# Taking a good shot with my G9



## patata (Oct 24, 2013)

Hey all

I have a Canon G9 and I can't seem to get a good shot with it.
What can I mess with to get a nice shot?I mostly want to focus on close shots.
My photos so far look weak,faded and soulless.I don't have the money to acquire anything external.Both software and hardware.

Thanks 


John


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## ThePhilosopher (Oct 24, 2013)

Well almost all cameras have an AA filter that will cut down some sharpness and you may be trying to focus too close to your subject as there is a minimum focusing distance associated with all camera/lens combos. 

Do some testing to find out what that distance is - every shot I've ever published (be it a forum, book, or print) has had some photoshop/darkroom manipulation done to it and that's not going to change as it's an integral part of the workflow for images that meet my criteria for acceptable.

Best of luck, and just keep shooting.


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## L1ght (Oct 24, 2013)

ThePhilosopher said:


> Do some testing to find out what that distance is - every shot I've ever published (be it a forum, book, or print) has had some photoshop/darkroom manipulation done to it and that's not going to change as it's an integral part of the workflow for images that meet my criteria for acceptable.



This.

90% of the time, all of those super nice photos you see online that have the perfect aperture, perfect lighting, perfect colors, perfect sharpness, have all had some work done after the shot was taken. Lightroom, Photoshop, etc..


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## TomAwesome (Oct 25, 2013)

Are you using macro mode? Canon G series cameras can focus in pretty close. My G10 and G12 could focus on things that were practically touching the lens. Aside from that, your question is far too vague and broad. Just learn the basics: exposure, aperture, ISO, etc, and practice.


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## Rook (Oct 25, 2013)

I was gunna say, with the G6 your glass is practically scraping whatever you're shooting by the time you hit MFD.

Does the G9 shoot RAW? If so, set it to RAW and only RAW, no point wasting card space with RAW+JPEG, use aperture priority, keep your aperture pretty wide if not as wide as possible and just concentrate on getting your subject sharp (meaning getting your DoF wide enough, shouldn't be hard with a small sensor) and yeah, do it in post.


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## patata (Oct 25, 2013)

Rook said:


> I was gunna say, with the G6 your glass is practically scraping whatever you're shooting by the time you hit MFD.
> 
> Does the G9 shoot RAW? If so, set it to RAW and only RAW, no point wasting card space with RAW+JPEG, use aperture priority, keep your aperture pretty wide if not as wide as possible and just concentrate on getting your subject sharp (meaning getting your DoF wide enough, shouldn't be hard with a small sensor) and yeah, do it in post.



I basically didn't understand shit.


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## Rook (Oct 25, 2013)

Haha ok.

In that case maybe find some fundamentals of photography videos on YouTube. Matt Granger's are pretty good I think. You need to know what 'depth of field' is, as that's one of the biggest creative controls you have. You control that by changing 'aperture', which is how much of the area of the lens is used to gather light. Taking light from the whole lens gives a narrowest depth of field - one thing in focus and more things in front of and behind that thing blurred and out of focus - whereas reducing the aperture takes light only from the centre of the lens making more stuff in focus. Because you're using less of the lens you also get a darker picture.

So to simplify. Your G9 will have a mode called 'Av', put it in that mode. Your main control will now change the aperture, the smaller the number, say 2.8, the more of the lens area you use and the less will be in focus. The closer you get to a subject, the narrower your depth of field too. Try to learn the difference between different aperture settings and the way it looks getting closer and further from your subject.

Next, your camera reads the light off your sensor and saves it as a set of numbers for each pixel (e.g. pixel 1 is 000000, black, pixel 2 is 999999, white, and so on but several million times). As standard, your camera will then compress that information and remember patterns and spit out a JPEG format image. Due to the fact that your camera is only remembering the patterns of how to redraw that image you don't have much room to edit it. If instead you stop your camera compressing the file and you save the colour of every single pixel (called RAW format) you can do huge edits without massively degrading the quality of the image.

I really think you need to do some basics of photography tutorials though, the stuff I said wasn't particularly complicated because I have no education, I just know enough to do what I wanna do haha.


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## patata (Oct 26, 2013)

Oh,okay.
I'll see if I can find anything good on YT


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