camera trivia

[forgotten_aria]

I also learned something about the Canon SD300 (and likely most canons of that size) while taking those kitty pictures. If you half depress the button, you can get it to take pictures more quickly than if you haven't depressed the button.

Comments

[blackpaladin.livejournal.com]

If that's the feature I think it is, that's getting more and more common among digital cameras. That's the autofocus kicking in: you push the shoot button halfway in to make the camera focus, then push it the rest of the way to actually take the picture. (Unfortunately, if you push the button all the way all at once, it still takes the time to focus before shooting, hence the delay.)

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

It's acutalyl somehign my old nikon had, but it never occured to me that my canon shoudl ahve it. I was being frustrated by how slow it was to take picutres, but figured that was a limitation of digital cameras. I am fool!

[gorgo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've seen that on a lot of autofocus cameras. As was mentioned, the standard interface is that pushing the button down half-way triggers the autofocus, and then pushing it the rest of the way takes the picture. It's most noticable on lower-cost cameras, as their autofocus tends to be slower.

A fair number of cameras can be set to continuously autofocus on whatever's in front of them, which would give you the speed of half-pressing without having to manage the shutter button so much. Tends to chew through batteries, though, so it's not something I'd want to leave on all the time.

[bk2w.livejournal.com]

As others have said, it presets the autofocus, but it also usually presets the exposure. I've used it a number of times when I want to take a picture of a backlit subject. I can aim the camera at the wall next to the window, then take the real picture. It'll usually be a better exposure (though not perfect).