New camera came in!

Williams 728
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I wondered if maybe somebody dropped it or something? No scratches or any dings, etc? Maybe it just needs a smarter user?...idk. dang.
 
christyle said:
I wasn't going to say anything in the other thread about other's suggestions, especially since you jumped on it so quickly, but a new point and shoot could be had for around $100. It will have less features in some ways, and less manual settings, but also have higher megapixels (Which can be very misleading, so isn't really a good indicator, but still) and some newer technology and features that can prove useful.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B5HE3IW/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I don't even use my point and shoot anymore now that Smartphones can take such great photos. This was with my LG G3
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It was me who posted the link originally. I really just wanted to illustrate the low cost of decent digital cameras these days. The prices not being dictated by local factors. Sorry Union if I gave you a bum steer.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Well, guess what? That bum steer was only the bum behind it! I used the flash in auto mode this time. Here are the results...




Seems like the flash speeds up the shutter enough for better focus, like Passedpawn alluded to earlier. DOHY!
 
unionrdr said:
Yeah, I need to read more. Didn't think it was 10 years old, dammit. My Vivitar is about that old. I def have trouble with this half press stuff...idk?
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My wife is a photographer. She changes out cameras like I do underwear. Actually, probably a bit more frequently. I know you would only do good things with it so I would donate to the cause if wifey has something hanging about that she hasn't sold yet. Remind me if you still find yourself in need and haven't heard from me.

EDIT: I missed the last shots...not sure how. Looking much better - still a flash photo though...Much better focus and a sweet looking brew room;)
 
unionrdr said:
Seems like the flash speeds up the shutter enough for better focus, like Passedpawn alluded to earlier. DOHY!
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What happens, if you are close enough and the flash has enough power, is that the camera knows it will have plenty of light and stops the lens way down. With the short focal lengths that go with these 1/3" sensors that means lots of depth of field. You don't have to focus. You almost have a pinhole camera. In fact you (or the firmware in the camera) has to be careful that it doesn't stop down to the point where blur is more from diffraction than circles of confusion.

The shutter speed is sort of moot in these modes. The shutter is opened, the flash fires and the camera measures the light returned from the subject. When it determines that enough light has come back from the subject for a good exposure it crowbars the flash lamp and closes the shutter. If you are close to the subject and it reflects a lot this can happen very quickly.
 
ajdelange said:
What happens, if you are close enough and the flash has enough power, is that the camera knows it will have plenty of light and stops the lens way down. With the short focal lengths that go with these 1/3" sensors that means lots of depth of field. You don't have to focus. You almost have a pinhole camera. In fact you (or the firmware in the camera) has to be careful that it doesn't stop down to the point where blur is more from diffraction than circles of confusion.

The shutter speed is sort of moot in these modes. The shutter is opened, the flash fires and the camera measures the light returned from the subject. When it determines that enough light has come back from the subject for a good exposure it crowbars the flash lamp and closes the shutter. If you are close to the subject and it reflects a lot this can happen very quickly.
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In addition, the duration of a strobe is something like 1/10,000 second, provides the majority of light for your exposure, and effectively freezes any motion that could otherwise have blurred the image.

Edit - For 35 mm, flash always required 1/60 second or slower shutter speed because any faster & the focal plane shutter would not be entirely open at once.
 
Yeah, I remember my Canon FTb using 1/60th for flash. I liked the 50mm lens on that one. It was the match needle type as well. I'm relieved to find out it was just me, rather than some hidden fault. I went back to the site I bought it from,& none of the used cameras say how old they are, year of manufacture, etc. I think they should. At any rate, the pics are looking a lot better. I'll have to see how video mode works?...
 
Your last set of pics look worlds better. Keep using whatever mode you're using. Half clicks aren't hard, there's nothing to learn, but whatever you're doing now seems to be working. Even though it's 10 years old, it seems to produce better images than your other 10 year old camera.
 
I have a Canon Powershot A620, came out around the same time as that S2 IS 10 years go. more compact and higher res than the S2 IS

LOVE the vari-angle screen. flip it around when travelling so the screen doesn't get scratched, flip it back to take pictures. tilt it to take pictures above a crowd or hold it down around my waist and pretend it's an old Hasselblad

started with an older, lower res version and have replaced it several times in the past. would buy a used replacement if this one crapped out.

