initial test Canon Power shot SX 130 IS

[KyDan]

The Fed Ex driver delivered my (gently used) camera just as we were preparing to bug out for a nice camping weekend.

I had already charged 2 pair of brand new Ansmann hi capacity NiMh AA batteries and had a new 16Gig memory card so

I was ready to try the camera.

We spent 3 days trailer camping at Mammoth Cave National Park in south central Kentucky, USA.

This park would be a great park even if it didn't have the largest cave in the US under it.

The park is also 56,000 acres of mostly un-touched natural forest.

It has miles and miles of hiking trails.

Now I have questions about this camera --

I know that any photo that is back lighted is a bad thing but sometimes you don't have a choice.

Either take the back-lighted shot or take no shot.

I have an example with a question.

Here is a tree with a huge gall on the side of it.

We thought we could imagine the gall as a bear cub holding on and looking at us.

In the first shot I am shooting with the camera on automatic mode and the lens is not

zoomed at all. I guess it's a wide angle shot.

Even tho there is a bright overcast sky behind the tree this photo looks pretty good.

In the second photo, I have zoomed all the way in at 12x to show a close up of the

tree gall that we thought looked like a bear cub.

In this shot taken from exactly the same spot, there is a lot of milky fog around the

photo.

I don't think my fuji camera would have done this. At least not this bad.

I have a couple of other examples I can post but this one is typical.

Is this milkyness normal?? Could I have used some other camera setting

and avoided some of this effect??

As always, I appreciate your comments!

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Is your metering for the second shot set to average or centre spot?

Yachtsman1.

[goddi]

...In this shot taken from exactly the same spot, there is a lot of milky fog around the

photo.

I don't think my fuji camera would have done this. At least not this bad.

I have a couple of other examples I can post but this one is typical.

Is this milkyness normal?? Could I have used some other camera setting

and avoided some of this effect??

As always, I appreciate your comments!

=======================

Dan,

There is something I learned back in the film days, and it might also apply to digital cameras today, too. Maybe, maybe not but here is my take.

The image looks overexposed. When you zoomed in on the dark object, the camera wants to make it '18% grey', an industry standard. But the light meter says, "Oh, it is almost black and I will open my shutter to let more light in to get close to 18% grey." So the dark object gets lightened. When you have a very dark or very light (snow) as your main object, the thing to do is to take a light meter reading off of something that is closer to 18% grey; then, hold that setting, recompose and take the picture. Or, in your case of the dark object, stop down an f-stop or two to compensate for the darker object. Or, with a very light subject, like snow, open the aperature a stop or two.

Gary

Link to how to use a grey card.... If you don't have a grey card, you can usually find something around you that is close.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5986275_use-grey-card.html

[KyDan]

Is your metering for the second shot set to average or centre spot?

Yachtsman1.

As far as I can tell with the camera set to Auto, I have no control over this feature.

I looked thru the menu in Auto and it does not say what metering is being used nor

allow me to change it.

In Program mode I can do this. I just read the manual on metering and I can choose

3 ways in P mode.

I will try some back lighted shots this way and see if it makes a noticeable difference.

I'm afraid I am not very good at fancy camera settings! I just want to grab the camera and

shoot. Auto is not as good as manual in some instances so I will have to try harder to learn

some settings.

The manual suggests "evaluative" metering for back lighted shots.

It also offers "center weighted" and "spot" metering.

I guess the "evaluative" is what you are calling "average".

I'll try some back-lighted shots with those settings and see what they look like.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

For the second pic you need "spot" metering.

Yachtsman1.

[Conflow]

Dan,

Prior to you going on your 'Trip' I had sent you a P.M as agreed ~ but you never replied nor acknowledged that !

However having looked at your (sample) Photographs posted above, I'm afraid you have into fallen into a trap

into which most new users of Digital-Cameras succumb.... In your case it seems that the Photos were taken

somewhere around mid-day or shortly afterwards and you were facing South ~ thats the 1st. mistake.

Secondly if you are photographing in Rainfall or in a Forest or shooting Snow-scene's you have to be aware

of the following....

Digital-Camera's can see a much wider Colour-spectrum than what your eye's can see and in particular it's

highly sensitive to (defracted) Ultra-violet radiation. In your case this diffusion is caused by UV-light impacting

into Mist or Evaporation or Water-droplets which can sometimes be seen as a 'milky-cloud' but in fact its mostly

invisable being in the upper Blue-spectrum which you cant see ~but~ the Camera will see it, particularily in a

damp Forest.

There are 2 remedies for this anomaly:- (1) Use a Circular-Polarised Lens Filter ~ (2) Post-processing with a

Kodak or Cokin-001 Filter set at 5% (no luminosity correction)....This is available as "Opanda-Filter download".

