Canon Digital Rebel 300D Survival Guide
I recently got a Canon 300D Rebel digital SLR. I love this
camera. There are a couple of issues though, that caused me some
trouble and seem to cause many other people trouble. In a nutshell
the autofocus and flash exposure algorithms in the fully automatic mode are
just too buggy, so use the semi-automatic "P" mode instead with the following
suggestions about preventing underexposure in flash pictures.
[1] The Green Box: Just Say No
The fully automatic mode (the green box) is basically useless, because
of the way its autofocus works. It might work OK outside in bright
sunlight with a small apertures, but indoors or with lower light
levels, where the aperture is wide open and the depth of field is
shallow, it is a disaster. Almost all of the time, the autofocus will
pick up the wrong thing; it will focus on the clothes instead of the
hair, or the hair at the back of the head instead of the face, or the
nose instead of the eyes, or the wastebasket at the side of the frame.
To avoid this, I always use the "creative modes", usually the "P"
mode, with the autofocus set to a single point in the center of the
image. I then point that at what I want to focus on, and, holding the
shutter button halfway down, compose my shot. This is totally
predictable and works great.
[2] Underexposed Flash Pictures: Use "P" mode
The Rebel tends to underexpose flash pictures. So again, don't use the
green box. The flash in the Rebel is plenty strong for photographing
in common indoor situations, but the camera seems to be very touchy
about how it measures the amount of power it needs to send to the
flash. Here are some ways to control and boost the flash power.
For automatic exposure, use the "P" mode or one of the other
'creative' modes. If you use the FEL (flash exposure lock, the '*'
button) before taking each shot, you can control the metering more
predictably to get the picture more brightly exposed.
Use The Histogram Review Mode: First, set your camera
so when it displays the review image after you take a picture, it
displays it with "info", i.e., the histogram. This is an option on the
setup menu of your camera.
As stated above, I always set the focus point set to the single point
in the center. In the "P" mode, the camera seems to meter from a very
small spot right at the center of the focus point. So you must
point directly at something medium toned, or you will get under- or
overexposure. So point at the subject's skin (if they have darker
skin) or something "18% grey" that you need exposed properly. If you
lock on dark hair, you will probably get overexposure on the skin. If
you lock on a white shirt, the picture will underexpose badly. So the
trick is learning how to quickly find something of the right intensity
in the frame and FEL (Flash Exposure Lock) on it.
Pressing the FEL ('*') button will cause a flash to fire once at lower
power in order to set exposure (it will also annoy your subject(s)
somewhat if you are taking a picture of people), and lets you then
compose your shot (within 16 seconds) while holding that flash
exposure setting.
I recommend you take a test shot with FEL if you can, and
if the exposure histogram display looks like it doesn't have enough
bright areas (i.e., nothing in the right 1/5th of the display), then
point the center sensor at something a little darker in the scene and
do FEL on that and take another picture. Otherwise, get used to doing the FEL
on a midtone region in the scene (such as someone's cheek or forehead) on every picture.
The built-in flash is pretty powerful but it can only do so much. I
got the 420EX external flash, and I usually bounce it off the
ceiling. This gives fabulous results, and gives everything a natural
look without the deer-in-the-headlight effect that direct flash
gives. I recommend it for indoor photos whenever possible. Again, use
'P' mode, never the Green Box.
Althought the Rebel does not have a Flash Exposure Compensation
setting, you don't really need it anyway. First of all, the variation in
flash exposure due to the fact that the camera meters on such a tiny area means that
you couldn't compensate reliably anyway if you don't aim the camera or the FEL exactly
on the mid-tone area in the picture.
But you can manually modulate the flash
strength, to make up for lack of flash exposure compensation
(FEC). Just partially cup your hand over the flash (or just
your finger if you're using the internal flash) when you fire the
FEL. The amount you block the flash during FEL will increase the flash
strength when it fires. This will always increase the flash strength.
To get a good feel for the camera's exposure behavior I suggest you
do your own experiments with this indoors in a non-sunlit or nighttime
setting, until you are familiar with how pointing the camera or using
the FEL affects the exposure of your pictures. With a the 300D digital
camera, of course, this is easy to do, just take a bunch of pictures
of the same scene with FEL at different spots (i.e., the dark fabric
on a couch, the white wall, the face of your friend), and in each
picture, take the picture with the camera pointed at the spot you
focused or took the FEL reading for. Then look at the results in the
Canon File Viewer utility. It has an option to show you a red
rectangle where the focus point was. This will let you see how the
choice of center target affected the exposure.
