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uch of the power of the PowerShot S100 resides in the many options included in the Function menu and the Shooting menu, which together provide the user with control over the appearance of the images and how they are captured. Depending on your own preferences, you may not have to use these menus too much. You may prefer to use the various Scene mode or Creative Filters mode settings, which choose many of the options for you, or you may prefer, at least on occasion, to use AUTO mode, in which the camera makes its own choices. However, it’s nice to know that you do have this degree of control over many functions available if you want it, and it is very useful to understand what types of items you can exercise control over. You also can create a ctomized menu with a few of your most often-used options, us-ing the feature called My Menu, also discussed in this chapter.The Function Menu
The first menu system for controlling your settings while shooting images is the Function menu, which is summoned by pressing the Func./Set button, in the center of the control dial, while the camera is in shooting mode. I have already discussed some of the options that are available through this menu, but now it is time to go through each setting in more detail. Note that, as is also true for the Shooting menu, the number of items that are available for selection through the Function menu var-ies according to the current shooting mode. So, for example, if the camera is set to AUTO mode, only a few options are
avail-able (self-timer, aspect ratio, image size, and movie quality), whereas virtually the whole range of 14 options is available in Program mode. The Scene, Creative Filters, and Movie modes have moderate numbers of menu options available.
In the following discussion, I will describe all of the options that are generally applicable to recording still images. I won’t discuss those that are specific to certain settings, such as the Scene types, which are selected from the Function menu when the camera is set to Scene mode, or the settings specific to Movie mode, which I will discuss in Chapter 8. In order to fol-low this discussion and test all of the options, it is helpful to set the shooting mode to Program and the image quality to JPEG, so almost all of the menu options can be selected.
i-Contrast
This is a very useful option that can help you avoid problems with excessive contrast in your images. Such problems arise because digital cameras cannot easily process a very wide range of dark and light areas in the same image—that is, their
“dynamic range” is limited. So, if you are taking a picture in an area that is partly lit by bright sunlight and partly in deep shade, the resulting image is likely to have some dark areas in which the details are lost in the shadows, or some areas in which the highlights, or bright areas, are excessively bright, or
“blown out,” so, again, the details of the image are lost.
One approach to this problem is to use High Dynamic Range, or HDR, techniques, in which multiple photographs of the same scene with different exposures are combined into one composite image that is properly exposed throughout the entire scene. The PowerShot S100 can take HDR shots on its own, or you can take separate exposures and combine them in software on your computer into a composite HDR image. I discussed those approaches in Chapter 3.
The i-Contrast setting gives you another way to deal with the problem of uneven lighting, with special processing in the
camera that can boost the details in the dark areas and re-duce the over-exposure in the bright areas at the same time, resulting in a single image with better exposure than would be possible otherwise. In order to do this, i-Contrast uses two complementary sub-settings, called DR (Dynamic Range) Correction to reduce highlight blowout, and Shadow Correc-tion to pull details out of the shadows.
The i-Contrast setting process is a bit involved; here are the steps. Press the Func./Set button and highlight this option, the top one at the left of the screen. (Somewhat oddly, when the Function menu first appears, this item is out of sight, above the ISO item; you have to scroll up to reach i-Contrast.) Above the line of icons at the bottom of the screen, when you first high-light the Off icon, you should see the words, “DR Correction Off,” meaning you are currently working with the DR Correc-tion sub-setting. (That label may disappear, depending on the Hints & Tips setting on the Setup menu.)
Scroll through the other settings using the control dial or the direction buttons: Auto, 200%, and 400%. With the Auto set-ting, the camera will attempt to determine how much process-ing is needed. The other two settprocess-ings allow you to choose how much correction is applied.
When you are done with the DR Correction sub-setting, press the Menu button, and the display switches to let you set the Shadow Correction. For that option, there are only two pos-sible settings: Off and Auto. When you are done with set-ting both Dynamic Range and Shadow Correction, press the
Func./Set button again to return to the shooting screen. An i-Contrast icon will appear in the lower right of the display to remind you that you are using this feature.
The images shown above illustrate the differences with DR set-tings of, from left to right, Off, 200%, and 400%.
Note that i-Contrast cannot be used with RAW images. Also, you can apply a slightly different version of i-Contrast to your images after the fact from the Playback menu, as discussed in Chapter 6.
ISO
These initials stand for International Standards Organization.
When I first started in film photography, this standard was called ASA, for American Standards Association. The ISO ac-ronym reflects the more international nature of the modern photographic industry.
