How to take photos in Paris ?

[annettecinca]

Great camera buying tips, Randy. My daughter has just asked for a new camera for Christmas, so the timing is perfect!

[GitteK]

Hi guys !

Merci merci for camera buying tips ! Here is another of randy's milliondollar shooting tips !

OK, so it's not Paris, but my road where I live, BUT you may want to take perspective photos in Paris too:


So here is randy's comment:
>>> The effect you have is called linear perspective. The curvature of the
lens makes it seem as though the road is coming together.
It has the effect of drawing people's view through the photograph.

The next time you shoot something like this, move to the left edge
of the road to shoot. The coming together will be very dramatic.<<<

Voila !! randy, you are a genius ! You should start charging us for this service !!

[Shoesy]

Gitte - If that's the road where you live, please find out if there are any houses for sale over there because it's GORGEOUS.

[rssilverandlight]

Gitte -

Have a wedding and I surely will charge ! My first wedding was in
1969 (I'm at about 1300 by now). Have camera, will travel.

[rssilverandlight]

Hi Annette -

The fountain, frame #277 is at place de la Concorde near the Obelisk.

The scratchings, frame #274 on the rock are on the Roman wall downstairs at L'Orangerie. The wall's discovery in the construction process, from what I understand, slowed the reopening until 2006.
If you look closely you will see that one of the scratchings is a diagram, could be a house; not too shabby for 2000 years ago.

[sandy]

Gitte

I have a Sony Cybershot DSC-S600 6.0 magapixels. I took it to Paris and as you may have seen in my old posts all my pictures came perfect. Maybe it is an old model now, and the only problem I found is that the zoom is not too powerful. I bought a 2 GB memory stick, and I took more than 700 hig definition pictures and more than 1 hour of filming. I just plug it to my computer with the usb cable and download the pictures.
My sister has an Olympus camera (don´t know the model), much smaller than mine in size, and she takes great pictures too.

[Happygoin]

Wow...I hope you realize how pretty the street where you live is, Gitte. It's a postcard!

[sistereurope]

Gitte, if I showed that picture to my husband he would want to move to Denmark tomorrow!

I am such an idiot when it comes to cameras. We just bought a new one (I THINK it's a Nikon!) that is relatively easy to use. You can also shoot short "videos" with it, which was really great when my husband went to Vietnam. It gave me such a better feel for the market, for example, to have the sound as well as the picture. It wasn't all that expensive either.

[rssilverandlight]

trechic -

Do not despair, I have been a professional photographer for 38 years.
And I shoot with a Nikon D200; it is a high end digital camera.
Although the type of camera can be important, it's the good eye
of the person that ultimately makes the difference.
That's where you come in.

[sandy]

Gitte,

Please, do your homework before asking those questions!!

Look under "what´s in the box" tab:

www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=183&modelid=14904#BoxContentsAct

It says it comes with a Multimedia Card 16-M. This card is removable and you can change it for another one with a higher storage capacity. The storage capacity of a card also depends on the resolution set on the camera for pictures. The higher the resolution, the smaller the quantity of pictures you will be able to store. Look at the chart at the specifications tab. It also comes with regular AA batteries, but you can also use AA rechargeable batteries.

Congratulations on your new acquisition

[Anne]

Gitte, a 16 Mo memory card is ridiculously small (something like 15 pics max I think - I had the same one sold with my Canon too), so you really have to buy a 512 Mo minimum, I would rather suggest a 1 or 2 Go .

I also suggest rechargeable batteries, because batteries get low rather quickly, specially when you use the big screen viewer (?) at the back of the camera . Canon sells good rechargeable batteries . Just make sure that you always carry another set of batteries with you (these can be standard ones) in case the other ones get low somewhere you cannot reload them (also the reloading takes quite a few hours) .

And yes, I am afraid that you will have to read at least some of the manual . The big pain is that, unless Canon has changed its policy since I bought mine, it isn't a "paper" manual but a DVD featuring 150+ pages . I hated that .

[sandy]

We took a 2 GB memory stick to our last trip to Paris and London. We took 700 pictures and more than 1 hour of filming, all stored on the same memory stick. I agree with Anne, a 16M memory stick is a joke.

[trechic]

I just saw this shot of your street, Gitte! It's a postcard!!

My camera that I used in Paris is a Konica Minolta Dimage X1 8 megapixels. I bought it new off of EBay for a little over $200 I think, although I think it retailed for around $350. But, if you look at the fabulous photos of Dep's taken recently in Paris...she used a Nikon Coolpix P4.

[GitteK]

OK, you clever ladies, thanks.

So the card is like the harddisk on a computer ? Next question: so when I have filled one card I can:

a. delete the pics from the card and use it again ?
b. transfer the pics from the card to my laptop - and then use the card again ?
c. insert a fresh card and shoot right away ?

sandy, you mention a memory stick. Is it the same as the USB key I have for my computer, or are there special camera-memory-sticks ?

So this means that I can just carry a memory stick in my handbag and transfer the pics FROM the card TO the memory stick, and then fill up the card again ?

You are the smartest bunch of hightech'ers I know !!

[Anne]

Gitte, unless I am mistaken, the "memory stick" that Sandy is talking about IS actually the memory card (am I right, Sandy ?) . Memory cards are very small and thin devices :

www.pixmania.com/fr/fr/photo/carte-memoire/4/1/categorie.html

Your a and c points are correct . As far as the b is concerned, you don't actually put the card into your laptop : I connect my camera to the computer with a USB cable, then I transfer the pics and then have them deleted from the card . Then there are also "lecteurs de carte mémoire" (see the 5th item on the website), only I don't really know what is the use for those .

