...photography... can any1 help me devise a topic...?

[Lee]

Im not sure if this is the right place to post... but anyway

I have recently become quite interested in photography and think my best bet is to do my project within the field. I have read up on the camera lens testing on this site, but i became confused v. quickly o_0 I have a Canon Powershot A95, and am not too sure of all its capabilities. Is there any way someone can give me a topic idea or explain to me very simply the lens testing/what my camera can do within that?

Thanx a lot!

[davidmoilanen]

It looked like the camera lens testing project on this site actually has quite a bit of information that could help you out a lot. If it is confusing to you try to spend some more time reading the information on the websites. Often spending time with a subject is absolutely essential to develop an understanding of it.

You can find information about your camera by typing the name into Google and doing a search. I just copied the name you had written and came up with many many hits. Take a look through those and it will give you all the specifications of your camera.

It seems like some of the camera tests might be better suited to a non-digital camera. Your camera is also a point and shoot camera which also doesn't allow you to test as many things about your lens but apparently you should still be able to do the experiment.

If you want to learn more about lenses than you can with your camera try asking parents or relatives if they have an old manual focus regular film camera. Many older people have these kinds of cameras lying around and because they are so simple they usually still work. If you can get your hands on one of these older cameras you can do all of the experiments in the camera lens testing.

So check out the websites listed as links on this site, google your camera to learn more about it and have fun.

[EDS]

Sounds like David offered good advice.

A couple quick additional comments -

Your camera is also a point and shoot camera which also doesn't allow you to test as many things about your lens but apparently you should still be able to do the experiment.

I've never played with an cannon A95, but have used a similar older model (the A70), and it should allow for almost total manual control. Switch it over to manual mode and you can control most settings independently. Also, if you're thinking of doing any experiments with color, you should probably set the White Balance control to "custom," set it once, and then leave it unchanged throughout the experiment. (The manual will tell you how to do both.)

There are three features you can't turn off, as far as I know: white balance correction, jpeg compression (which is probably okay for most experiments as long as you use the highest resolution and highest quality setting) and noise correction for long exposures (>1 second on the A70). If you try to do the star test, you may find that the automatic noise correction causes trouble - but there's no harm in trying it to see what happens.

Here's a web site with some good articles on basic camera optics that offer a friendly introduction to the terminology. http://dpfwiw.com/index.htm#site_index


I suggest jumping in and trying a couple experiments. I'm sure either David or I would be happy to help if you run into trouble or have specific questions. Or, if things still aren't making any sense to you, I'll be happy to offer some more detail.

Good luck,
Erik