The original use of the ISO/ASA standard was to designate the “speed,” or light sensitivity, of film. For example, a “slow”
film might be rated ISO 64, or even ISO 25, meaning it takes a considerable amount of exposure to light to create a usable image on the film. Slow films yield higher-quality, less-grainy images than faster films. There are “fast” films available, some black-and-white and some color, with ISO ratings of 400 or even higher, that are designed to yield usable images in lower light. Such films can often be used indoors without flash, for example.
With digital technology, the industry has retained the ISO
concept, though it applies not to film, but to the light sensitiv-ity of the camera’s sensor, because there is no film involved in a digital camera. The ISO ratings for digital cameras are sup-posed to be essentially equivalent to the ISO ratings for films.
So if your camera is set to ISO 80, there will have to be a good deal of light to expose the image properly, but if the camera is set to ISO 1600, a reasonably good (but “noisier” or “fuzzier”) image can be made in very low light.
The upshot of all of this is that, generally speaking, you want to shoot your images with the camera set to the lowest ISO possible that will allow the image to be exposed properly. (One exception to this rule is if you want, for creative purposes, the grainy look that comes from shooting at a high ISO value.) For example, if you are shooting indoors in low light, you may need to set the ISO to a high value (say, ISO 800) so you can expose the image with a reasonably fast shutter speed. Oth-erwise, if the camera uses a slow shutter speed, the resulting image would likely be blurry and possibly unusable.
To summarize: Shoot with low ISO settings (around 100) when possible; shoot with high ISO settings (400 or higher, up to 1600 or even 3200) when necessary to allow a fast shutter speed to stop action and avoid blurriness, or when desired to achieve a creative effect with graininess.
With that background, here is how to set ISO on this camera.
As is discussed in detail in Chapter 5, one good feature of the PowerShot S100 is that you can make certain important set-tings, such as ISO, using the control ring. However, you can also set ISO from the Function menu, and this is not a bad way to make this setting. So, especially if you want to use the control ring for other purposes, it’s good to know how to get quick access to the ISO setting with this menu.
Press the Func./Set button and move to the ISO icon, the sec-ond one down on the left side of the screen. Then scroll across the menu at the bottom of the screen to select a value ranging from Auto at the left, through 80, 200, and other specific
val-ues, to a maximum of 6400 at the right of the scale.
If you choose Auto, the camera will select a value from 80 up to the maximum that you set using the ISO Auto Settings op-tion. To set that maximum level, press the Menu button, which will take you to the ISO Auto Settings screen.
On that screen, use the right and left direction buttons to set the maximum ISO speed, which can be set at any value from
400 to 1600. Therefore, if you set ISO to Auto, the camera will never be able to use an ISO value greater than 1600. If you want to use a value higher than that, you have to set it manually, or use Handheld Night Scene mode, which uses high ISO values.
I discuss the ISO Auto Settings item in more detail later in this chapter, in connection with the Shooting menu, because that menu includes this feature as a separate menu item.
You cannot select Auto ISO in Manual exposure mode; you have to select a numerical value. In AUTO shooting mode, Movie mode, Creative Filters mode, and Scene mode (except
for Movie Digest), Auto ISO is automatically set, and you cannot adjust the ISO setting. Also, when DR Correction is turned on at a level of 200% or 400%, the ISO setting is fixed within a certain range; these limitations are discussed at page 87 of the Canon user’s manual. Finally, as discussed in Chapter 3, if the shutter speed is set to a time longer than one second, the camera automatically sets the ISO to 80.
White Balance
One issue that arises in all photography is that film, or a digital camera’s sensor, reacts differently to colors than the human eye does. When you or I see a scene in daylight or indoors under various types of artificial lighting, we generally do not notice a difference in the hues of the things we see depending on the light source. However, the camera does not inherently have this auto-correcting ability. The camera “sees” colors dif-ferently depending on the “color temperature” of the light that illuminates the object or scene in question. The color tempera-ture of light is a numerical value that is expressed in a unit known as kelvins (K). A light source with a lower kelvin rat-ing produces a “warmer” or more reddish light. A light source with a higher kelvin rating produces a “cooler” or more bluish light. For example, candlelight is rated at about 1,800 K; indoor tungsten light (ordinary light bulb) is rated at about 3,000 K;
outdoor sunlight and electronic flash are rated at about 5,500 K; and outdoor shade is rated at about 7,000 K.
What does this mean in practice? If you are using a film camera, you may need a colored filter in front of the lens or light fixture to “correct” for the color temperature of the light source. Any given color film is rated to expose colors correctly at a particular color temperature (or, to put it another way, with a particular light source). So if you are using color film rated for daylight use, you can use it outdoors without a filter.
But if you happen to be using that film indoors, you will need a color filter to correct the color temperature; otherwise, the resulting picture will look excessively reddish because of the
imbalance between the film and the color temperature of the light source.