I attach 3 (corrected) Images viz:-

Image-01-c

The 'White-balance' of this was way-off and was corrected and Gamma was dropped to 0.8 then 'auto-levelled'

Image-02-c

Your original shot ~ again 'White-balance' corrected but now showed up the 'Blue-UV-tinge' (originally milky).

Image-03-c

Corrected with Cokin-001 Filter set to 5% ~ Now UV-filtered and showing the water-droplets on the tree-trunk

on its North side ~ I could have gone to 10% with this but it would have been a little OTT.

Hope this is of some help to you when dealing with outside Forestry- terrains and Snow-scene's.

Brian.(Conflow)

[cjdnzl]

The Fed Ex driver delivered my (gently used) camera just as we were preparing to bug out for a nice camping weekend.

I had already charged 2 pair of brand new Ansmann hi capacity NiMh AA batteries and had a new 16Gig memory card so

I was ready to try the camera.

We spent 3 days trailer camping at Mammoth Cave National Park in south central Kentucky, USA.

This park would be a great park even if it didn't have the largest cave in the US under it.

The park is also 56,000 acres of mostly un-touched natural forest.

It has miles and miles of hiking trails.

Now I have questions about this camera --

I know that any photo that is back lighted is a bad thing but sometimes you don't have a choice.

Either take the back-lighted shot or take no shot.

I have an example with a question.

Here is a tree with a huge gall on the side of it.

We thought we could imagine the gall as a bear cub holding on and looking at us.

In the first shot I am shooting with the camera on automatic mode and the lens is not

zoomed at all. I guess it's a wide angle shot.

Even tho there is a bright overcast sky behind the tree this photo looks pretty good.

In the second photo, I have zoomed all the way in at 12x to show a close up of the

tree gall that we thought looked like a bear cub.

In this shot taken from exactly the same spot, there is a lot of milky fog around the

photo.

I don't think my fuji camera would have done this. At least not this bad.

I have a couple of other examples I can post but this one is typical.

Is this milkyness normal?? Could I have used some other camera setting

and avoided some of this effect??

As always, I appreciate your comments!

I copied your tree image into Photoshop and had a good look at it. The first thing was that the shadows were too bright, but restoring the tonal range to put the dark tones where they should be was not entirely successful in terms of the image. There might have been an element of overexposure due to the dark trunk fooling the camera into overexposing, but that's not the whole story. There is an overlay of flare, or uniform light over the entire image. Flare is usually caused by shooting into the light, but in this shot there really isn't enough back light to cause much flare.

I have concluded that there was something wrong when you took the photo. Perhaps the atmospheric conditions caused some condensation on the lens - was the camera cold, did it come out of a cold trunk in the car? in which case it could be condensation. Or, is the lens clean? It doesn't take much grease on a lens to produce rampant flare.

Lastly, the images appear none too sharp. Perhaps you have reduced the image quality a bit too much with jpg compression. I'm hoping so, otherwise you could have sharpness problems.

Perhaps you could set up some controlled shots, frontal lighting, side lighting, and back lighting, checking the lens to be sure it's clean, and make a judgment about the camera after that.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Dan

Reading all this-

You may want to do a "factory re-set" to bring the camera back to what it was set when made, if you aren't menu orientated, the previous owner may have set it to their own preferences, or made adjustments & given up & sold it on, which is what I did with my Canon bridge... One way of finding out what the actual camera users think & do is to use Flickr, find a group for your camera & ask questions there.

Yachtsman1.

[KyDan]

Wow, thanks to you all for the time spent and the technical answers.

I'll try to respond-- The camera was not colder than the environment. It was a crisp fall morning. No visible fog anywhere.

I did just now take a real good look at the lens and it appears to have a fingerprint right in the middle

Thanks cjdnzl for suggesting that. I'll do my best to give it a good cleaning. (Yes I have lens cloths and

solution for this job.)

I admitted at the onset that I knew the photo in question was backlighted and that is a bad thing.

I couldn't move the sun or the gall on the tree so I couldn't fix that.

Yes the photos are greatly reduced in quality using google picasa. I did that just so I could post them here and

stay within the size limitations for this forum.

I have looked at all the other photos that I've taken since I got the camera on Thursday and almost all appear

to have some fog or milkiness. The only one's that do not are fairly dark.

Cleaning the lens will be my next move!!

Brian thanks for your technical help also! I cannot seem to find your PM but really appreciate your help

here in the forum. I will check out that filter that you mention as we take a LOT of photos in the woods

and occasionally on the beach! Snow shots, not so much thankfully!!

I'll clean and take some more shots and report back.

Also will do a factory reset as suggested by yachtsman if the lens cleaning does not give the hoped for result.

