S1 Tips and Hints - Compilation

[DavZell]

Is there a way to print all these out together on one page? On my
browser these posts are so narrow and long...

You can get them all in one file at the following link:

http://www.zellersys.com/s1_tips.txt

David

 

[akitakan]

I second that. Thanks drz for all your efforts.

The S1 Tips and Hints Thread is great but hard to get through, so...

Here is a compilation of ideas from that thread. Hope you like it!

David

[P.S. I am never doing this again... ugh!]

The Tips (In no order other than my arbitrary classification
=========================================

Too long to post in one message. Please see next messages...

--
'Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well,
including this, I suppose.' Douglas Adams

 

[serpeant]

If you were a chick, I'd give you sex, actually, you deserve it anyway...

Thanks. Geat summary.

The S1 Tips and Hints Thread is great but hard to get through, so...

Here is a compilation of ideas from that thread. Hope you like it!

David

[P.S. I am never doing this again... ugh!]

The Tips (In no order other than my arbitrary classification
=========================================

Too long to post in one message. Please see next messages...

--
'Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well,
including this, I suppose.' Douglas Adams

 

[Bka314]

The S1 Tips and Hints Thread is great but hard to get through, so...

Here is a compilation of ideas from that thread. Hope you like it!

David

[P.S. I am never doing this again... ugh!]

The Tips (In no order other than my arbitrary classification
=========================================

Too long to post in one message. Please see next messages...

First because you did a great job.

Second because the last message was 3 days ago and this list is worth to be on the first page of the Canon talk - in case somebody missed it.

so thanx again

 

[FrancescoRaf]

Thanks a lot drz

even if I don't have this camera:

I am planning to take it if the price will get lower here in Italy (still 629 euros), for the preview images of Dimage Z3 totally disappointed me.
Yet I maybe wait for S2 IS if it'll be ready before the end of 2004

FraF

 

[Abie]

Is there a way to print all these out together on one page? On my
browser these posts are so narrow and long...

-------
Copy and paste into a new Word file. Or notepad.

 

[Phil Pearce]

The S1 Tips and Hints Thread is great but hard to get through, so...

Here is a compilation of ideas from that thread. Hope you like it!

David

[P.S. I am never doing this again... ugh!]

The Tips (In no order other than my arbitrary classification
=========================================

Thank you again for a great idea, and then a great job. Time consuming I'm sure, but really worthwhile. Hope the thread continues.

Phil
--
Oly D-540 Canon S1 IS

 

[Schockwave]

Thank you very much for that, have printed it all out and also saved it to my documents, so that I can easily refer to it at any time!

The S1 Tips and Hints Thread is great but hard to get through, so...

Here is a compilation of ideas from that thread. Hope you like it!

David

[P.S. I am never doing this again... ugh!]

The Tips (In no order other than my arbitrary classification
=========================================

Too long to post in one message. Please see next messages...

--
ICQ: 125470635
AIM: Schockwave500
Yahoo: schockwave500
MSN: [email protected]
http://img72.photobucket.com/albums/v220/Schockwave/
http://schockwave.smugmug.com/

 

[Yorky]

Certaainly worth keeping this on the first page!

Doug

 

[Frank43]

I would like to add my thanks.

This thread will eventually be removed from the forum. There should be a way to make this type of document permanently available.

Frank

 

[Ivo SI]

if you are in record mode ( red led ) and switch to the review mode ( green led) and then press the review mode again ... the lenses retract ...

 

[FRiC]

The reason is because LCD screens are designed to be viewed in one orientation only. On Canon cameras with the flip LCD the correct orientation is when the LCD is opened out to the left, and not rotated and closed back in. (Even worse is when a vertical screen is used horizontally or vice versa...)

[lots of goodies snipped]

----

I noticed that if you put the LCD in the closed position but face
out, it will give you more accurate exposure displays."

"
=== End of Tip

 

[Yorky]

I think we should keep this thread handy, new owners are asking questions which have answers here.