With a modern digital camera, you do not need to worry about filters, because the camera can adjust its electronic circuitry to correct the “white balance,” which is the term used in the con-text of digital photography for balancing color temperature.
The PowerShot S100, like most current digital cameras, has a setting for Auto White Balance, which lets the camera choose the proper color correction to account for any given light source.
Here is how to make this setting through the Function menu.
Once you have highlighted the white balance setting, which is the third icon down on the left side of the screen, you can scroll across the line of icons at the bottom of the screen, which correspond to the following choices for the white bal-ance setting, most of them represented by icons: Auto White Balance (AWB); Daylight (sun icon); Cloudy (cloud); Tung-sten (round light bulb); Fluorescent (fluorescent bulb); Fluo-rescent H (same, with letter H); Flash (lightning bolt); Under-water (fish); and Custom (special symbol).
The above settings should be self-explanatory, except for Fluo-rescent H. That setting is for a type of fluoFluo-rescent bulb that is meant to be closer to the appearance of daylight than normal fluorescents. You may want to experiment, not just with the fluorescent settings, but with all of the presets, to see if the set-tings listed above produce the results you want. If not, you’ll be better off setting the white balance manually.
In my experience, Auto White Balance works well in most
cases when you’re shooting outdoors in sunlit or cloudy con-ditions, and indoors when you’re using flash. However, I have not had good results with this setting shooting indoors under incandescent lighting with the S100. So, when I’m shooting indoors in ordinary room lighting or with photoflood lights, I use Program or another shooting mode that lets me set the white balance to the proper value; as noted above, with Auto, Creative Filters, and some other modes, the camera is set to Auto White Balance and you have no control over the setting.
To set white balance manually, from the white balance menu option on the Function menu, highlight the Custom option, at the far right of the line of icons at the bottom of the screen.
Aim the camera at a white (or gray) sheet of paper (or a white or gray wall, or other object; a photographic gray card is seen in the image above) under the light source you will be using, and fill the camera’s entire screen (not just the focus frame, if one is visible) with the image of that surface. (You can zoom using the zoom lever if necessary to fill the screen with the chosen surface.) Press the Ring Function button (to the left of the red Movie button) to record and lock in that white balance setting. Now, until you change that setting, whenever you se-lect the Custom white balance icon, the camera’s white balance will be set for the value you have just selected through this procedure. This system can be very useful if you often use a particular light source, and want to have the camera set to the appropriate white balance for that source.
If you really want to tweak the white balance setting to the nth
degree, after you have selected your desired white balance set-ting (whether a preset or the Custom setset-ting) press the Menu button, and you will be presented with a screen for fine adjust-ments. You will see a pair of axes that intersect at a zero point, marked by a white dot. The four axes are labeled G, B, M, and A for Green, Blue, Magenta, and Amber. You can now use all four direction buttons to move the red dot away from the cen-ter toward any of the axes, to adjust these four values until you have the color balance exactly how you want it. If you prefer, you can use the control dial to adjust the G-M axis, and the control ring to adjust the B-A axis. (If you only need to adjust the B-A axis, you can use the control ring to make that ad-justment without pressing the Menu button; just start turning the control ring while you are still on the main white balance screen.) The camera will remember your adjusted white bal-ance value until you alter it again, even after you have switched to a different white balance preset.
One final note about white balance: If you shoot using RAW quality, you can always correct the white balance setting after the fact, in your RAW software. So, if you are using RAW, you really don’t have to worry about what setting you are using for white balance. Still, it’s a good idea always to check the setting before shooting, to avoid getting caught with incorrect white balance when you are not using the RAW format.
My Colors
This setting offers great options for altering the colors of your JPEG images as you take them. (The My Colors feature does
not work when you are shooting RAW or RAW+JPEG im-ages.) Using the fairly wide variety of settings available with this option, you can add or subtract intensity of color or work in subtle changes to the look of your images. Of course, if you plan to edit your images on a computer using software such as Photoshop, you can duplicate these effects readily at that stage. But, if you don’t want to spend time processing the im-ages in that way, having the ability to alter the color effects in this quick way can add a good deal to the enjoyment of your photos.
Using this feature is easy: Just select My Colors, the fourth icon down on the list of icons on the left, then scroll across the icons at the bottom of the screen until you find the one you want to use. In the chart on the next page, I provide compari-son photos showing each setting as applied to the same scene, under the same lighting conditions, to illustrate the different effects you can achieve with each variation. General descrip-tions of these effects are as follows.
Vivid
The Vivid setting increases the saturation, or intensity, of all of the colors in the image. As you can see, it calls attention to
The Vivid setting increases the saturation, or intensity, of all of the colors in the image. As you can see, it calls attention to