"I finally figured out why I keep cutting off the top half of people's heads," my wife said as she went through the latest stack of photos she'd taken with her Canon A570.
"Why's that?" I said, putting down my newspaper.
"Well, I'm always pressing down hard on the shutter button, trying to get the camera to take the picture when I want to take it, and I automatically lower the camera, so it cuts off part of their heads."
I ruffled through the set of photos she had stacked on the table, and sure enoughmany showed kids, relatives, and friends with the top third of their heads gone. I grimaced.
As a veteran of film cameras, I once again cursed digital shutter lag, thinking about all the nifty candid shots I'd missed waiting for the digital camera to run through the calculations it needed to process and save pictures to its memory card. Yes, the digital age has brought us incredible convenience in editing, uploading or printing our own photos...and all those nights I'd spent in a dark room breathing odoriferous chemicals such as developers and fixers were behind me.
But seemingly...so were candid shots.
CAPTURINGCANDID SHOTS WITH A LOW END CAMERA
High end cameras have ways around the shutter lag, often by taking a rapid series of shots in succession. But is there a way to do it with a low end camera? Fortunately, for mostthere is, and you can do it using standard programs you might be using every day on your computer right now.
The key lies in the movie making feature most digital cameras have as one of their options. By taking video clips, you can easily capture those candid moments.
"Taking video clips?' you ask. "How does that help me take candid photos?"
Easy. I'll show you how.
TAKE VIDEO CLIPS, NOT PHOTOS
When filming fast action sequences in which you want to capture your child catching a ball or perhaps his first fleeting smile, set the camera to the video movie maker mode, not the picture taking mode. Run the video over a short interval and film the action sequence you want to capture
.
"But now I have a video clip," you say. "How does that help me capture candid shots?'
STEPS TO CAPTURING CANDID PHOTOS
There are three steps to candid photos:
1) Attach your camera to the computer in order to be able to upload the clips;
2) Filmthe clips and upload them;
3) Extract candid photos from the clips.
This procedure assumes you are running Windows NT or Vista.
ATTACHING YOUR CAMERA TO THE COMPUTER
1) Obtain a USB cablewith a connector that will fit your camera at one end and attach it to a USB port on your computer.
2) Install the driver that came with your camera. When you attachyour camera and flip it into the picture review mode, the "plug and play" feature of Windows will cause the computer to immediately sense your camera.
CAPTURING CANDID SHOTS
Upload yourclip tothe default directory andopen the folder. You'll notice that the clip icon differs from a photo icon in that it has "sprockets" on each side, symbolic of the old days of movie cameras that used sprockets to advance the film.
Capturing the candid shots contained in this clip is simple.
1) Open the file using a commonly available video play program such as Windows Media Player, already installed on NT and Vista machines. Play the clip all the way to the end, noting the position of the slider bar at the moments you want to capture.
2) Return the clip to the beginning and move the slider to the position you noted in #1.
3) Advance the slider incrementally, frame-by-frame, until you reach the moment you want. As you do, you may see other moments. Note these.
4) When you reach the optimum moment, click "full screen" so that the picture fills the entire screen of your monitor.
5) Press two keys simultaneously: Cntrl and Prnt Scr. This will save the screen image to the clipboard.
6) Now open the WindowsPaint Program, located in Accessories, and Click Edit, Paste. This will import the image, and you'll see it on your screen.
7) Now click "File, Save As" , and choose a folder. This saves your chosen candid shot to a photo folder for later uploading to your favorite photography printing studio.
THAT'S IT!
The beauty of this method is that you can obtain any number of photos from one clip -- you cancapture and save each frameof the clip asyou pass through the "critical moment" andyou will be surprised at how natural the expressions of your subjects are. No posing. You are filming them AS they move through this moment in their lives. And you will have imaged a whole sequence of events that occurred too fast for your camera in the photo mode to capture.
With this simple method you have just defeated digital shutter lag...and now have better control over your balky, frustrating digital camera.
Visit The Digital Camera Zone at http://www.yourdigitalcamerasecrets.com and the Digital Photography Guide at http://www.digital-photography.how-to-zine.com for more digital photography tips and reviews.
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