DOUG

 

[insideabubble]

I'm having some difficulties using a couple of tips concerning low-light focus, more preciselly these 2:

"Low Light: ""Any prosumer digicam is going to have difficulty in low-light except for sony cameras, and even those cameras have difficulty. The best thing to do is manual focus on your subject when it is too dim for autofocus. There is a trick though with the S1. Basically if you set the custom button on the S1 to Auto focus lock and then turn on the Red eye reduction, you can have an AF Assist Illuminator. Just use the custom button to focus and whalla, your subject is in focus! It works up to about 3-5 feet. I've tried it in complete darkness and it works amazingly!"""

• I'm not quite sure if I understood how this works... the red-eye reduction only fires when you actually shoot the photo, you need to focus before that, so how exactly does it serve has an AF assist lamp? confused:

"Use hyperfocal. Use Av, set to f2.8, set manual focus to 10', zoom out all the way and everything from 4.5' to infinity will be in focus. No focusing needed so it'll be fast. Try in a completely dark room. Save as Custom setting and you're all set for Halloween-type pics. If the subject is closer than 4.5', you should be able to focus on it the 'regular' way."

• I've tried this, but all I get is blurry photos. Now, I'm not sure if the problem is incorrect focus or camera shake... :~

I know these are probably very ridiculous questions, but I'd really apreciate if someone could help me out on this!

 

[NeoteriX]

"Use hyperfocal. Use Av, set to f2.8, set manual focus to 10', zoom
out all the way and everything from 4.5' to infinity will be in
focus. No focusing needed so it'll be fast. Try in a completely
dark room. Save as Custom setting and you're all set for
Halloween-type pics. If the subject is closer than 4.5', you should
be able to focus on it the 'regular' way."

• I've tried this, but all I get is blurry photos. Now, I'm not

sure if the problem is incorrect focus or camera shake... :~

I know these are probably very ridiculous questions, but I'd really
apreciate if someone could help me out on this!

Re: the preflash thing -- I tried it out and couldn't get it to work either.

Re: hyperfocal, those instructions are slightly off, IMO. Check out this site: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

It'll allow you to calculate the hyperfocal length for a variety of cameras and such.

In anycase, the hyperfocal length of the S1 at full wide (zoomed out, 5.8mm focal length) with an aperture of f/2.8 is 2.38 meters or 7.82 feet. So, set your manual focus to about the 2 meter mark if you're in metric, or if the scale is in imperial, the mark between 5 and 10 feet.

Using a hyperfocal of 7.5' instead of 10' will get you a slightly closer in focus (like 3.5' instead of 4.5') with a tradeoff that the camera will lose focus beyond 40.6'

Maybe this might help you. Otherwise, it's probably camera shake.

 

[FlipG]

I believe this is what is meant by the first 'tip' and here is what I did to get this to work - though I'm not 100% certain that I've interpreted this tip the way it was intended.

As written it does not work. Do this to get it to work, but it is not a very robust method. Hyperfocal is better IMO for dark/low light focus situations.

I did this in aperture priority mode and tried this in a dark room and it only [sort of] works on close subjects around 3-5 feet with horiz/vert lines to help focus lock onto:
assign jump button to AFL
Set flash=on, redeye=on, flash pop-up=on.

focus on a subject preferably one with horiz or vert lines to help with focus lock and half-press the shutter button - now while holding the shutter half-pressed hit the jump button to initiate AFL and repeat pressing of the jump button until you get a focus lock indicated by a green square in the EVF.

With these settings in place, and the flash up, the red-eye reduction lamp will light and stay lit to facilitate illuminating your subject and attaining focus lock but the range is quite short. It often takes several hits of the jump button to allow focus lock via AFL.

Regarding hyperfocal - please be aware that manual focus setting will be lost whenever the power cycles on the camera, and when the LCD/EVF turns off, ie due to power management. So if you set up hyperfocal in your Custom settings and lose MF, you can turn the mode dial out of C to any other mode and then return it to C to reimplement your saved settings with MF back in place - or you can just stay in C and set MF again to the desired range. You should be OK with 7.82 feet or just a bit farther, ie 10 feet as I have read that hyperfocal settings are best erred on the far side of the desired focus setting to allow for sharp focus out to infinity. This will push out you min distance for focus but only by about one foot with f2.8 and 5.8mm focal length.

