Disclaimer: a point and shoot is the only camera I currently own.
Lack of a shallow DOF is the greatest problem, in my opinion. Unfortunately there isn't really a way to fix that. On my camera, at the widest aperture, things can be either in sharp focus or "annoyingly blurry but still recognizable" - no way to get pretty background bokeh even when the background is at infinity and the focus is at the closest possible distance. The solution: use postprocessing, or don't take pictures that require shallow DOF :). There's a positive aspect to this, as well - I can shoot a landscape wide open, where a DSLR photographer would need to use a much narrower aperture and likely require a tripod :)
Be sure the camera's focused at the right thing. The "smart" auto-focus, that thinks it knows better than you what to focus on, probably doesn't.
Use the live histogram if you have it. This is an advantage point and shoots have over DSLR - you can see the histogram while composing! Learn to use the histogram to judge the exposure - not the brightness of the image on the LCD, which can be misleading. Use exposure compensation to prevent clipping the histogram.
Live white balance is another advantage of point and shoots - if the LCD looks suspiciously reddish or bluish, change WB.
Always try to use the lowest ISO. Otherwise the noise is horrible.
USE A TRIPOD. (People sometimes laugh when they see me with a full-size tripod and a tiny pocket camera attached to it. I have to admit it looks funny. But hey, it works) :)
If your picture has too much color noise, try converting it to black and white by discarding the red and blue channels. The remaining green channel should be the least noisy one, and b&w photos rule anyway :).
Don't use the viewfinder unless your camera for some reason actually has a good one. You are not looking through the lens, you can't tell what's in focus, you are probably seeing only a small portion of the entire frame, and, with tiny viewfinders on many P&S (like mine), the amount of detail you see might even be less than on the LCD, and you have to strain to see that much. Ideally, use the LCD to tell where the borders of the frame are, and then actually look at the scene with your own eyes to evaluate it better and to see small details which might not appear on the LCD (like telephone wires - eww).
Read the manual that came with your camera.
Above all, remember that your camera, despite being a "point and shoot", is a complex and powerful piece of equipment fully capable of taking great photos. Take your camera seriously. There're some photos you can take with a DSLR that you simply can't take with a point and shoot - so don't take those. ALL equipment has its limitations.
To put it another way - just because your camera does not have a reflex mirror and interchangable lenses, doesn't mean the way to use it is to "point and shoot". |
