Cameras: buy 'em good and keep 'em forever

My Canon S90 is aging. It has been dropped, its lens has been touched and cleaned numerous times, its batteries no longer keep a good charge, but it still takes good pictures.

I believe the direct descendent of my old workhorse is the present Canon S120. The lens now opens up to f/1.8 when set to wide angle (24mm -- 35mm equivalent). The processor is now a DIGIC 6. The autofocus is faster, although I never found it all that difficult to live with before, and the frames per second rate is hitting 9.4. Warning: The S200 is a lesser camera and not an upgrade from the S120.

Before buying a camera, ask yourself what you will be shooting. Do you like to shoot available and steer clear of the on-camera flash? If so, make sure the camera you buy has a fast lens; The faster the better. And don't forget to check the lens speed when the camera is zoomed out to a longer lens setting. The only point and shoot I know of that doesn't lose lens speed as the lens is zoomed out is the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ200 with its constant f/2.8 throughout the zoom range.

I was careful when I retired from The London Free Press. As a photographer put out to pasture, I found myself without a camera for the first time in my life. As a retired fellow forced to accept a reduced pension, buying a kit similar to the one I had at the paper was financially impossible. I looked over the point and shoots and committed myself to working within the limitations of the decidedly amateur equipment.

I can't do all I once could but I'm still shooting pictures and that keeps me happy.

If I were buying a camera tomorrow, I'd get two cameras: A Canon S120 and Lumix FZ200. The Canon with its f/1.8 wide angle is great for shooting available light. Take it to birthday parties and the like. It is a wonderful piece of equipment.

The Lumix with its constant f/2.8 all the way from 25-600mm is damn close to my old constant f/stop professional lenses.

Both cameras will fit into one very small camera bag. Add a spare battery for each and you're ready to rock an' roll.

Capturing the minimum for maximum impact

I love my lilies. I planted this one for the lovely ruffles, the gentle creases running the length of the pedals and for the burst of bright yellow hidden in the centre of the white bloom.

If I could capture those three elements in one image, I would have my picture. As you can see, I did and I do.

This was shot with my aging Canon S90. It was a pretty sophisticated point and shoot for its time and today it is still delivering the goods.

Finding routes to a good picture

I like faces. For the most part, faces full of expression add real zing to a picture. I am always asking myself, "Can I find a shooting position that will get capture the subject's face and reveal the emotions of the moment?"

Almost always the answer is yes. But Saturday at the Junction Climbing Centre open house the answer was "No." The place was busy, filled with visitors eager to test themselves by tackling one of the many colour-codes routes up the climbing wall. To include my granddaughter's face in a picture I had to be right against the wall and that was impossible. The wall was truly crawling with climbers.

But one does have others visual tools to give a little oomph to a photo. There's form, colour, action and more. Wall climbing offers a photographer a myriad of routes that all lead to a good picture. And note that I said good. The pictures I grabbed at the open house are only good. Not a one is great.

The story, as I see it, at the climbing facility is the soaring height kids can attain if they tackle a wall correctly. I saw some young climbers making it right to the top of the easiest of the 30-foot high climbs. The safety of the sport is also an important factor to include. And if one can find a way to make the small size of some of the participants obvious, one's found another good route to a fine photo.

I now think a better angle for shooting this is a low angle showing the incredible height of the climb ahead of my adventurous granddaughter. Including the instructor would add the contrast and make her small size immediately clear. With a little luck, the great picture would also show some of the action taking place further down along the wall. Context is often good and here it would be a great plus.

Unfortunately, getting Fiona's expression-filled face in the picture will not be easy no matter what approach the photographer takes. Unless the photographer straps on a harness and tackles the climb immediately beside the fearless little climber. If the photographer shoots from above, all the ingredients for a great picture fall immediately into place.

The problem for me is I'm 67 and an old 67. Climbing the wall, holding on with one hand while twisted around shooting pictures with a camera gripped tightly in the other hand, may be one route to great picture that is out of my reach today.

A naturally posed moment makes a picture

As a former newspaper photographer, I know well the pressures to produce. If one is covering an event, say a sporting event, and one player is the focus of the story, then one has to return with a publishable picture of that player.

Clearly an action shot is best. A shot clearing illustrating why they are worth a story is by far the best shot. Sadly, this is not always possible. Sometimes time constraints force the photographer to spend just moments at a game. The pressure of covering the next assignment forces the photographer to go with a second best image.

