Canon Ixus Question

JohnK

Hi all. I've got a Canon Ixus 800is and although I'm very happy with it I do have one niggling issue that maybe someone here knows a way around.

In dark-ish situations if I turn the flash on then the shutter has its quick open-close so all is good. However, if I turn the flash off then it leaves the shutter open for a much longer basically rendering it useless for handheld night-time non-flash pictures because people move, hands shake ect. I know that might be useful in some situations but its screwed up more pictures for me than I could count. Is there any way to get the shutter to work at the same speed regardless of what the camera thinks the ambient light level to be?

I know the light level of what I’m looking at is more than adequate and when its fast moving its really annoying. Because of this all I end up with is images so blurred that the same person appears several times in the same picture

melekalikimaka

if you have shutter priority, use that. BUT nothing will come out, it'll be black, try pushing up the iso as high as it will go, but if its open for long on auto, it means there aint enough light coming in, so its staying open til enough comes in for a image to appear basically

JohnK

On auto its fine with the flash but the flash is useless in this case as what I was taking pictures of was too far away so flash or no flash it really made no difference to the light levels. In fact what I was taking pictures of was flooded in light but unfortunately the backdrop was completely black so the camera kept taking the light level from that (I could see its little boxes flashing on the black spots) so if the people weren’t blurred they were completely white

I cant find anything about Shutter Priority in the menus on auto or manual mode.

In some of the pictures I was able to get them to comeout but it involved zooming in as far as I could to minimize the backdrop but even then it didnt work for all of them.

melekalikimaka

in manual

edit the shuuter speed so maybe 1/15th or higher, should stop the shake and blur

JohnK

I cant find any settings like that though

melekalikimaka

humm trying to remember my ixus. you defo can do it on them tho, em, once in manual mode, there will be an option for shutter speed...somewhere

kirving

There isn't an option for shutter seed, well not on my 850is, the you can try changing the metering mode, so that it will measure the light on a spot(surrounded by a rectangle) instead, and turn the ISO up as high as you can.

JohnK

Doesnt seem to be any shutter speed option on this one from what I can see. I tried changing the metering but its still picking different spots rather than say the center so it probably wouldnt have made any difference for the pictures I took recently.

bostonian

On the camera there will be either a mode dial or an option in the menu somewhere for camera operation. Select manual, usually shown as a little camera icon next to an "M". Crank the ISO up and let her rip.

JohnK

Thanks for the suggestion but I've tried boosting the ISO up 800 (max for this camera) but it was still taking longer to take the pictures and they tended to be very grainy.

5uspect

Those cameras have small sensors and are not especially sensitive to light (compared to a larger sensor in a DSLR because of its larger area). Upping the ISO will help but as you said it will add noise (grain). There is a ISO Hi option too apparently, try that.

A quick google for the manual (here) says that there is a manual mode. Scroll the wheel to the Camera symbol+M setting and press func/Set. You may be able to control shutter speed here.
I know certain powershots have AV and TV modes which allow you to easily control aperture and exposure easily but I'm not sure the Ixus does,

Make sure the IS in on should help with your hand shake at least.
You may have to just use the flash. The manual mentions a "slow synchro" option for night scenes.

There's lots of other useful settings in there too such as flash exposure lock and long shutter mode that you may find useful. It's a case of RTFM I'm afraid.:p

JohnK

Well who'd have guessed there'd be anything usefull in the manual

It only allows you to increase the shutter speed i think but the exposure lock could be good if I just set it at the start against a spotlight or something

thanks 5uspect

5uspect

Oddly enough its often much easier to take pictures with a fancy SLR than a compact with its psuedo controls!

JohnK

I'm not surprised, even setting the exposure lock on mine requires quite a bit of nimble finger work due to the position of the controls and it only holds it until the camera powers down so if you're choosing your moment you could lose it all.