And I am by no means a hightecher : my kids actually explained all this to me, and then of course I read that blo*dy Canon DVD manual .

[Darcy]

Congratulations on your new baby, Gitte! Wishing you many wonderful trips to Paris together.

[andi]

Gitte, congratulations on your new purchase!

1) Rechargable batteries are a definate must, standard batteries will only last a very short time, lithium batteries are best.
2) Check to see which type of memory card you need to buy if you upgrade, it appears to be a standard SD card from what I read in the spec sheet, there are several different types SD, HD etc......the size and shape vary to fit each camera. 512mb upwards will store loads of pictures.
3) Once you have pictures on your camera, you plug in the USB cable (should be supplied) connect the other end to your computer/laptop, a box will pop up asking you what you want to do, follow the instructions to send them to your computer. If you click copy instead of send they will stay on your camera too, so you will have to delete them from your camera afterwards. (this may be the better option at first until you are used to working everything) I don't think you will be able to transfere your pictures straight to a USB pen though?
4) Did you know that your camera will also do small videos as well? You switch to video mode and start to record, the images will not be as good a quality as a picture though and will use up more of your memory but a handy extra non the less. Be sure to use the video function in a well lit place as they tend to come out very dark if not. The more light the better the quality usually.

When you get your new camera it is best to have a good play around and test out what each function does, you can't really do any damage by experimenting........have fun dearest, looking forward to many new images from you!!!! ;D

[Becky (Berkeleytravelers)]

Hi Gitte - congratulations, you will love having this camera I'm sure.

Memory card: buy the largest can bring yourself to pay for (keep the little one it comes with for the times you actually do take 500 high resolution pictures and fill up the big one, and you want to take more before getting back to your computer, LOL - and it will happen!). This is equivalent to a floppy disk because it stores the data and is removable.

Transferring data: I have't looked at the information about yours, but since the card is removable you will insert it into something to transfer the photos (or as Andi says, there may be a USB cable to connect to your computer and transfer). I have a combination fax/copier/photo printer that takes all the different card types/sizes on the market and can be used to print commercial quality photos. In addition, I have a SanDisk memory card reader (that also accepts multiple card types/sizes) that I use to transfer the images to my computer. So, you will need something like that to take the photos off the card and get them to the computer (which is where you would store them permanently), and from there you can put them onto something else. (You also could take the card to a commercial source and have them put the photos on a CD or DVD for you, which you then could put onto the computer or whatever, but doing that means not having the ability to take pictures because you will have to leave the card with them for a day or two.)

The card will be used over and over, once you have transferred the photos to your computer (or had them transferred to a CD or DVD). When you put them onto the computer, you will have the option of either copying them to the computer (leaving them on the card) or moving them to the computer. I always copy them and only after I see them on the computer do I erase them (because once I did something wrong in the transfer, and lost some since they no longer were on the card - I didn't know, as someone mentioned when Tre had problems, that there now are specialists who can retrieve information that has been deleted so long as nothing new has been recorded over it).

Do get rechargeable batteries (but even so, carry at least two extra sets with your camera because the batteries always wear out faster than you think they possibly could - and if you do the video mode that usually uses even more battery power).

Final thing - the zoom feature will make it much easier to address the issues you raised to Randy (cars and people, more of the "frame" than you would prefer, etc.). I use the zoom aspect of lenses to "edit" before I shoot - for instance, if an interesting building has cars in front of it and I don't want them in the shot, or if there is a scene that would be perfect but for the horrible X to one side of the frame, etc. - just zoom in a little and you not only get a closer view of the thing you wanted, but you also get the unwanted things out of the frame without complicated editing after the fact.

You're going to really enjoy having a good camera that gives you lots of options. (We will leave editing your pictures until later, LOL!)

[sandy]

Gitte,

Don´t feel frustrated. Though I can cope very well with the new technologies (I was one of the first persons to use a PC, back in 1985), it took me a while to learn how to manage the new digital cameras. I´ll try to make it clear for you:

The "memory stick" and the "memory card" are the same thing. They have different storage capacities, from 16 M to 2 Gb, but their size is all the same. It is a small cartridge, that you insert in the appropriate slot in the camera (like a floppy disk in a PC). Once you take your pictures, they are stored there. You can then copy them to your computer using the USB cable without the need to remove the card from the camera. Then you can also copy the pictures to a CD to have them stored for ever.
After that you can delete the pictures from the card, and use it again as many times as you like.

If your card is full while you are on your trip, you can also go to a photography shop, and ask them to copy the pictures from your camera to a CD, so you can delete them.

You can also delete some of the pictures stored in the card one by one, but always have to be careful so you don´t have the same problem that tre had, deleting all the pictures by mistake.

I hope all this was clear, but don´t be lazy and read the manual anyway!!

[rssilverandlight]

Gitte,

Congratulations !

Boy am I glad I was away from Our Paris for several days.
It saved me typing a lot of good stuff that was posted by others.

1. USB cable from camera to computer.
2. 1GB card for the camera as primary, 512 as backup
3. rechargeable batteries
4. monitor on all the time and flash drain batteries, carry charger
5. unless you take an ungodly amount of pictures like I do
(large size, high resolution), a 1GB and 512 is all that you are
likely to need.
6. In your practice time, remember that your camera still works
on vertical as well as horizontal.
7. When I travel I am not a fan of having my images copied
on a CD. I take enough cards, and then some, so that MY
computer is the one that sees my images. There are plenty
of horror stories about stores messing up people images.

I'm sure others will chime in and before you know it you will be
taking "Ansel Adams, eat your heart out" photographs !