Newbie question re: Scenes on S3

[tachy]

I am a newbie to the s3, and pretty new to photography in general.

I have read the section on the Scenes/special scenes in the manual, and have read "night scene" and "night snapshot" description several times.......and to me they sound the same.

I wrote to canon tech support asking them the difference or when to use them and they answered that one uses IS, and the other doesn't, but when I checked, they both seemed to use IS, and so I sent my email back to them, and got a second reply, that YES, they both use IS, but that "Night Scene" is for photographing a night view, and that "Night Snapshot" is for taking a person with a night scene behind them.

I then sent them the exerpt from their manual for
"Night Scene" that reads: "Allows you to capture human subjects against the backdrop of an evening sky or night scene"

and

"Night Snapshot" that reads: "Allows you to take snapshots of people against twilight or night backgrounds"

which to me sound very similar, and all I got was a reply with the full exact words from the manual sent back to me?

I was hoping someone here could be more helpful in explaining the difference. It seems Canon tech support either is confused on the difference or they don't really know, and are just making up answers?


Thank you in advance.

[Dafer]

I agree, I find the owners manual to be not much help. For instance : "P program AE - use the program AE mode to have the camera automatically set the shutter speed and aperture value to match the brightness of the scene" Isn't that what auto does? It would be great if someone on this forum who knows more than we do could just post a brief description of how they use these modes..

[tachy]

I have only had my camera a few days, but I think the difference between Auto and Program, is that auto keeps the menu choices and adjustments to a minimum (basically just resolution and compression), where on program, it lets you change more settings and shoot continuous or bracketted photos. Auto is basically just point and shoot.

[tachy]

And in the S3 advanced manual........AF Assist beam on page 12, says (see page 28), and if you look at page 28, all it says is (see page 12). Neither way says anything about it. And if you look in the index in the back of the advaned manual, it says AF Assist beam......(12, 28). That is incredibly helpful. I now know how to turn it on or off, but that does not tell me what it does. I assume it is mentioned somewhere else in the manual.

[griptape]

So many questions... I'll start with the first one.

Night scene, you have nothing in the foreground. You want everything the camera sees to be at the same focus. Night portrait, you have a subject in the foreground with a dark background. You want the subject in the foreground to be focused on more than the dark background. Think of it as being at a concert... If you want to take a picture of your friend with the stage behind him, you would use night portrait. If you wanted to take a picture of the whole crowd/the stage, you'd be better off using night scene.

The program mode lets you set the focus manually and the ISO manually, set your white balance, pick your colors, change the flash strength, etc. (hit the Func button in both modes and you'll see you can change things in P but not Auto). It gives you more control than Auto, but doesn't make you figure out what your shutter speed and apeture should be (which can be a real pain to get right for beginners).

I don't use the assist beam, because I usually set my focus manually, but I believe it's so you know what you're focusing on more easily. Say you have a wall 10 feet from you, and you're trying to take a picture of something outside the door way 20 feet from you. Having the beam pointing on what the camera will focus on cuts down your chances of accidentally having the wall in focus and blurring what you were trying to take the picture of outside the door way.

[Dafer]

So many questions... I'll start with the first one.

Night scene, you have nothing in the foreground. You want everything the camera sees to be at the same focus. Night portrait, you have a subject in the foreground with a dark background. You want the subject in the foreground to be focused on more than the dark background. Think of it as being at a concert... If you want to take a picture of your friend with the stage behind him, you would use night portrait. If you wanted to take a picture of the whole crowd/the stage, you'd be better off using night scene.

The program mode lets you set the focus manually and the ISO manually, set your white balance, pick your colors, change the flash strength, etc. (hit the Func button in both modes and you'll see you can change things in P but not Auto). It gives you more control than Auto, but doesn't make you figure out what your shutter speed and apeture should be (which can be a real pain to get right for beginners).

I don't use the assist beam, because I usually set my focus manually, but I believe it's so you know what you're focusing on more easily. Say you have a wall 10 feet from you, and you're trying to take a picture of something outside the door way 20 feet from you. Having the beam pointing on what the camera will focus on cuts down your chances of accidentally having the wall in focus and blurring what you were trying to take the picture of outside the door way.

Thanks, that clears a few things up. Had an S45 for years and didn't really use all that it could do. Want to at least try with the S3...