Some Thoughts and Other Stuff……
When my photography moved from film cameras to digital cameras back in the late 90’s life was very simple. Before digital if you made sure your chosen film was loaded properly, had your chosen lens fitted and exposure set on the camera it was job done. This left you to concentrate on taking the picture, basically composition and focus. When the first simple digital cameras came along “Menus” were introduced that gave you some additional control of the finished product but still not too daunting.
Fast forward to today and it is a completely different world. Cameras are extremely complex pieces of high tech. computing equipment. The menu is no longer a simple and easily navigable feature, it has become the brain of the camera and controls your output. Like any computer if you don’t set it up properly you will get bad results. It’s the old “rubbish in - rubbish out” scenario. My first serious DSLRs were Nikons and came with an operating manual you could use as a door-stop. On perusing the manual it quickly became apparent that there would be a lot of features on the camera that although I had paid for, I would never use. One feature for example was video. I had no plans to ever shoot video using my DSLR as that would probably involve additional sound equipment, lighting possibly and a software suite for post processing the video sequences and producing a video I could share. I wanted to get out there right away and shoot photos that I could be proud of and expected great things from my new DSLR.
When we take a new camera out of the box it comes set up with default settings enabling us to use it almost right away, after inserting batteries and SD card of course. After firing off a few shots we then press the menu button and a screen pops up. This is when the fun begins. We are presented with a myriad of options to assist in our photography and set our camera up to shoot the way we want it to be behaving. The power of modern cameras is impressive with control options for almost every aspect of taking photos. It is important to have a good idea of how you want your camera to be set up, based on the photos you plan to take and identify the key set-up menus that you need to understand and tweak in the menu system.
At this point it is important to point out that the camera doesn’t take the picture you do. If it isn’t set up properly then be prepared to be disappointed. Although this has always been the case, it has become more apparent to me now that I am struggling with a cataract in my right eye. Unable to manually focus properly (even with focus peaking turned on), I have had to temporarily revert to the auto focus modes. Thinking that setting the camera to Single or Continuous autofocus was all that there was to it, I quickly got sucked in to the AF/MF section of the menu and found settings I did not know existed which could explain a few things when my focusing has not been spot-on. My point here is therefore to get to know your camera and make sure you have it set up for success not failure. This experience has taught me not to assume I know how to do things without fully understanding the options. I am sure that although I use Fujifilm cameras, this lesson will apply to whatever camera you have.
Changing topic, it was my birthday last Friday, 1st April. It was a bit of a milestone birthday in that I have hit 65, yes I am officially what we used to call an OAP (but now thanks to HMG I don’t get my pension for another year yet). I had a great day as we headed to London, with my wife and sister heading off to sample the delights of Kensington Palace, I was able to take in a couple of excellent exhibitions and get some street photography in.
