray into completely manual mode, typically for outdoor night time shots.
I’m not an expert by any means, but I can get off good shots with my methods. Part of the key is having a huge memory card, taking lots and lots of photos, and not be bummed out that there are only, say, 20 keepers out of 300 shots (not necessarily due to exposure, but for any reason). That’ll probably infuriate some of the dedicated hobbyists and pros, but hey! Digital’s cheap.
There are many DSLR’s with ‘liveview’ where you can look through the screen and check exposure with that.
There are some tilt screen DSLR’s, eg the Nikon D5000 and you can use them to check exposure.
Generally speaking when you use this feature you will lose many of the speed advantages of a DSLR and sometimes even end up slower than a compact but for landscapes etc thats obviously not a problem.
There is now a phase detection superzoom compact available.
Not a DSLR replacement but does address one traditional advantage.
I got this Olympus E-420 at a boxing day sale thinking I would use it and my point and shoot, depending on the circumstances. I almost never use the point and shoot anymore. Like the above poster, I use full manual or aperture priority mode exclusively. I also have the pancake lens, making this the smallest dSLR in the world, it fits in a coat pocket or my gf’s purse. You can’t beat full manual in low light situations or when you want to play with depth of field. You should consider one of these, I imagine you can get one pretty cheap these days, I got mine with a zoom lens for $350 Canadian.
Oh, just throwing in a bit here to add on to the guys talking about the benefits of manual focus: One problem with modern SLR cameras is that there isn’t any kind of microprism in the viewfinder to help you determine when you’re in focus (not sure how they worked. Maybe magic?). There are companies out there (KatzEye comes to mind) which produce screens that you can replace the factory viewfinder screens with so you can get that old-school focusing ring back, if you are so inclined
One thing about my dSLR that I love is the ability to save photos in RAW mode. This means that after I get home and see the photo on my nice, big monitor you can play with some of the exposure settings after the fact. The preview you get on the LCD screen is crap due to its size and glare. White balance, color balance and f-stops are just some of the things that can be adjusted after the fact with the RAW editor.
Example: We went to Europe this spring and I took a picture of some German palace on a very overcast day. In real life, the clouds were quite interesting with a lot of volume and physical presence. You could see different wisps floating around and it made the palace look imposing. I couldn’t tell if I captured that on the tiny LCD screen and in fact once it was blown up on my monitor, I found I had not captured the definition of the clouds, making the photo pointless. Then I played with the settings in the RAW editor and voila! The clouds came back. I was quite impressed!
The option for manual focus is important, but in the vast majority of cases, the autofocus is better these days. Technology has really come a long way since the early 90s, so much so that there are very few situations in which manual focus will perform better than autofocus.
You cannot adjust f-stops after the fact. You can adjust exposure. They’re different things. Adjusting the f-stop also affects the depth of field.
There are many advantages to shooting RAW. The biggest are, as you mention, the ability to adjust white balance after the fact and the ability to recover blown highlights.
Without going into too much detail about how raw capture works (unless somebody really wants to know), you get about an extra stop and a half to two stops of overexposure leeway shooting RAW than shooting JPEG. It’s very comparable to the difference between shooting negatives and shooting slides, with negs being RAW files and slides being JPEGs. You can also have completely the wrong white balance setting and it will affect your photo not one bit, as white balance data is simply metadata in the file, not hard-coded. You have a JPEG with the white balance completely off, and you’re hosed unless you turn it into a black-and-white.
Ohh, that’s right. It seemed wrong as I was typing it. Exposure. Duh. I have found that autofocus (at least on my camera) sucks at night. I have it set to AF+MF so I can fiddle with it in low light.
Yes, AF is usually wonky in dark situations. However, I usually find my eyes are just as bad, usually worse. I use AF assist in these cases (from the flash, via the red beam) or focus on areas of high contrast (highlights from lighting). With the AF assist, the hit rate is practically 100%. There’s also the “bright light” AF assist some cameras have built-in. I don’t like that one as much, as it tends to be blinding for the subject.
But, yes, if you don’t have an external flash with the assist beam, this is one area where manual focus can be helpful. Problem is, in many cases where the camera can’t find enough contrast to focus, neither can I. I can make a reasonable guess from experience, but to me if it’s not tack sharp focused on the eyes, it goes into the garbage pile.
If the subject isnt moving this is where live view can be helpful, as you can magnify the area you’re focusing on up to 10 times (edit: with some DSLR’s at least).
Very useful for some kinds of supermacro where the manual focus is sometimes more about moving the camera back and forth rather than adjusting the focus ring.