[3] Getting More Depth Of Field in Flash Pictures: Use "M" mode
In "P" mode, with my 18-55 kit lens, the camera defaults to 1/60s shutter, 5.6 aperture.
To force a smaller aperture, in "M" mode, you can set the aperture to something a little smaller like f8, and
the speed to something reasonable for handheld, like 1/125, and the camera will
compensate with proper flash strength. The above techniques such as using the FEL carefully and
cupping your hand over the flash during FEL can be used to boost the exposure if needed. You may need to
set the ISO to 200 or 400 to get enough light however; the flash probably won't be able to illuminate the scene
enough at ISO 100, even at full power.
FECSET
Some people use this utility http://revolution.cx/rcx/fecset.htm
to up the flash exposure compensation. The 300D does have a flash
exposure feature, they just removed the user interface to it from the
control panel. But it can still be set using the USB protocol. I tried
it. It does work, but isn't really necessary; using the "P" mode and
being careful about what you aim at when you lock the exposure (with
or without FEL) seems to work quite well for me.
New Firmware
A Russian hacker modified the firmware to allow flash exposure compensation to be entered on the camera
menu. You can find links at
http://www.bahneman.com/liem/photos/tricks/digital-rebel-tricks.html or just Google for "Russian Rebel firmware 300D".
That's All
That's about all I've found so far. The camera can take beautiful
flash pictures under the right conditions, but I still have trouble
controlling whether it is going to under- or overexpose in many
situations, mostly indoors.
The saving grace of digital is that you get immediate feedback, and
often have time to correct the issue immediately and take another
picture. But for those once in a lifetime shots, you don't get that
opportunity, so it is important to get this issue resolved somehow.
Some sample pictures taken with the 300D are here.
Some of the flash shots were taken before I got the external flash. See if you can tell which...
From: Ferenczi József
Using the flash:
- Set camera to Av mode, and select the aperture you want in order to get the desired DOF. Select a middle gray level surface, e.g. someone's cheek, palm or forehead then press '*'.
- If the flash symbol blinks the flash power is not enough - otherwise you can make the picture. To get the desired flash power you can
a. get closer
b. set higher ISO
c. open the aperture until the blinking stops.
d. bump up FEC.
This way you determined the maximum aperture you can use at the given distance. You may combine chaniging the settings as you like.
If you want you can switch to M mode and control the background lighting a bit more. When you want to take photos in a given place (room, restaurant, etc.) select the presumably maximum distance/minimum (worst) lighting and determine the aperture to be used. Take some test photos and watch the histogram - may be that yo have to open the aperture some more if the background gets too dark.
Then you will get consistent results. When the lighting changes or the subject is too close you can adjust the camera settings quickly.
High contrast scenes:
Set the camera to Tv mode according to the reciprocal rule or any other you may want to apply (Sunny 16, etc.)
- Point to the brightest part of the scene and get the aperture using '*' , then find the darkest part and do the same.
- Switch to M mode and set the shutter speed the same as it was in mode Tv then dial to the average of the previously measured apertures.
Now you can take the shot.
If somebody prefers, the camera can be set to M , and after setting the desired shutter speed, a middle gray surface can be used to set the aperture. The scene can be measured by pushing '*' pointing to the brightest then the darkest scene then taking the average of the two readings. This way the exposure can be fine tuned. I should add that usually pointing to the brightest part the indicator should not exceed +1 1/3 or + 1 2/3 because it is highly possible that one of the color channels may overflow - but the histogram will not show it after taking the picture. If the measured range do not fit into the -2,+2 range one should decide if the highlights or the shadow areas are of greater importance and may expose to the right or to the left.
Thanks for your patience in reading my letter. I must tell, that the above techniques do not originate from me - they are collected by me from different sources - but I could not find again the references. This way (shame on me) I can not put a reference list ...
Yours sincerely:
József Ferenczi (alias LyPapa)
website: www.lypapa.org - in Hungarian, with a lot of pictures taken with different cameras. The purpose of the site is to show what can be done with a camera in the first some days of use - and to give some advice on settings/usage tricks, in order to help the selection between models.
Henry Minsky
Last modified: Wed Jul 28 15:23:21 EDT 2004
