SYGADC: RAW Photography and More...

Review:

1. The Basics
2. Using Automatic

Things do sometimes go wrong:

1. If the camera seem to be turned off, it may just have entered sleep mode. If you don't use any controls for a specified time, the camera enters this mode to reduce battery drain. To wake it up, press the shutter button halfway down, or turn the camera off and back on. After an hour or so of inactivity, some cameras shut off completely. You can often change the time it takes before the camera enters sleep mode or turns off completely (think wedding photos).
2. If you can't turn on the camera, the batteries are dead or have been removed or a memory card hasn't been inserted.
3. If your batteries drain quickly, stop using the monitor to take and review pictures.  In fact, stop using the monitor as much as possible.  The camera captures a moment.  Photoshop will take care of the composition and editing. If it's cold, keep the batteries or camera under your coat. Consider buying two sets of batteries!
4. When you turn the camera on, a battery shaped icon on the control panel indicates when the batteries are fully charged, getting low, or run down empty and should be replaced immediately - this is the first thing you should look at when you turn the camera on before you go out on a photo session...
5. When you turn on the camera, an error message will be displayed if there is a problem with the memory card. You should also have a number of memory cards - label them so you can remember what's on what.  Keep the memory cards in the plastic cases!
6. If you can't take a picture, it may be because the memory card is full. To free up room for new pictures, move the images to a computer and erase the memory card, delete some you don't need, or switch to a smaller image size.
7. Some cameras have a delay between your pressing the shutter button and the shutter opening. This can cause you to miss fleeting expressions - you have to be like Wayne Gretzky - go to where the puck is going to be, not where it is...
8. To control which part of the scene the camera focuses on, read your user guide so you understand how focus works in various exposure modes.
9. If the focus lamp blinks when you press the shutter button halfway down, the camera may be having trouble focusing.
10. If flash photos are too dark, you are probably too far from the subject. Most built-in flash units are good only up to about ten feet. They don't have the power to illuminate subjects much father than that.
11. If photos are too light when using flash, you may want to reduce the flash power or use the wax paper trick, or bounce the flash off the ceiling/wall
12. If your pictures are blurred, you may not be holding the camera steady as you smoothly press the shutter. Most blurry photos are caused by jabbing the shutter button. You may also be too close to the subject or the subject may be moving too fast.
13. Never take pictures of the sun or other bright light sources. Doing so can injure your eye or the camera's image sensor.
14. If your pictures are not at all the way you expect, it may be because the camera remembered a change you made in the settings and continues to use that changed setting. Some cameras remember changes even when you turn a camera off and back on. See if your camera has a procedure that resets all settings to their factory defaults.

Digital SLR's:

• expensive
• you can change lenses.
• You see the scene through the lens so what you see is what you get. (Fixed lens cameras with electronic viewfinders differ from SLRs in that they don't use a movable mirror to bounce light into the viewfinder).  New Sony cameras, for example, have electronic, not physical mirrors for a steadier image.
• You can select from a large variety of accessories, including powerful flash units.
• they won't fit in your pocket

Evaluating Mega Pixels:

• Beware of claims about resolution for cameras because there are two kinds of resolution; optical or interpolated. 
• The optical resolution of a camera or scanner is an absolute number because an image sensor's pixels or photosites are physical devices that can be counted. 
• To improve resolution in certain limited respects, the optical resolution can be increased using software. This process, called interpolated resolution, adds pixels to the image to increase the total number of pixels. To do so, software evaluates those pixels surrounding each new pixel to determine what its color should be. For example, if all of the pixels around a newly inserted pixel are red, the new pixel will be red. What's important to keep in mind is that interpolated resolution doesn't add any new information to the image— it just adds pixels and makes the file larger. This same thing can be done in a photo-editing program such as Photoshop by resizing the image.
• Always compare optical resolutions when looking at cameras.