Canon SX130is.. What can I expect?

[cadlewv]

I'm not new to taking pictures (as I have about 10,000 on my computer), but am very new to photography. I'm a single father, so I've never had enough extra money to buy a really good camera.

I recently bought a Canon SX130is. I've always been so intrigued by photography, and almost always stop to take in a scene, overlook, vista, etc.

So, as the title of my post states... what can I expect out of my camera, as far as it's manual settings and how they relate to taking very good pictures?

So glad I found this site and forums.

Thanks in advance!

[inkista]

Well, your camera still uses a relatively small sensor (1/2.3", which means it's 6.16mm x 4.62mm, so the chances are good that lower light performance and dynamic range are still going to be what you're pretty much used to with a P&S camera. But having the PSAM modes means you can override what the camera thinks is the right exposure if you want. You'll have more specific control over exposure settings than you would with most other P&S cameras.

The two books I'd recommend reading are Bryan Peterson's Learning to See Creatively, which is a basic book about composition, and how you can use the settings for compositional effects, and his Understanding Exposure, which teaches you how the settings are related to each other.

I'm afraid that aperture and depth of field with a sensor that small won't work exactly the way it does with a dSLR, though. It's tough, outside of macro photography, to blur the background with a small sensor camera.

[elle s'ennuie]

Expect this particular camera to have a somewhat short battery life with regular AAs. So rechargeables are highly recommended!