Digital

Last night I messed around with the digital camera I got.  It has a bunch of settings on it -- a pictogram of a moon, a pictogram of a palm tree, a pictogram of a mountain, a pictogram of a snowman.  I can't be troubled to read the instructions, so I just took a bunch of self-portraits on different settings.  The difference in color and texture is remarkable.  This won't come as any surprise to anyone who takes pictures, but to idiots like me it is fascinating.  Of course, I didn't write down which setting was which so I didn't learn which little graphic I want to turn the dial to for a specific result.

I did entertain myself for a good long time, though, snapping pictures while the dog looked on, wearily.   

 

Comments

[Hal O'Brien]

I'm generally flash averse, myself, but these are nice. That's a very pretty pearl necklace.

The pictogram of the moon is probably a flash suppressor. The pictogram of a mountain probably means it's optimized for distance. I'm not sure about the palm tree... although it might be a rose, which some manufacturers use to indicate close-ups. No clue about the snowman.

[Al Wheeler]

I would guess that the snowman is a setting that compensates for the overall brightness in snow-covered scenes.

[Dylan]

Yes, the mountain is for distance, the flower for closeups. The flower will focus on the item in the foreground for extra sharpness at the cost of degraded clarity for the background. (If you hold it close enough to a target item, that is.) The mountain is uniform resolution for everything, I believe.

[marianita]

Hey, you may be able to find out what settings those pictures were taken on, even now. If they are still in your camera, you can often hit the "display" button a few times as you scroll through them and it will show all the settings the camera was on for that picture. At least, that's how my Sony works...

[PG]

I wonder what makes us take pictures of our feet. That was the first thing I tried photographing when I got a cameraphone.