> > Hi, > > John Francis wrote: > > Mostly right things but then.... > > > We care about the process; most folks don't. For them, the > > digital camera does help, even if it's only because of the fact > > that it's very easy to see what you did wrong almost immediately. > > Given the "most folks" scenario, I think it is more a case of "that" > rather than "what" you did wrong. In many of those "most folks" cases > they will not have the faintest clue _what_ they did wrong. Or, more > properly, they will not have the faintest clue how to correct their > perceived mistake. An advantage of digital is that they can then change > settings, even at random, to see what happens and get an instant > result. I wonder how many of them will actually undergo a learning > experiance from it?
If they just learn not to take photographs that have a tiny dot in the middle of the screen surrounded by an expanse of nothing much, or pictures with the top of the head (or half of little Jimmy) cropped off, that will eliminate the vast majority of bad snaps. Then, of course, there are the under-exposures because the built-in flash isn't quite powerful enough to illuminate an entire sports arena. After that it's a toss-up between bad timing (eyes closed, mouth open, etc.), glaring reflections from the flash (including trying to take a picture of the TV screen using flash), and thumbs, hands, other people's arms, etc. getting in the way of the subject. All of those mistakes are fairly obvious, and easy enough to correct. Only after that do we get into the "tough" scenarios: the wrong part of the scene in focus (at least nowadays with AF cameras there's usually *something* in focus, which I guess is some kind of an improvement), or motion blur because the shutter speed is too low. Those are going to be harder to correct without at least a little thought.
