Advanced Point and Shooting

The above shot was taken by my Leica D-Lux4 point and shoot on my road. Not bad for a point and shoot unedited image!

Okay, before I can dive into the features you need on your point and shoot we have to talk photo basics: f/stop (aka aperture), shutter speeds and ISO. I really wanted to write these tips and reviews in the most basic way but I quickly realized that without this foundation a novice isn’t going to really know how to work their Point and Shoot in order to get better pictures. I’m gearing this towards amateur photographers who really want to understand their camera’s better so a little of the techie stuff is necessary.
At least for me, I’ve found that understanding the theories behind concepts is often more valuable than memorizing the actual concepts! What’s the saying “Give a person a meal and they will be fed for a day, teach them to farm and they will be fed for life.” Hopefully I can break it down to the most basic level so you can take better pictures and better understand when to use those special modes your camera can do.
So here it is: f/stop, shutter speeds and ISO all control how much light comes into your camera. I find it easier to think of light in the same way you think about water. Instead of thinking of light coming through the lens of your camera, think about water coming through a pipe. Make the hole smaller (f/stop), less water gets through. Open the pipe for a long time (shutter speed) more comes in. F/stop is the hole, shutter speed is how long the hole is open. I’ll talk about ISO later.
Shutter speed is pretty self explanatory, shorter (i.e. 1/2000th of a second) lets in very little light, slower speeds (i.e. 1/10th of a second) let in more.
F/stop (aka aperture) is the size of the hole inside your lens. The number is actually a ratio of the length of your lens to the diameter of the hole. Smaller numbers (i.e f/2) are actually bigger holes than bigger numbers (i.e f/16). Lame right? Yeah, obviously some mathematician came up with this system! But photography is all based on math so it actually makes sense, it’s just not very intuitive! Some photographers think in terms of golf where smaller scores make bigger money :)
Okay, you don’t need to memorize f/stops or anything but you need to understand the relationship of f/stop and shutter speed in order to properly expose your photograph and to understand their effect on an image. Obviously, shutter speed and f/stop have a inverse relationship; if you open up the f/stop to make the hole bigger, you are going to need to shorten the shutter speed in order to maintain the correct exposure. Pretty simple.
Thankfully, ISO is a very simple concept. ISO refers to how sensitive the the little digital chip that records the image is. A low number like ISO 80 means it’s not very sensitive, a high number like 1600 means it’s really sensitive. So, if you increase the sensitivity of the sensor, you are going to need less light so you can use a faster shutter speed, then why not use a high ISO all the time then? The answer is something called “Noise.” A little noise is fine, too much can be bad. On Auto ISO mode, a good P&S camera will keep your ISO low enough to not make objectionable amounts of noise. Noise is also one of the main things to look at when buying a camera, I’ll talk about that more in future reviews.
Now, why would you want to change any of these controls? And that takes us to the entire point of this discussion! Yay! You can actually understand what all those special modes (like “Sports” and “Night Portrait”) actually are! It will also lead us into knowing how to use the most valuable tool on your P&S camera; Exposure Compensation and how to not take blurry pictures. More on that next time (I know, what a tease!).