Digital Photography [ split from Flickr Gallery by VSack (PR1)]

If I am not mistaken, the S2iS is a good camera but has a slow autofocus@tele, you can check the reviews :
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons2is/
http://www.megapixel.net/reviews/canon-s2is/s2-gen.php

Susan, email me at [email protected] with your email address and I will send some pics over to you as big jpegs to look at / print

If I understand correctly from what I’ve picked up over the years, lighting and shadow control are the most import parts of a good shot.

I notice with the cheap film camera I have and the equally cheap digital camera that I had that there are differences in how they record the image. Especially I noticed differences in perspective. If I was standing slighly above the subject, it would be noticeably short and fat (I’m sure there is a proper term for that) in the digital picture, while looking normal in the film picture. Is this normal for digital photography, or just the cheap camera that I had?

Yeah, most people are unaware that digital cameras have capture a much smaller area than film. On a compact digital camera, or on a bridge, a sensor is way smaller than an APS or 24x36 (DSLR are closer, approx 1.5x smaller). Given the relationship between the focal length and the focal plane, it means you use lenses with much wider angle (his explain the "fatter and shorter" impression you had)

In fact, most compact digital cameras have a focal length 5 times smaller than film camera (see Focal Length Multiplier) : a classical 35mm lense will become a 7mm lens. Even if the focal lense/focal plane ratio is maintained, this changes the way the image is captured, for two reasons :
- depth of field of wide angle lenses is greater
- field of view is reduced