Capturing those special moments

Shot RAW, colour is better than jpg but I still missed the peak moment.

My last post looked at saving a special moment by cutting and pasting together two images taken moments apart. It's a Photoshop ruse, for sure. But, I posted the "trick" and the voting was almost unanimous: The doctored picture was best. Even the subject in the manipulated image voted for the Photoshop worked pic.

Well, wouldn't you know it. I was back shooting a similar picture just this past weekend. This time it was grandma Cathy, grandpa Bill's wife, who was celebrating a birthday. I decided to use my Fuji FinePix HS10 set to best picture capture mode. I left my Canon PowerShot S90 in my bag. Also, I shot the image RAW.

I like the colour and detail in the highlights better in the Fuji image. But the moment captured was not the best. It is a moment too soon. The peak moment was still to come. I missed it.

There are advantages to cameras without shutter lag. There are times I sorely miss my high end Canon SLR. Motor drives are no match for good reflexes. A fast camera with no shutter lag, teamed with a blazingly fast motor drive, attached to a flash capable of firing as fast the motor drive, ah, now that is the answer to all my problems but one: Money. A camera like that makes my money problems much, much worse.

I'll just have to keep getting by.