Paul Lester Photo

I was picking my son up from basketball. We were on the way home and I happened to stop at a stoplight and noticed this sign. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me, so I hoped that they wouldn’t catch the error of their ways until after I got the shot. The next morning, it was still there! Notice anything wrong?

To the credit of Walgreen’s they did catch the error and have made the necessary corrections. I only hope that the person in charge of spelling is not in charge of the cash register also!

For those visitors from out of the US: Hooked on phonics is a product that is sold here to help children learn how to read phonetically.

In a couple of posts, Paul Butzi writes here and here about the camera’s exposure meter and its lack of doing the right thing. I guess as far as digital camera use, I’m a minimalist.

I shoot exclusively JPEG, never raw, 90% of the time I use the meter’s reading unless I’m very sure that it’s going to flub the exposure. I’ll check the histogram to see that it’s about where I want it, if not I use the exposure compensation button to change it up or down to get where I want. If I still cannot get it ‘right’, I’ll take 2 exposures, one exposing for highlights, one for shadows. I’ll blend them later using Photoshop.

The only time that I can think that I use manual is when I’m shooting sports in a controlled environment, such as a gym. In this case, I take a few readings before the game starts, one at each end of the court and one in the middle. I take a few test shots, see how I like the outcome/histogram, then set the camera to manual and let ‘er rip. I can squeeze out the maximum number of frames per second by letting the camera forget about trying to change exposure each time I point the camera a different way and setting the limit switch on the lens so that it doesn’t have to worry about certain distances.

Since I don’t use manual much, does this make me less creative, less technical, or less anything? I think not, but I have seen discussions and comments where some photographers think that if you don’t always/mostly use manual, then you are not a true photographer. I just love these rules and yardsticks. They crack me up. I’ve been shooting for over 20 years and I have rarely used manual, save for when I used my Minolta SRT-101, which was an all manual camera. Heck, I’ve even been known to place my camera, dare I say, on program mode and let it make all of the exposure decisions, but this is rare. Most of the time it’s aperture priority for me!

Oh, BTW, I use auto focus, too, except for really close in macros !!! Shame on me! I wonder if that makes me less creative? Perhaps I’m just a point and shoot guy!

About the photo: Taken on 2006/09/22, Jekyll Island, GA at a landscape workshop. 1/50 sec @ f/11