I own a Canon SX10 (I had an SX2 before, which I’ve managed to damage - completely my fault, it turns out that is not a good idea to point it at very bright light sources ) and at some point I was thinking about replacing it with a dSLR (a low end one, I didn’t want to spend more than 600-700 € on the body, accessories & a couple of lenses). In the end I didn’t, mostly because I don’t use the camera that much (once a month, at most) and for the reasons outlined below:
Practicality
The P&S is smaller and offers you a large zoom without having to carry a couple (at least) objectives with you all the time. It uses 4 AA batteries; I always have a fully charged set with me (besides the one in the camera - with both sets I can take ~ 1600 pictures), but in an emergency I could buy some from any shop. This is not the case with most dSLRs, which have proprietary batteries and chargers.
The SX10 can be used as a video camera, which I don’t usually do but a couple of times it turned out to be a useful feature.
Picture quality
In my (very limited) experience, my Canon is comparable to a low-end dSLR in very good lightning conditions. As soon as the amount of available light drops a little (by which I mean some clouds or going indoor), the dSLR takes a clear lead. As pointed out before in the thread, a big lens and a big sensor will be always better. Of course, my SX10 increases the ISO number to compensate for low light, but going above 400 produces very noisy pictures. So I try to keep it below 200 and no zoom. Sometimes it works.
**Controls **
The manual focusing on my Canon is a real pain. You have to look on the LCD, but only a small part of it shows the actual image in focus, so I never know how the overall picture looks like. Even after taking the picture I’m not sure about that, as the LCD is quite small. If you need to finely control the focus, then an SLR is a must.
The autofocus works fine and is reasonably fast most of the time, but sometimes it goes wrong (especially in poor light or poor contrast). Not good if you don’t have the time to play with the controls.
The zoom is great on the Canon, fast and easy to control (due to its 2 speeds).
I also like the LCD, which can be tilted and turned. This allows me to see reasonably well the scene when I keep the camera above my head or at ground level.
I never measured the actual speed, but with my memory card (SD 150x, IIRC) I think it gets up to 2 images/s. Not bad, actually.
To sum it up, the SX is easy to carry (compared to an SLR), practical and in good conditions you can get nice pictures. And its cheap (I’ve payd 325 € for the SX10, and I’m still using the batteries and memory cards from the SX2).
IMO, if you’re a beginner in photography and you don’t plan to make a full-time hobby out of it, a P&S will give you a stepper learning curve at first. Mostly because you can immediately see on the LCD the effect of playing with various controls. I had more than a few moments of “What this button does? Oooooh, nice!” simply because the camera shows you a good preview of how the picture will look like when you half press the button. Change setting -> half press -> evaluate picture, repeat several times and you’ll get a good felling of the role each setting plays in the final picture.
I carry a Canon Powershot SD790IS with me most places I go. I use it in place of a photocopier at law libraries (like a spy!) and for casual pictures. It works very nicely for that. It is a 10MP. I have a Canon T1i with a variety of lenses for serious photography. It takes fantastic pictures, only impaired by my utter lack of talent. Wonderful color and depth, great contrast. More pixels, but you don’t really notice that unless you blow things way, way up, which I don’t do.
You will save lots of money and have more fun with the Point and Shoot because you will use it more.
As a new Canon T2i owner, having previously owned a few Canon PnS…
Low-light and indoor performance is unreal with the dSLR, especially with no flash. I’m getting gorgeous pics that I would have thought impossible without secondary lighting or flashes.
Focusing is much sharper and crisper, and can grab the point that I want it to–the PnS often gets confused by foreground and background objects or off-center framing.
Autofocus and zoom speed on every PnS I’ve used is very slow in comparison, as is shutter delay, making action shooting a frustrating experience.
Work flow of the buttons, lens, and functions is much faster and easier on the dSLR and is designed to ultimately be able to do by touch without pulling your eye from the viewfinder.
Battery life of the proprietary batteries is much longer than AAs. One battery, plus one charged spare, got me through an entire wedding and 4 hour reception of constant shooting.
Did you know you can rent lenses from many camera shops? Why pay $2000 for a lens you won’t use that often when you can go rent a lens very cheaply to take with you on that nice vacation or your kid’s graduation?
One more option is the Panasonic Lumix G series. Smaller and lighter than a dSLR because there is no mirror, with a basic layout similar to that of a P&S, but with interchangeable lenses, and a swivel-and-tilt screen like the SX20. Lare could still use his method of previewing before shooting, and he would get many advantages over a P&S: bigger sensor resulting in better high ISO performance and better image quality, and greater responsiveness: faster focus and faster continuous drive.
Excellent points (although the lens gets most of the credit for that). About the only thing I ever use a flash for these days is fill flash for portraits. Do you ever go to museums/churches/castles/whatever that tell you “no flash”? No problem!
Once you get used to this, there’s no going back. It just seems so natural to use exposure or focus locks, or change the aperture or shutter speed without pulling the camera away from your face.
Sony, Samsung, and Olympus all have similar camera systems, each with their own particular advantages and disadvantages. One thing to note is that if you attach a reasonable zoom lens to any of these cameras (and only a few are available) they lose their small profile and become as bulky as any ultrazoom.
A P&S can do it, but the very definition of an SLR precludes it.