[Ken Cox]

DAN

SOME HOW TO'S HERE

http://www.techhive.com/

SHOULD INCLUDE ON YOUR WEB PAGE

KEN

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dan,

All good advice - but sometimes when lighting is tricky, you may just want to use the "bracket" feature which I suspect your camera has. Also the overexposed image can be pretty much totally recovered using a few Photoshop features such as selective desaturation and selective contrast enhancement, etc. Here's one of them after a few minutes ot touch-up.

Best regards.

Lin

[Conflow]

Hi Lin,

Nice correction job there above ~ I dont use Photoshop myself ~ I use some German-utiities which best suits my work

but in essence selective-desaturation and contrast enhancement would be the way for Dan to go with his work....

Colin wrote that there was a vast amount of 'Flare' but no light to cause same ~ In my experience Autumn morning & noon

shots in a 'decidious' Forest always cause this type of 'Flare' due the autumnal transparency of the foliage which diffuses

all light and in particular UV-light which can be clearly identified....this does not happen in an 'evergreen' Forest.

Just a thought...

Brian.

[KyDan]

Well I've cleaned the lens and taken some more shots. I'll post an example tomorrow morning.

They do look better but still have some fog. We actually HAD some fog this AM so it's not a great test.

I do think it looks better.

Lin, wow you really made that little "bear cub" look great. Especially considering I had posted such a low res

photo to begin with.

Lin- Can you tell me what I'm looking for in the manual when you say "use bracket mode"?

Is that a light metering setting or something else?

Sorry to be such an amateur! (I've only been taking some sort of pictures my entire life!!)

On another note-- my PC choked when I tried to view the video from this camera.

Engineer son has been given orders to build Dad a new one.

I told him my problem and he said he'd give me plenty of video horsepower in the new one.

It (canon video) does play on my lap top but I only use it when we're "on the road".

On a positive note-- the Canon automatically partially mutes the sound when you use the

zoom feature. The zoom motor is very quiet to begin with and the slight mute during use

makes it almost un-noticeable in the few test video that I have taken.

Just in case anyone cares to see it-- I will put a short clip online and post a link here

momentarily.

In the video my wife is walking down the steps to the main "historic" entrance to Mammoth

Cave. It was late evening and getting dark pretty fast. I thought the video was more than

acceptable considering the low light.

Back in a sec with the link....

[Ken Cox]

Lin is on holidays for a few weeks

do a google re "photography bracketing"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracketing

think i gave you a link to the parent site before

http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Glossary/Exposure/Auto_Bracketing_01.htm

ken

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Dan

Auto Bracketing is to take shots a number of stops over & under what the camera auto or default setting is. I can't remember if my Canon bridge had that feature, I think it did, my Panasonic certainly has. What you do with your bracketed shots is another subject, I use it for HDR (High Dynamic Range) images where a programme such as Photomatix blends them together giving a whole knew dimension to your images. Using it too much is gimmiky in some peoples eyes. I think you need to do some reading. If you go to Canons web site you can download a PDF manual for your camera, the PDF manual is searchable with a box where you could type BRACKETING & search for what your cameras parameters are.

Yachtsman1.

[goddi]

......In this shot taken from exactly the same spot, there is a lot of milky fog around the photo.

I don't think my fuji camera would have done this. At least not this bad. I have a couple of other examples I can post but this one is typical. Is this milkyness normal?? Could I have used some other camera setting and avoided some of this effect??...

=============================

Dan,

I took a look at the specs of your camera. I see that it has the 'AE Lock' function. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I think your image is overexposed due to the dark subject you zoomed in on. There have been many suggestions to 'fix' this problem. But you have a function in your camera that, I think, will help you get a better shot in-the-camera. Take a look at this site that talks about using your 'AE Lock' function of your camera.

http://www.learn.usa...k_article.shtml

Basically, the AE Lock function will lock in an exposure setting. This can be used in the situations like you had when you were trying to take a shot of something very dark (or very white), or really any shot, if you want to take it that far. A camera tries to make every exposure to be 18% grey. So, if you want to be really specific, one would take an exposure reading off a 'grey card' in the light that is shining on the subject and lock in that exposure with the AE Lock function. Then compose your shot and take the picture with that exposure setting.

But, if you don't have a grey card handy, you can take an exposure reading off of any other object that is 18% grey or close to it. Sometimes, green folage or grey stones are close, but you get the point. You can get a grey card and learn what other things out there come close to a grey card reading and then you don't have to really carry around a grey card.

With this method, your shot in the camera will be much closer to what you want and you will have to do less post processing.

And here is an interesting site that talks about using a grey card with some interesting samples of the benefits of using a grey card:

http://www.digitalar...nstructions.htm

Gary

[KyDan]

OK, I've got a lot to digest!! Thanks to all.

