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[scottiesmum]

Looking forward to the piccies Unc   ....   it sounds super !

[tuftedduck]

That is a very nice bag, unkyUb, and plenty of room inside without being so big that you fill up to the limits with stuff and then it it too heavy to carry  

A wee word of caution ( built on personal experience   )

You're two lenses are autofocus, and there is a motor in the camera body that pushes the lens elements in and out to focus.
There is also on the lens body, a manual focusing ring............twist that  to manually move the elements................but never do that if the camera is set in autofocus mode as that will cause damage to the motor.
If you want to manually focus, there will be an option to turn off the autofocus.

TD had a camera body ruined when a curious onlooker picked it up and started to twist the manual focus ring, lots of loud grating noises and wee springs falling out..

Indeed, scottiesmum..............roll on the pics...............he has got to swallow that instruction book first 

[UncleUB]

Thanks for the advice/warning TD.Hopefully my compact flash card will be here tomorrow.Why do postmen have to have holidays,its just not on. 

[tuftedduck]

>>> .Why do postmen have to have holidays,its just not on. <<< 

I'm back with another wee caution on this auto focus motor thing.

I'm not sure about your lenses, but most of mine are IF, meaning Internal Focusing..........when you focus the elements move inside the lens but the front element of the lens stays static.
On one lens, however, there is no IF and as you focus the front element of the lens rotates and I found that when you put the lens hood on that lens, that action wants to rotate the front a little which could act against the focus motor.
So, when I put the hood on that lens, I switch the camera to manual focus, on with the hood and switch back to auotfocus. Same when taking the hood off.

This is the great thing about DSLRs........you spend so much time fiddling that you never get the chance to take any pictures. 

[UncleUB]

Cor blimey,its all clever stuff.

I notice that when the camera is switched on you can hear the lens and it moves,is that the auto focusing kicking in.
I have tried it with manual focus,turning the lens zooming ring then sharpening the focus before I press the shutter,is that making sense.?
I have not yet ventured beyond the camera 'auto' setting

[tuftedduck]

I'm surprised you can do anything, mine won't even turn on if there is no card in it.

Yes, you will hear the wee motor whizzing a bit when you turn on...........if you were focused at infinity (say ) the last time you used it and this time when you turn on it happens to be pointing at something three feet away (say) it will zip in and focus................unless of course the lens cap is on then it has nothing to focus onto as there is no light passing through the thing.

How do you find the zooming rings.......a bit stiff ? They will ease up in time, but you don't want them too slack...........too slack and they might slip around on their own volition just when you don't want them to such as pointing up to snap a plane or a bird.

That all makes sense..........keep taking the medicine 

[UncleUB]

Hehe,its all clever stuff,and your help has been brilliant.TD.

The one thing I think is poor is the user manual,158 pages,but very small pages.I think I might have to invest in a better one.I have noticed you can get guides just for your certain model of camera.

Better have a lie down now,got a head like a toyshop. 

[tuftedduck]

If you go to http://support.sony-europe.com/manuals/manuals.aspx?site=odw_en_GB#m=DSLR-A200

you can get the instruction manual as a PDF which might be easier to read.

There are two listed...........line 1 at .55Mb which is a quick-start sheet, or line 14 at 3.37 Mb which is the full thing.

[UncleUB]

Thanks TD, done. 

[UncleUB]

Finally got my £30 cashback from Sony.Should have been paid within 28 days (ordered it Boxing day) Had a letter a couple of weeks ago from Sony saying there is a delay in sending cheques out(are Sony that poor) 

A camera question,

Raw mode: Is it worth a novice photographer like myself shooting in raw mode?

[tuftedduck]

UnkyUb, the downside of RAW mode pics is that Windows cannot open them, and you need a specific program to open them, edit them (if you want) and then save them as .jpg or other mode that Windows can cope with.
As far as I am aware there are no free RAW converters, the last free one was RawShooters Essentials, but that was bought by Adobe and is now part of the Photoshop suite.
Having said that, the software that came with your camera will, or may, have a RAW converter..........how good I know not.

Unless you are deeply into image editing, I think RAW can be a complexity too far, although once the principles are grasped, the results can be very good. However, if you only want to view your pics on screen, or email them or put them on the web, or print them on something other than a domestic printer.....it is probably overkill.

The essence of RAW mode is that you have more control at the pic taking stage as the RAW settings will ignore several of the camera auto settings, white balance as an example, thus allowing you to apply these settings at editing stage ( if you want).

For a professional there are great advantages, for the amateur.........a complexity you may not want. However, if you install the bundled converter and give it a try you may like it.........steep learning curve.

I use RAW when I am shooting commercially, when doing it for my own pleasure, I stick to TIFF format.

Good on you for getting the cashback.........better late than never 

[UncleUB]

Thanks for the reply TD.The Sony software does come with 'Image data converter' to convert to raw.I think at this stage it is something I will leave alone.As you point out all I do is view my pics on screen,upload them to web albums and print them out.
I have enough to keep me occupied with the camera without getting into more serious stuff.
Thanks once again for your info and feed back. 

[tuftedduck]

My pleasure, UnkyUb..

I think you are wise, get to grips with the camera, get used to all it's possibilites...........come out of "auto" mode and experiment..........then think of RAW.

To expand a little on the RAW front, and to give an idea as to why the pro prefers to shoot in that mode.

The other two main modes are jpg and tiff.

jpg is a "lossy" format, meaning that when the camera processes it from the sensor into the memory, it discards a lot of information from the file in order to save space, info is lost hence lossy, and that process of loss happens avery time thereafter when and if that jpg file is edited and saved.
In time, if it is repeatedly edited and saved, you end up with a unusable image.
The jpg image is also severely compressed, again to save space and again that causes loss of definition.
Viewed on the screen you will not notice these losses unless the edit function has been applied too often

TIFF is lossless, in that no loss of data is incurred at editing stage, but in camera it is again compressed to an extent, although not nearly as much as jpg.

RAW files are not compressed and are totally lossless.........each and every bit of each and every pixel is crammed full of data, which is retained during the RAW editing stage............you have in fact a digital negative.


The result of the above is that a jpg file is small, a tiff is a lot bigger and a RAW is huge............on a memory card I have, I can get 186 jpgs, or 36 tiffs or.................5 only RAW.

Now, the point of shooting in RAW....................is to edit you pic without loss of data. Extrapolate from that the fact that there is no point in shooting RAW if you do not intend to do that editing................there is no point at all in shooting RAW, putting them into a RAW converter just to save as jpg and thus suffer the jpg lossy attributes.................why not just shoot jpg.
Put another way, shoot RAW only if you are prepared to edit and retain jumbo sized files ................full of quality, certainly, but no use for the web or emailing (the files are huge) and not viewable in Windows  unless and until converted to a readable format.

If you camera supports it, tiff would be the choice.