HTH

I'm having some difficulties using a couple of tips concerning
low-light focus, more preciselly these 2:

"Low Light: ""Any prosumer digicam is going to have difficulty in
low-light except for sony cameras, and even those cameras have
difficulty. The best thing to do is manual focus on your subject
when it is too dim for autofocus. There is a trick though with the
S1. Basically if you set the custom button on the S1 to Auto focus
lock and then turn on the Red eye reduction, you can have an AF
Assist Illuminator. Just use the custom button to focus and whalla,
your subject is in focus! It works up to about 3-5 feet. I've tried
it in complete darkness and it works amazingly!"""

• I'm not quite sure if I understood how this works... the red-eye

reduction only fires when you actually shoot the photo, you need to
focus before that, so how exactly does it serve has an AF assist
lamp? confused:

"Use hyperfocal. Use Av, set to f2.8, set manual focus to 10', zoom
out all the way and everything from 4.5' to infinity will be in
focus. No focusing needed so it'll be fast. Try in a completely
dark room. Save as Custom setting and you're all set for
Halloween-type pics. If the subject is closer than 4.5', you should
be able to focus on it the 'regular' way."

• I've tried this, but all I get is blurry photos. Now, I'm not

sure if the problem is incorrect focus or camera shake... :~

I know these are probably very ridiculous questions, but I'd really
apreciate if someone could help me out on this!

--
Canon S1 IS
Keep on Shooting!

 

[insideabubble]

thanks for both of your tips!

Regarding hyperfocal, I tried reducing the MF distance to 2 mt like the previous poster said, but not much difference. I really think my problem is hand-shake and not the actual focusing, because the shutter speed is automatically set to 1 sec. Here's a couple of tests I just did:

http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0255503101/img_0111.jpg

http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0255503101/img_0112.jpg

What do you think, camera shake or bad focusing?

As written it does not work. Do this to get it to work, but it is
not a very robust method. Hyperfocal is better IMO for dark/low
light focus situations.

I did this in aperture priority mode and tried this in a dark room
and it only [sort of] works on close subjects around 3-5 feet with
horiz/vert lines to help focus lock onto:
assign jump button to AFL
Set flash=on, redeye=on, flash pop-up=on.
focus on a subject preferably one with horiz or vert lines to help
with focus lock and half-press the shutter button - now while
holding the shutter half-pressed hit the jump button to initiate
AFL and repeat pressing of the jump button until you get a focus
lock indicated by a green square in the EVF.

With these settings in place, and the flash up, the red-eye
reduction lamp will light and stay lit to facilitate illuminating
your subject and attaining focus lock but the range is quite short.
It often takes several hits of the jump button to allow focus lock
via AFL.

Regarding hyperfocal - please be aware that manual focus setting
will be lost whenever the power cycles on the camera, and when the
LCD/EVF turns off, ie due to power management. So if you set up
hyperfocal in your Custom settings and lose MF, you can turn the
mode dial out of C to any other mode and then return it to C to
reimplement your saved settings with MF back in place - or you can
just stay in C and set MF again to the desired range. You should be
OK with 7.82 feet or just a bit farther, ie 10 feet as I have read
that hyperfocal settings are best erred on the far side of the
desired focus setting to allow for sharp focus out to infinity.
This will push out you min distance for focus but only by about one
foot with f2.8 and 5.8mm focal length.

HTH

I'm having some difficulties using a couple of tips concerning
low-light focus, more preciselly these 2:

"Low Light: ""Any prosumer digicam is going to have difficulty in
low-light except for sony cameras, and even those cameras have
difficulty. The best thing to do is manual focus on your subject
when it is too dim for autofocus. There is a trick though with the
S1. Basically if you set the custom button on the S1 to Auto focus
lock and then turn on the Red eye reduction, you can have an AF
Assist Illuminator. Just use the custom button to focus and whalla,
your subject is in focus! It works up to about 3-5 feet. I've tried
it in complete darkness and it works amazingly!"""

• I'm not quite sure if I understood how this works... the red-eye

reduction only fires when you actually shoot the photo, you need to
focus before that, so how exactly does it serve has an AF assist
lamp? confused:

"Use hyperfocal. Use Av, set to f2.8, set manual focus to 10', zoom
out all the way and everything from 4.5' to infinity will be in
focus. No focusing needed so it'll be fast. Try in a completely
dark room. Save as Custom setting and you're all set for
Halloween-type pics. If the subject is closer than 4.5', you should
be able to focus on it the 'regular' way."

