Making Adjustments for Point and Shooting Photography

As many of you know, last year I began carrying a Canon SD780IS point-and-shoot camera with me everywhere I go. The reason I started doing this is to always have a decent quality camera with me to be able to capture shots that I would normally miss by not having my SLR or G11 nearby.

As is pretty evident, the camera's auto functions did their best in adjusting the exposure and captured a pretty bland over-exposed image. After seeing this, I took a few steps to the right and knelt down at the edge of the beach. This alone would of created a better composition, but still would not overcome the poor exposure. Since the camera does not have any manual settings, I had to fool it into correctly exposing the image.

To do this I first composed with the center of the image near the bright horizon and pressed the shutter release halfway down to lock in exposure and focus. Continuing to hold the button down, I then recomposed the shot and pressed the shutter release the remainder to capture the shot.

The result is a much better exposure and quite frankly a very nice image especially considering it was taken on a sub $200 fully automatic point-and-shoot.

Canon SD780 IS - 1/320 second, f/3.2, ISO 100