Here is a link to a test video I took.

This was my 1st day with the camera.

It's nothing special but I was impressed that it looked so good considering

how dark it was getting- especially down in the mouth of Mammoth Cave.

It's about 150 Meg so it's huge. If you're interested--

Mammoth cave test video

[KyDan]

I'd appreciate your thoughts on video.

This camera takes 1280 x 720 video. It makes a MOV file.

That Mammoth Cave file is 55 seconds and 159 Meg.

I know that MOV files may not be the optimum type but it's what I've got.

Keeping in mind that I'm eventually hoping to incorporate some video in future

P2E photo shows-- as well as keeping the video for archival purposes-

do you recommend I change format?? Should I convert the MOV to MPEG4???

Should I convert them to something else?

What type video is best for use in P2E shows??

IF you do think converting to another format is a good idea, can you recommend

a program to do the conversion?

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Dan

Have you tried allowing PTE to convert/edit your video file?

Yachtsman1

[KyDan]

Dan

Have you tried allowing PTE to convert/edit your video file?

Yachtsman1

Not yet. My present computer is underpowered for HD video viewing and editing.

I will have a new desktop PC in a week or two.

I have not used PTE in almost a year. I have not used the new version with

video capability at all.

(I know, all you guys are going "oh, no- now he's going to want us to teach him how

to do that")

Once I get my new PC up and running and loaded with necessary software I'll be

watching lots of those how to video produced by Lin and others.

I was asking about MP4 conversion because I read an online review of this

camera that said it gave MOV video files but they could be converted to MP4 with

little or no loss. I assumed that meant MP4 were preferable file format to MOV.

If PTE works with MOV files and my new PC runs MOV files as effortlessly as it should,

I guess the only reason to convert to MP4 would be if I wanted smaller files that

would be more easily shared online?

[KyDan]

FYI- I meticulously cleaned the lens and took some more shots today.

Here is one with plenty of contrast and bright light with deep shadows.

Lots of fall color.

We were adding a new parking spot at my son's house.

It is not back lighted as my original complaint but it is very bright sun.

I think much of my problem was a dirty lens.

Other suggestions by many of you here will also be implemented by me

as I learn to use this camera.

[fh1805]

I guess the only reason to convert to MP4 would be if I wanted smaller files that would be more easily shared online?

Dan,

Don't expect that a file will automatically get smaller if it is converted to a different format. The basic difference between one video format and another is the compression algorithm (also known as a coder-decoder routine or codec). If you have a video file that has already been heavily compressed and you convert it to a different format with a less aggressive compression, it is more than likely to come out larger in size. That is not necessarily a bad thing. It means that it requires fewer computer resorces to do the final decode, and so will run a less powerful systems. But, of course, it also means the file will take longer to upload/download to/from the Internet.

Video = whole new can of worms!

regards,

Peter

[cjdnzl]

FYI- I meticulously cleaned the lens and took some more shots today.

Here is one with plenty of contrast and bright light with deep shadows.

Lots of fall color.

We were adding a new parking spot at my son's house.

It is not back lighted as my original complaint but it is very bright sun.

I think much of my problem was a dirty lens.

Other suggestions by many of you here will also be implemented by me

as I learn to use this camera.

I think you've cracked it. That garden shot is much sharper, and the detail right under the bushes is very good. I'm reminded of an old adage I learned 50 years ago - "Always keep your lens clean. This does not mean always keep cleaning your lens."

Good work,

Regards,

Colin (New Zealand)

[KyDan]

Just a brief follow up on my Canon SX 130 IS.

I'm pretty happy with it so far.

Downside- it's a bit larger than pocket size but still fine in a belt case.

Here is a photo that is deliberately back-lighted.

I just used full auto setting.

I moved just so the sun was behind a tree trunk and took the shot.

I know it is not up to snuff for many of you experts but looks pretty good to an amateur like me!

I've added it to my camera arsenal but it won't be my one and only take with camera.

The little Fugi is still a good pocket alternative.

A few comments on the video feature -- this camera has automatic image stabilization. It seems to be fine in single shots but often

does not work well in video mode. In fact some of my videos have increased "shake" rather than reduced.

I will have to shut it off for some future video testing.

Plus side is the camera slightly mutes volume during zoom so the already quiet zoom motor is nearly

inaudible in video shots.

Focus motor is also very quiet.

Wind noise is evident but also noticeably reduced from my FugiFilm pocket camera.

Here's the back-lighted shot--

[Ken Cox]

DAN

SEE BRACKETING

http://www.techhive....03201211270500/

http://www.techhive.com/article/2013270/bracket-your-photos-for-the-perfect-shot.html#tk.nl_photo

KEN