• I've tried this, but all I get is blurry photos. Now, I'm not

sure if the problem is incorrect focus or camera shake... :~

I know these are probably very ridiculous questions, but I'd really
apreciate if someone could help me out on this!

--
Canon S1 IS
Keep on Shooting!

 

[DavZell]

I would call it camera shake -- look at the numbers on the clock. There is a double/sliding image, not lack of focus.

As an aside, the original hyperfocal directions were based on full wide angle (no zoom). If you zoom you will fall out of focus. This is not necessarily obvious.

D.

thanks for both of your tips!

Regarding hyperfocal, I tried reducing the MF distance to 2 mt like
the previous poster said, but not much difference. I really think
my problem is hand-shake and not the actual focusing, because the
shutter speed is automatically set to 1 sec. Here's a couple of
tests I just did:

http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0255503101/img_0111.jpg

http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0255503101/img_0112.jpg

What do you think, camera shake or bad focusing?

 

[lion1308]

With a shutter speed of 1' it's definetely handshake and not a focus problem.

Francisco

Regarding hyperfocal, I tried reducing the MF distance to 2 mt like
the previous poster said, but not much difference. I really think
my problem is hand-shake and not the actual focusing, because the
shutter speed is automatically set to 1 sec. Here's a couple of
tests I just did:

http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0255503101/img_0111.jpg

http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0255503101/img_0112.jpg

What do you think, camera shake or bad focusing?

As written it does not work. Do this to get it to work, but it is
not a very robust method. Hyperfocal is better IMO for dark/low
light focus situations.

I did this in aperture priority mode and tried this in a dark room
and it only [sort of] works on close subjects around 3-5 feet with
horiz/vert lines to help focus lock onto:
assign jump button to AFL
Set flash=on, redeye=on, flash pop-up=on.
focus on a subject preferably one with horiz or vert lines to help
with focus lock and half-press the shutter button - now while
holding the shutter half-pressed hit the jump button to initiate
AFL and repeat pressing of the jump button until you get a focus
lock indicated by a green square in the EVF.

With these settings in place, and the flash up, the red-eye
reduction lamp will light and stay lit to facilitate illuminating
your subject and attaining focus lock but the range is quite short.
It often takes several hits of the jump button to allow focus lock
via AFL.

Regarding hyperfocal - please be aware that manual focus setting
will be lost whenever the power cycles on the camera, and when the
LCD/EVF turns off, ie due to power management. So if you set up
hyperfocal in your Custom settings and lose MF, you can turn the
mode dial out of C to any other mode and then return it to C to
reimplement your saved settings with MF back in place - or you can
just stay in C and set MF again to the desired range. You should be
OK with 7.82 feet or just a bit farther, ie 10 feet as I have read
that hyperfocal settings are best erred on the far side of the
desired focus setting to allow for sharp focus out to infinity.
This will push out you min distance for focus but only by about one
foot with f2.8 and 5.8mm focal length.

HTH

I'm having some difficulties using a couple of tips concerning
low-light focus, more preciselly these 2:

"Low Light: ""Any prosumer digicam is going to have difficulty in
low-light except for sony cameras, and even those cameras have
difficulty. The best thing to do is manual focus on your subject
when it is too dim for autofocus. There is a trick though with the
S1. Basically if you set the custom button on the S1 to Auto focus
lock and then turn on the Red eye reduction, you can have an AF
Assist Illuminator. Just use the custom button to focus and whalla,
your subject is in focus! It works up to about 3-5 feet. I've tried
it in complete darkness and it works amazingly!"""

• I'm not quite sure if I understood how this works... the red-eye

reduction only fires when you actually shoot the photo, you need to
focus before that, so how exactly does it serve has an AF assist
lamp? confused:

"Use hyperfocal. Use Av, set to f2.8, set manual focus to 10', zoom
out all the way and everything from 4.5' to infinity will be in
focus. No focusing needed so it'll be fast. Try in a completely
dark room. Save as Custom setting and you're all set for
Halloween-type pics. If the subject is closer than 4.5', you should
be able to focus on it the 'regular' way."