I have a DSLR (Canon T1i) and my smartphone (Galaxy S5) which both take excellent pictures, but my A620 is my go-to
 
Yeah, the new one has a bigger/better lens & a lot more features. The old Vivitar 5150s was losing autofocusing ability, & the program button somehow got mashed down. When it worked properly, it had great resolution, which was more than even magazines required for uploads. But not now. Good thing my 2GB SD card works in the new one. I had it on auto with the flash up in the last group of pics.
 
Hamaki said:
In addition, the duration of a strobe is something like 1/10,000 second, provides the majority of light for your exposure, and effectively freezes any motion that could otherwise have blurred the image.
Click to expand...

Just for giggles I took an old Mecablitz flash that lets me dial in the power I want from 1/16 of the max the unit can do to full power. At 1/16 the flash lasted 440 uSec (1/2272th sec). At full power the duration was more like 4 ms(1/250th) of a second but, interstingly enough most of the light is delivered in the first half. The cap is obviously being nearly fully discharged in this case and light output drops as the voltage decreases.

I found an old Cannon Elf in a drawer. If that thing's battery will hold any charge I see if I can get the flash duration on it.
 
Mine has a scale for certain adjustments, the flash being one of them when I turn the dial from "auto" to "P". The scale goes "+" or "-" a couple numbers with lines in between. Kinda cryptic & didn't get the camera user's guide?
 
unionrdr said:
Mine has a scale for certain adjustments, the flash being one of them when I turn the dial from "auto" to "P". The scale goes "+" or "-" a couple numbers with lines in between. Kinda cryptic & didn't get the camera user's guide?
Click to expand...

Google will find that manual for you, I'm sure. P mode is sort of camera dependent, but its still an auto mode that probably leaves the flash off. Get the manual and see what it says.

If you want brighter pictures, set the dial to B and just hold the shutter release down for a while :)

[edit] your camera might not have a B[ulb] mode.
 
P is the 'program mode'. Given an incoming light level it makes choices on aperture and shutter based on whatever the factory thinks is the best combination at that light level. If the light level is below where wide open aperture or long shutter time would be required flash will be enabled. The Program table or graph is usually found in the manual. Or check the EXIF file to see what the camera decided to do.
 
Thanks you guys! Who says an old hoss can't learn new tricks?...or is that roaddog? The program mode seems to do a whole list of things, besides the buttons covering the back. Sheez...is this a camera or a laptop?:drunk: Got a couple more pics I'm gonna post of the grains & such that came in the other day with flash from close up. They came out pretty good. Maybe who's brewing this weekend? Another neat little thing the electronic viewfinder does is, after shooting, it shows the image for like 2 seconds, which is also programmable.
 
ajdelange said:
Just for giggles I took an old Mecablitz flash that lets me dial in the power I want from 1/16 of the max the unit can do to full power. At 1/16 the flash lasted 440 uSec (1/2272th sec). At full power the duration was more like 4 ms(1/250th) of a second but, interstingly enough most of the light is delivered in the first half. The cap is obviously being nearly fully discharged in this case and light output drops as the voltage decreases.

I found an old Cannon Elf in a drawer. If that thing's battery will hold any charge I see if I can get the flash duration on it.
Click to expand...

I can't remember many details from high school & college photo classes, just some of the big picture ideas. No pun intended.
 
The Elf battery did indeed take charge but the flash is too puny to trigger my photo detector which is a back biased LED except when very close (a couple of feet at most). The flash duration is, of course, going to be very short at that range. It in fact lasts about 30 usec (1/33,000th sec). Obviously your hands can be as shaky as the US economy and you'll still be free of blur with a flash duration that short (provided the flash is the major light source).
 
ajdelange said:
The Elf battery did indeed take charge but the flash is too puny to trigger my photo detector which is a back biased LED except when very close (a couple of feet at most). The flash duration is, of course, going to be very short at that range. It in fact lasts about 30 usec (1/33,000th sec). Obviously your hands can be as shaky as the US economy and you'll still be free of blur with a flash duration that short (provided the flash is the major light source).
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"trigger"? Your're using a reverse-biased LED into what, a scope?
 
