Harry's Blog

Now here's a subject you see on every photography forum. Should you record your DSLR images as RAW of JPEG files?

Photographers unlucky enough to Google the subject and end up with Ken Rockwell's nonsense will probably tell you JPEG every time, if they are fans of oversaturated cartoons.

But the truth is this. Whenever you take a picture with your DSLR the result is a RAW file. Think of this as your negative.

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I never used Auto ISO on my 40D, it wasn't very well implemented. The camera would tend to stick between very conservative settings and only used a small range of the available ISO settings anyway.

However I have used Auto ISO on my Canon EOS 50D in the last week and am really pleased with it. My camera gets two uses - 1, as a creative tool, 2, as a way of snapping the usual family pictures one does when out and about.

The second mode, armed with a Sigma 18-200mm DC OS, the Auto ISO has been really useful. We took the kids to Westbay harbour (in Dorset) and there were plenty of changes of subject and lighting that made the Auto ISO rather useful - especially with a slow-ish lens which has big changes of widest aperture.

What impressed me most was that the 50D tried to keep the ISO as low as possible rather than just pumping it up to 800 or 1600 and leaving it there. Taking some pictures of the children playing outside as the sun set had the camera trying ISO 100 when possible and only one 1600 shot. And as most 50D users have actually discovered, in good light ISO 1600 pictures look fantastic.

So yes, colour me impressed. I've definitely had a change of heart where Auto ISO is concerned. And while not a feature I'd use when composing more creative shots - when in "walkaround" mode it works very well indeed.

You ever have those days where you come home with your camera and you look at the 80 or so shots on the card and not a single one is worth uploading to Flickr or even showing anyone?

That's how my morning went. We took the kids for a walk to Bushy Park and onwards to Hampton Court palace. The sky was grey, the light terrible and to make matters worse I took the wrong lens with me.

I was using the Sigma 18-200mm DC OS which can be surprisingly sharp at times. But out and about today I took a lot of very dull badly focussed shots. The autofocus in the lens prefers sunny days and today's dull light gave this slow - but very useful - lens nothing to work with.

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I decided to have a go at making my own diffuser for the Canon 430EX flash from a plastic milk carton.

I didn't do anything particularly skilful other than cut the top and handle off the carton, then slipped it over the flash and held it in place with an elastic band.

Here's my hi-tech diffuser:

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A few weeks ago I bough a Canon EOS 5 via Ebay. This is the first 35mm SLR I've ever owned. And this morning I got back my first roll of film.

While some of the pictures were very blown out due to my inexperience with slide film I did get some really great shots. Certainly I feel that the camera was £30 well spent.

You can view some more of my efforts on film in this Flickr set.

After months of noodling around, reading books and magazines and worrying about how things are supposed to work, rather than how I want them to...I've finally hit on a method of manual exposure photography that works for me.

So I thought I would share it with you.

But first a little lesson about the use of histograms on the current range of Canon DSLR cameras. I'm going to assume you are shooting in RAW because...well why wouldn't you?

Remember your camera doesn't store an equal amount of detail in its entire range. The bulk of the variations of tone are at the top lighter end. So while you may have 4096 shades at the highlight end, you may only have 128 at the shadow end. So it makes more sense to expose as much of your image towards the right of the histogram and bring back some of those shadows towards the left in post-processing.

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I do believe I'm finally getting the hang of this photography lark.

I'm certainly happier with the pictures that I've taken over recent weeks than any I've taken before.

The big change I think is decided how I want to take pictures rather than worrying how my camera seems to want to take them, or how I should use it. The camera is just a tool rather than the arbiter of what makes a good photograph.

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