Making Adjustments for Point and Shooting Photography

Published Jan. 6, 2010 at 4:49 p.m.

As many of you know, last year I began carrying a Canon SD780IS point-and-shoot camera with me everywhere I go. The reason I started doing this is to always have a decent quality camera with me to be able to capture shots that I would normally miss by not having my SLR or G11 nearby.

As is pretty evident, the camera's auto functions did their best in adjusting the exposure and captured a pretty bland over-exposed image...After seeing this, I took a few steps to the right and knelt down at the edge of the beach...This alone would of created a better composition, but still would not overcome the poor exposure...Since the camera does not have any manual settings, I had to fool it into correctly exposing the image.

To do this I first composed with the center of the image near the bright horizon and pressed the shutter release halfway down to lock in exposure and focus...Continuing to hold the button down, I then recomposed the shot and pressed the shutter release the remainder to capture the shot.

The result is a much better exposure and quite frankly a very nice image especially considering it was taken on a sub $200 fully automatic point-and-shoot.

Canon SD780 IS - 1/320 second, f/3.2, ISO 100

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