Hi all,

I new to the photography end of things...Only use a point and shoot camera..Its an old Canon ixus....

Just wondering if its possible to get good results with it...Mainly used for shooting the car...

 

Against my normal shooting I recently picked up a Canon G11 point and shoot and took it to Acadia NP this week. I will say this I was pleasently suprised with the results.

 

Here is one of the G11 shots, 20 seconds,tripod mounted, f8, iso 80 with the internal ND filter on and 2 external filters stacked ND and CP.

Mountain stream in Acadia National Park,



for a point and shoot class camera, I am impressed.

 

Thats pretty dang impressive Dave...regardless of P/S or DSLR.

 

^ Thanks, I guess it was worth teetering on a rock in the middle of the stream getting my feet wet to get the shot

 

So much of a successful shot is composition, and you can do that with a full DSLR, a Point 'n Shoot or even a pinhole camera and get great results, especially just for display on the web and sharing with friends.

I imagine that when you start printing at A3 and higher the quality of the glass, the dynamic range and the acuity of the sensor all begin to get more important.

That said, two of my three shots in the October thread here were shot with a hybrid (Sony NEX-5) and this nice kitty was shot with my wife's Cybershot pocket camera (zero post processing):



Bottom line - don't think you need a high-end rig for awesomely cool results. In the same way that a pro in a Miata will thrash a hack in a GT3, a pro shooter with a pocketcam can turn out some quality images.

 

Just as the other guys are saying, absolutely you can get great results. Photography is more about your eye (how you see things) and the light than it is the equipment. Sure, there are some shots that require particular gear, telephoto lens or whatever, but work with what you have today.

Sometimes there are ways of fooling a point-and-shoot into giving you more control --

Read the manual about what happens with a half-press of the shutter. If you can lock focus or exposure separately (some P&S have that option) then you're golden. You can half-press the shutter pointed in a different composition to lock the focus or exposure, pushing exposure up or down or focusing where you want.

If your camera only locks both together at a half-press then you're more limited but also look for "exposure compensation" control. That'll let you bump exposure up or down independently of focus.

edit -- ha ha, that G11 is no P&S or toy. I have the S90 with same sensor and I'm in love. Not dSLR-quality low-light noise but pretty darn good. An amateur could go pretty far with one of these.

 

Ya but I still like to call it a P&S

 

Must read up on that one...

There are so many different settings on a p&s (well for me at least)