• I've tried this, but all I get is blurry photos. Now, I'm not

sure if the problem is incorrect focus or camera shake... :~

I know these are probably very ridiculous questions, but I'd really
apreciate if someone could help me out on this!

--
Canon S1 IS
Keep on Shooting!

 

[bdbx18]

Hyperfocal will only help with inability to focus due to low or no light e.g, doubtful focusing accuracy or to invoke a quick shot without the need for focusing. With a fixed say aperture say f2.8, only the shutter speed will be calculated by the digicam. If you had flash on, the S1 will default to 1/60 (or is 1/30?) which will be sufficient to avoid handshake. Without flash on, you need to watch the shutter speed given and use bracing or tripod if it calls for less than 1/2 sec.

Good luck.

Francisco

Regarding hyperfocal, I tried reducing the MF distance to 2 mt like
the previous poster said, but not much difference. I really think
my problem is hand-shake and not the actual focusing, because the
shutter speed is automatically set to 1 sec. Here's a couple of
tests I just did:

http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0255503101/img_0111.jpg

http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0255503101/img_0112.jpg

What do you think, camera shake or bad focusing?

As written it does not work. Do this to get it to work, but it is
not a very robust method. Hyperfocal is better IMO for dark/low
light focus situations.

I did this in aperture priority mode and tried this in a dark room
and it only [sort of] works on close subjects around 3-5 feet with
horiz/vert lines to help focus lock onto:
assign jump button to AFL
Set flash=on, redeye=on, flash pop-up=on.
focus on a subject preferably one with horiz or vert lines to help
with focus lock and half-press the shutter button - now while
holding the shutter half-pressed hit the jump button to initiate
AFL and repeat pressing of the jump button until you get a focus
lock indicated by a green square in the EVF.

With these settings in place, and the flash up, the red-eye
reduction lamp will light and stay lit to facilitate illuminating
your subject and attaining focus lock but the range is quite short.
It often takes several hits of the jump button to allow focus lock
via AFL.

Regarding hyperfocal - please be aware that manual focus setting
will be lost whenever the power cycles on the camera, and when the
LCD/EVF turns off, ie due to power management. So if you set up
hyperfocal in your Custom settings and lose MF, you can turn the
mode dial out of C to any other mode and then return it to C to
reimplement your saved settings with MF back in place - or you can
just stay in C and set MF again to the desired range. You should be
OK with 7.82 feet or just a bit farther, ie 10 feet as I have read
that hyperfocal settings are best erred on the far side of the
desired focus setting to allow for sharp focus out to infinity.
This will push out you min distance for focus but only by about one
foot with f2.8 and 5.8mm focal length.

HTH

I'm having some difficulties using a couple of tips concerning
low-light focus, more preciselly these 2:

"Low Light: ""Any prosumer digicam is going to have difficulty in
low-light except for sony cameras, and even those cameras have
difficulty. The best thing to do is manual focus on your subject
when it is too dim for autofocus. There is a trick though with the
S1. Basically if you set the custom button on the S1 to Auto focus
lock and then turn on the Red eye reduction, you can have an AF
Assist Illuminator. Just use the custom button to focus and whalla,
your subject is in focus! It works up to about 3-5 feet. I've tried
it in complete darkness and it works amazingly!"""

• I'm not quite sure if I understood how this works... the red-eye

reduction only fires when you actually shoot the photo, you need to
focus before that, so how exactly does it serve has an AF assist
lamp? confused:

"Use hyperfocal. Use Av, set to f2.8, set manual focus to 10', zoom
out all the way and everything from 4.5' to infinity will be in
focus. No focusing needed so it'll be fast. Try in a completely
dark room. Save as Custom setting and you're all set for
Halloween-type pics. If the subject is closer than 4.5', you should
be able to focus on it the 'regular' way."

• I've tried this, but all I get is blurry photos. Now, I'm not

sure if the problem is incorrect focus or camera shake... :~

I know these are probably very ridiculous questions, but I'd really
apreciate if someone could help me out on this!

--
Canon S1 IS
Keep on Shooting!