It is at times like this that the shooter looks for a naturally posed moment. If an action shot is not to be then at least one must return with an image that will look good on the page. Second best must not look like second best.

This thinking can give a newspaper shooter an image to keep the sports page editor smiling and this approach can also produce a family album picture from almost any event. The naturally posed moment used to illustrate this article put a smile on every one's face from parents to grandparents to even the young soccer player.

The naturally posed moment is also a good backup photo. It is a solid image from the event that can be used if the other shots, the action shots, fail. Never let image blinders prevent one from seeing all the photo moments.

Adding extra meaning to family photos

It was John and Ashley's anniversary. Some good friends were there. Their parents were present. Their two young daughters were at the table. A cake and a camera appeared. The only thing missing was a photographer. Fiona, the couple's 4-year-old daughter stepped up and took control with a little help from her grandfather, a retired photographer (me).

Gramps encouraged the couple to get close, they snuggled and Fiona shot. I could have shot the picture, I did help stage it, but having Fiona shoot the photo added an extra layer of meaning and memories to the moment.

Plus a dog-faced photographer was bound to elicit a smile from the happy couple. Did I mention our 4-year-old photographer had recently had her face painted?

Making use of the background

I like clean images. This is not always the best way to shoot a subject and it certainly is never the only way to approach photography, but it is usually my overriding goal when taking a picture. I want the subject of my photo to be immediately clear. No ambiguity. I like my subjects to pop.

Each spring I wait patiently for the magnolia tree in my backyard to burst into bloom. The purple flowers are downright exciting to see after a long, cold and colourless winter. The dramatic break from white is welcome. (My oldest granddaughter screamed with delighted excitement on seeing the flowering magnolia for the first time.)

My favourite images of these magnolia flowers contain only one or two blooms but they are presented to the viewer in a dramatic fashion. This year I managed to capture quite the dramatic moment. I found the angle, the point of view, that placed a striking flower against a background of deep shadow. I found the deep shadow below the evergreens that blanket the hill.

A low shooting angle placed the bright, colourful bloom dramatically against the intense, black background. A recent rainfall decorated the petals with drops of beaded water and the overcast day supplied wonderful, colour-enhancing lighting. (With soft, diffuse light colour defines shape. On a bright day the highlights and shadows carry a much larger share of the visual load.)

To show you exactly what I did, I have included a photo of the entire magnolia tree as it looks in my backyard. Note the hill, the evergreens and the deep shadow behind. Whenever you are taking pictures, watch your background. In many cases, you can control the background by carefully choosing your camera angle.

One last thing in passing, note the colour of the blossom in the close-up and the colour of the blossoms in the overall shot of the tree. The blossoms appear more pink-red in the bottom image and definitely more magenta-purple in the close-up. The purplish flower is much closer to reality.

Digital cameras often have a difficult time accurately depicting colours in the red region of the spectrum. If colour is important, as it is here, taking an image into Photoshop, or another image enhancing program, is the answer. (You may be forced to select the colour in question and to fix the hue without degrading the rest of the image. Colour correction can be tricky.)

Problems with colour accuracy are not new. Photography was plagued with colour shift errors in the days of film. There was a reason that Paul Simon sang the praises of Kodachrome. Shooters loved the colour palette it brought to a scene.

Soft can work online but wilts when printed

Today was my granddaughter's first day of soccer. She was excited. She was up early and dressed for action before 9 a.m. This is not the usual way she starts a Saturday.

I tried to document her first day on the field but it was difficult with only a glorified point and shoot. There is a reason that working pros insist on using DSLR cameras with a strong 35mm heritage. Even when used in auto mode, these high-end cameras can be trusted to always deliver the goods.

The action shot, left, is a really nice picture moment. Sadly, it is out of focus. It works as a small image on the net, but it fails as a print. All too bad but excuses don't make a picture better.

Knowing how iffy it can be to grab a sharp action photo with my superzoom camera, a Fujifilm Finepix HS10, I shot lots. Another image, this one lacking action, shows a great smile that captures the mood of the day.


There are a number of lessons here:

• Shoot lots. This is always the right approach but in difficult picture-taking situations it is paramount.
• Try for action when action is the core of the activity but watch for other photo moments as well.
• Stay alert for pictures and you won't go home empty handed even if you come up blank when it comes to capturing the action.