While the Canon Powershot S1 digital camera is mainly designed for casual use, you can still use it to take professional looking photographs. The Powershot S1 has a powerful enough lens that, as long as you remember some basic rules of photography and disable a few default settings on the camera, you can take high quality photos wherever you go.
Instructions
1. Disable the "Gain" and "Flash" on your Canon Powershot S1. These features typically give an "amateur" quality to digital photographs. To disable them, press the "Menu" button while the camera is in its normal picture-taking mode. Use the arrow keys on the camera to highlight the "Gain" menu option and switch it too "Off." Do the same for the "Flash" menu option.
2. Pay close attention to the light that you're using. A lot of shadows in an image will give it an unprofessional feel, so remove as many possible by adding more light sources to your image. Use a few lights from around the room to light the subject from different angles.
Be mindful of harsh shadows being cast by the subject on things like objects in the background--these should always be removed, even if you let other shadows go. By simply working on the lighting quality of your photographs, you can give them an instant professional feel without actually spending any money.
3. Set your camera down on a flat surface, or use a tripod. Though digital cameras will attempt to automatically correct and compensate for any motion blur caused by your hand moving during the snapping of a picture, it can only do so much. By setting your camera down on a flat surface or using a tripod before you take a photograph you can mimic the still, professional look of real photographers.
4. Don't zoom in too far. The Canon Powershot S1 has a digital zoom lens, which means that instead of really zooming in on a subject the camera creates the zoom effect by simply enlarging certain portions of the image. This is a feature that a professional photographer would never use, and if you want to take high quality stills with your Powershot S1, then you shouldn't, either.
Tags: Canon Powershot, camera down, camera down flat, Canon Powershot digital, down flat
