Sound Shooters: Point-and-Shoot Camera

Hitomi Dames

By Hitomi Dames

We have a point-and-shoot camera and keep it in our car just in case. But we rarely use it and didn't know our Canon PowerShot A3300 well.

I happened to discover this point-and-shoot camera can take pretty good images when I shot these fresh garlic at a local farmers market.

So I challenged with this point-and-shoot camera when I went shopping. 

My challenge was to take close up images without zooming in with the lens because using a zoom lens isn't effective with a subject this small. So when I photograph veggies and plants at the farmers market, I have to get very close to my subject. It is a nice place to practice. The vendors don't mind my taking pictures of their wares close up.

First I just shot with “standard mode” without thinking. Then I thought I should have used “macro mode”.

Left is standard mode. Right is macro mode.

But I don't see any difference by switching from standard to macro. I checked meta data after downloading files to my computer. Guess what? They are all the same f-stop, shutter speed and ISO. It doesn't matter whether I use standard or macro mode.

My next challenge was how close I can get to a subject. Since point-and-shoot is auto lens focus only, you cannot adjust the focus manually as you can with a DSLR.  

I found that you can get pretty close to the subject. In fact, you can get as close as three centimeters. And it focused surprisingly well. 

So all of the sea holly images were shot with same focal length. I used the widest lens, 28 mm on this camera.

Now I can understand why people like to take photos with a smart phone.

Joel Dames Photography

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