Amateur photography help

contraband

So, I got me a Canon PowerShot A540 for Christmas. I know it's just a point-and-shoot, but it's my first real "camera," per se. I've always been very interested in photography, but I've never had the funds for a decent camera of my own. So, hey, a camera! Neat!

I know it's not single-lens reflex, but is there anything I can to do augment or improve my camera? Which amateur photography guide should I look to for salvation? My girlfriend has a copy of (iirc) The Basics Of Photography, she's further entrenched into this hobby than I am. Is that book any good? Also, my camera supports MMC or SD cards. Which should I go for? The card it came with is like 15 megs, so I'll be replacing that today. I'm planning on picking up a 2 gig SD card at BestBuy since I have a gift card anyway.

So, aside from all of that. Any personal advice from photographers? How do I properly fuck with the ISO setting for the best picture? (Times like these I wish I was working with film so I could even muck around in the f/stop &c...) Oh, and when could I justify spending $lots on a Rebel? Thanks in advance.

edit: for wholeness' sake:

Lucky Cynic

Well, if your camera has like a screw-like track in front of the lens, I would say getting a protective lens screwed in would probably be a good thing to invest in. I'm in the same boat with you and have found that a 2gig SD card is extremely helpful. I would also suggest toying around with all of the presets and toys and bells and whistles the camera has, I mean, even if the picture doesn't come out quite right. That is what I am doing right now and I must say that the pictures continue to get better and better, a little bit more in focus, much brighter, well lit with a proper flash, etc. It just comes with time it seems.

redx

umm... well, a review I just pulled up says it has both shutter speed and apature priority modes, so you should be able to muck about with F/stops and what not.

err.. ISO, well how you change it should be in your manual somewhere, but you basicly want to shoot as slow as is posible for your environment. Unless I totally misunderstand the concept.

Google Image Search

Low ISO = low light sensitivity. Lower ISO means you get less noise. In bright light you want to shoot as low as your camera can go, but at night or when you're shooting fast moving things you'll have to bump it up higher, to 800 and above.

Your camera can fake an aperture (the number that looks like 2.8, 5.6, etc) which effects the depth of field of the picture. If you're taking a portrait, you generally want it to be shallow, so you use a wide aperture, or a small f-stop, like 2.8, to make sure the background is out of focus. On a landscape or a shot where you want more things in focus, a narrower aperture/larger f-stop is what you want. Keep in mind though, that a narrower f-stop lets in less light, so a longer exposure is in order, which means you have to hold it still.

Slapnuts

Because its not an SLR its going to be harder to screw around with on the fly. So you should figure out what situation you're going to be using the camera the most in (IE- Indoor/Indoor Lighting for Candids, Outdoor/Sun for Sports, Indoor/Pro-lighting for Amateur Pornography) and set your one Manual Setting to that. You'll have to play around with the settings to figure out what you like.

Don't stress about it too much, you'll figure it out over time.

From my experience, Canon cameras usually do a really good job with their Auto settings. Meaning that if you put the thing on Auto and go to town in whatever situation you find yourself in, your pictures are going to look damn good.

Read the manual and figure out what auto preset is used for what situation and try to remember to set your camera for that should you find yourself in that situation (the mountain looking icon on the selector wheel is for outside shots. The icon with the head is for portraits. And so on.) If you forget to set anything the Auto setting will work just fine for you.

You've got yourself a pretty forgiving first camera. Play around with it and figure out what you like. And remember to press the button to take the picture down lightly to auto balance the settings before you press it hard to take the picture. That'll tell your camera to auto set itself for the picture you're taking. Which will make your picture look awesome.

If any of that is confusing, let me know. I'm not the greatest person at explaining things. But I am a professional photographer and have owned a few Canon Powershot cameras.

EggyToast

The best camera in the world won't help you with layout and framing. A good camera, like an SLR, will increase the quality of your shots, but it won't make them good pictures by itself.

So abuse the fact that it's a digital and take a lot of pictures. When you do, pay attention to things like the depth of field, color saturation, overall noise, and other things. Tips on f-stop and ISO aren't that helpful if you don't actually see what's being changed, so don't just take good advice as fact; see what the changes actually are doing to your pictures (so take the same shot with different settings).

Every good photographer spent a lot of time just taking pictures, to get comfortable with framing a shot quickly and knowing what should be adjusted. The really good ones know what to do before they even hold the camera up. But you only get that way through practice, so just take a lot of pictures. Don't be afraid to delete duds once you get them off of your camera, but look at the duds to see what happened. Pretty much every digital camera stores information like ISO settings and aperture, so you don't even need to take notes nowadays.

contraband

awesome, thanks guys!

quick question before I run out to Best Buy--is there any major difference besides MMC or SD cards as far as storage/price goes?

EggyToast

The major difference is that MMC was designed for open systems, so you should have less trouble finding drivers, etc. But SD has also been around for a long time, and is newer (and theoretically faster, although probably not all that noticeable for camera usage). MMC is older, SD supersedes it but is based more around Microsoft's protocols. Check prices when you go out; if they're the same, get SD.