Canon Telling on myself -- sometimes the camera is right

Jock Elliott

Hall of Famer
Location
Troy, NY
If you own a G12, you know that it has two spots on the top dial for storing "custom" settings.

I like to take pictures of the sky, so after some research, I cooked up my own secret recipe for sky photos that I dutifully stored in C2.

My wife and I take the dogs for a walk a couple of days ago, and beautiful clouds were doing their thing overhead.

I switched on the G12, selected G2, and took a photo.

A bit later we stopped by a pond that I have photographed many times. I was struck that most of the ice had melted, but a couple of ducks were standing on submerged ice so that it appeared they were walking on water. I selected the "landscape" mode on the Scenes menu and took a couple of shots.

I forget to switch back to G2 and snapped a few more pix of clouds on our stroll.

When I pulled the pictures up on my computer monitor, the truth was apparent: the lanscape mode worked better for sky photography than my secret recipe!

Darn camera . . . now I just might have to try a couple of those other pre-canned modes . . .
 
interesting! can I ask which settings you chose and what the camera did differently? I pretty much avoid my camera's auto and scene modes like the plague :tongue: but maybe that's just me being elitist...
 
bartjeej,

It took me a while to access the shooting data associated with the pix.

My recipe: ISO 80, Centerweighted metering, manual focus at infinity, f8, 1/125, vivid colors

Canon Landscape mode: ISO 80, evaluative metering, continuous AF, f4, 1/400, my colors (color boost) off

Until I checked, I would have bet that the landscape mode was at a higher f number, but not so . . . and the Landscape mode definitely looks better.

- Jock
 
Hi all, I've just been given a G12 for my birthday and still learning about it. Thanks for sharing your recipe, I hadn't thought about that.

Best wishes

Kev


Sent from my HTC Desire S using Tapatalk
 
Hi all, I've just been given a G12 for my birthday and still learning about it. Thanks for sharing your recipe, I hadn't thought about that.

Best wishes

Kev


Sent from my HTC Desire S using Tapatalk

Kev,

I like the G12 a lot. I think it is a very versatile all-in-one package.

Cheers, Jock
 
If I recall correctly, the Scene modes are JPEG-only, i.e., no option for Raw capture. That may not be important to you; if it is, I'd continue to work toward getting those custom settings tuned up!
 
Thanks for the welcome, didn't realise about jpeg only in scene mode. I would like to use Raw and edit them in GIMP. Is the photo editing software in the box any good or better to stick to GIMP or any other suggestions?

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those are definitely better alternatives, Chuck ... if Kev can afford them

Ah, good point; I didn't mean to be insensitive to that.

Elements has historically been offered at steep discounts at various times during a version's life cycle - which is not much more than a year. When it reaches the $50-60 US threshold, it's arguably a good investment; most of the Photoshop tools needed for enthusiast-level photographers are found in Elements. I've been using it since Version 1, although Lightroom has replaced it as my primary organizing and light editing tool.
 
Thanks for the welcome, didn't realise about jpeg only in scene mode. I would like to use Raw and edit them in GIMP. Is the photo editing software in the box any good or better to stick to GIMP or any other suggestions?

Sent from my HTC Desire S using Tapatalk

The Digital Photo Professional software that comes with the G12 allows you to edit RAW. How it compares with other RAW editing software, I can't say.

Cheers, Jock
 
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