About Digi Cams

The target audience for this blog are those who have a digital camera. The following are the good reasons for buying a 'digi cam':

1. No need to spend on film
2. No processing cost or time
3. Easy and fast to show/send to others
4. Immediate preview
5. LCD display is easier to use than a viewfinder (other than for digital SLRs)
6. Video clips can be recorded
7. More options: face detection, smile-shutter, blah blah blah

The following are the problems we face, after buying digi cams

1. Consumes a lot more battery power
2. Unlike film, memory cards are not cheap and cannot be bought anywhere
3. Shutter lag: it takes some time for a digital camera to take a photo, after you press the shutter
4. Need more light, most of the time
5. Almost impossible to have long exposure times ( does not matter unless you are a pro)

If you have a slim/compact digi cam, you have extra problems. The main reason for this is the small lens diameters. The optical engineers have no choice but to use those tiny lenses that don't let much light in to the camera, because we won't buy the cameras unless they are small. The main problems are:

1. Difficulty to take photos in low light:
Due to small lens diameter, the cameras don't get enough light into them when taking photos under low light. Difficulty to focus, and camera shake are the common results of this problem.

2. Camera shake or motion blur:
When taking photos during evenings, or at places that are not so well lit, these cameras take too much time to take a photo. If we don't manage to keep the camera still for that long, the result is an image blurred due to motion. Some cameras are said to have built in correction for camera shake, but most of the time this is not sufficient. Some cameras just give you a warning, but then it is not so useful if you keep trying and failing.
Another reason for camera shake is the small size of the camera. There is no solid grip, and the press of a shutter provides enough force to shake it.



















3. Flat photos:
The small lenses result in high depth of field in photos. To say in simpler terms, everything that is near and far would appear well focused in your photo. This might sound like a good thing, but it is not when you want to take a photo that clearly shows what you want to show and suppresses the rest by blurring them. More, depth is not conveyed properly in your photos.

4. Too much automation:
This is the biggest problem. The camera decides what are the best settings to take the photo, and thereby captures really bad photos when there is a slight change from the usual scenes that people want to shoot. The photo below was a result of shooting in "Fully Automatic" mode with a fairly good digital camera.



















I guess this is more than enough for now. during my next posts, I am going to post a few tips to get rid of, or at least minimize, the above problems while taking better photos.