Let’s face it, we’re not all pro photographers.  Very few of us will ever run around the African veldt for National Geographic, or cover a Jets football game for Sports Illustrated, or shoot weddings for Hollywood celebrities.  So most of us will never have the latest & greatest gear – many will never even own a DSLR.

And that’s fine.  Most people don’t NEED a DSLR; the soccer moms shown in the Canon commercials, who are using a $600 body set to Auto mode with the cheap kit lens, certainly don’t need one.

For many people, and many situations, a point & shoot is more than enough camera, especially if it has manual controls.  So if you own a P&S, or have one in addition to your DSLR, this post is really for you.  Let’s talk about making the most of what you have.

Previously, I’ve written some posts about the “Perks of a Point & Shoot,” where I focused on some of the features they offer.  This time, let’s work with a more general scenario.

It’s early evening in late February in Pennsylvania.  I’m heading to a community park to visit my friend Frederick the Duck.  Frederick is a domestic duck who was abandoned at the park sometime in the fall.  I found him in early January, nearly freezing and mostly starved.  Since then I’ve been visiting every few days with a bag of cracked corn.

Frederick makes the perfect photographic subject for a number of reasons; he’s a domestic duck and can’t fly away from me if startled; he’s somewhat used to people and therefore doesn’t startle as easily as a wild duck; he’s restricted to the section of his pond near the creek, where the ice doesn’t form; and he’s a ham.

This evening, I’m a bit later than usual getting up there.  Sunset is starting and the sky is mostly overcast, which means that the light is growing dim – especially on the back side of the pond under the trees where he hangs out.  To make matters even worse, Frederick is swimming between myself and the sun, so he’s back-lit.

Rather than carry my DSLR & bag of lenses, I have my Canon P&S stuffed in my coat pocket.  I’m not there with the intent of staging a full-on photo shoot, I’m there to feed the duck – but I carry the P&S with me just in case something interesting happens.  And it usually does!

Sometimes Frederick puts on little duck performances, bobbing around and splashing and doing a dance across the water.  But tonight he’s pretty subdued; he eats some corn and then slips back into the pond and swims about a bit while preening.  Not the most exciting thing, but still worth a few photos, especially with the warm sunset light reflected in the pond.

So here’s the challenge – how do I shoot a back-lit duck on bright water?  I’m limited in where I can move to and still be able to see him, which means I ‘m left with two choices; either work with exposures or use artificial light.

Since I’m using the P&S, I don’t have any off-camera strobes, so any artificial light is going to come from the built-in flash.  I prefer to shoot in Av mode when using the on-board flash, as it lets me adjust the strength of the flash relative to the exposure.  So I meter Frederick and the water, and set the exposure to f/4 and the exposure compensation to +1, which will make the water lighter and bring more of his face out of the shadows.  I set the flash compensation to -1, since I don’t want to light him with it, just add a bit of fill to the shadows.

The settings are good, but there are two problems with this method: 1) white balance, and 2) red eye.  The white balance is set to Cloudy to accent the warm sunset light.  Against that, the flash appears very blue, which leaves the shot looking not-quite right.  And since it’s direct on-camera flash, Frederick ends up with duckie red-eye, which leaves him looking somewhat zombie-ish.

Both of these problems can be corrected in post-processing.  A local color balance layer (restricted to the flash area and feathered out) fixes the color shift, and the red-eye correction tool does a good enough job on the eyes.

The other option is to work the exposure for the best balance between light and shadow, and accept those shadows which cannot be overcome.  So you’re pretty much going to have either bright water and a somewhat-exposed duck, or properly exposed water and a duck silhouette.  Either way makes a good image, it just depends on the effect you’re going for.

So here we have three images, taken with a P&S camera and basic skills, each of which has a distinct feel to it, and all of which were created under less than ideal situations.