Helpful though. These fancier digital cameras are complicated by comparison to my old one. But Canon does make good cameras in my opinion. I still love my FTb. Now if I just had a 10" reflector telescope & something to mount the new camera to it? I'd like to get some planet picks. Always wanted to do that. Maybe see how the zoom works on the moon?
 
unionrdr said:
Helpful though. These fancier digital cameras are complicated by comparison to my old one. But Canon does make good cameras in my opinion. I still love my FTb. Now if I just had a 10" reflector telescope & something to mount the new camera to it? I'd like to get some planet picks. Always wanted to do that. Maybe see how the zoom works on the moon?
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Sounds great... how do you plan to get there?
 
Some claim the government has a real Stargate. Alien technology, so I'm gonna sneak in & use it! It's like a 4x zoom, so I'll have to see how that works, just for curiosity's sake.
 
unionrdr said:
Some claim the government has a real Stargate. Alien technology, so I'm gonna sneak in & use it! It's like a 4x zoom, so I'll have to see how that works, just for curiosity's sake.
Click to expand...

If you're going to use the Stargate, I would try it on 1x zoom first... anything past 3x zoom for a first-timer is going to be pretty disorienting.
 
Psylocide said:
Sounds great... how do you plan to get there?
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24xqvkk.jpg


I designed this super hi-tech space rocket that we strap him to so he can take HD pictures as close to the moon as possible.
 
Might be psychedelic man? :drunk: We'll find out some night when I play around with the dial settings? And I think I'm a lil late for that one. The mission to Pluto is almost there. Would've been a great fly-by though.
 
Oh ho hooo...BANG! ZOOM!:D I always loled at that one back in the day. Pop howled at those bits. Too bad the video crapped out on the old Vivitar. Strap to a balloon like those on youtube & see how high it goes for video.
 
In no particular order:

Union: Find the timer mode, set the camera down, press shutter and remove hands, stop kicking the table, get the significant other to stop doing jumping jacks, and the camera will take a pic in 10s or so and should be nice and steady.

A620 is still awesome cam, still use mine even tho I have way more standard and digital SLR equipment than I should, including stuff to hook up to the 10" Newtonian telescope

CADJockey-I actually did that with model rockets and a camera. It went...poorly.
 
ajdelange said:
Yep. Led in series with a 1K resistor to a 2.3 V power supply, scope across the resistor.
Click to expand...

If it's a large area LED (high current) the capacitance (and the scope probe's capacitance) might be filtering the fast pulse, but I doubt it. Still, if you know the junction capacitance of that LED (or PD if you switch to that), you can easily figure out the bandwidth by 1 / (2*PI*R*C). You could try a smaller R.
 
Maybe I could just shake up a gusher bottle & mount the camera on that? :D Gonna use it on my new tripod with the programmable timer someday soon.
 
passedpawn said:
If it's a large area LED (high current) the capacitance (and the scope probe's capacitance) might be filtering the fast pulse, but I doubt it. Still, if you know the junction capacitance of that LED (or PD if you switch to that), you can easily figure out the bandwidth by 1 / (2*PI*R*C). You could try a smaller R.
Click to expand...


I really have no idea what the diode capacitance might be but it is reverse biased so the depletion region is large and the capacitance should be small (if I remember this stuff correctly). I guess 10pf is typical. With 1000Ω that's a time constant of 10 nsec corresponding to a bandwidth of 100 MHz (note: no π here) and a brickwall LPF of that bandwidth would spread a 1 nsec pulse to look like a 20 nSec sinc or put 10 nS 'flanges' on a perfectly rectangular pulse - not significant on a 30 usec pulse. Or looked at another way, a 30 usec pulse has bandwidth of only 33.3 kHZ so it isn't going to be distorted in going through a circuit of 100 MHz bandwidth monitored by a 200 MHz scope. Scope capacitance is compensated for when the probe is calibrated.
 
very cool uses of a Canon PowerShot are available thru CHDK, the Canon Hack Development Kit

does not permanently overwrite your firmware and does NOT void any warranty, but allows you to access functions already in your camera you don't normally have access to.

allows you to shoot RAW images, override manual setting limitations, auto-bracketing, motion detection, time lapse and buttloads more

you create a bootable SD card to access these functions. to return your camera to its original state, switch SD cards and that's it.

can do some very cool things with your PowerShot, including S2 IS
 

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