What would Cyril Fletcher say?

It is easy to take photographs in winter especially if you are interested in night photography. I stopped at a service station earlier this week and took these photos. I had my compact camera in my pocket and saw the garage which I thought looked well-lit.

The photo on the right was taken on the footbridge. It is the garage on the opposite side of the motorway and there is much less light hitting the sensor. The automatic focusing failed on this occasion. It generally works very well and it is really rare to end up with a photo like this. If you like fine art then its good, but I didn't want to take this photo. I am showing you this because it highlights a limitation of compact cameras. I don't know of manual focus on compacts but as Cyril Fletcher used to say on That's Life, "unless you know differently, do get in touch"

I do like compacts. I think the quality of image is excellent. They are easy to carry around and the optical zoom is amazing and continuosly improving. You can even get compacts that have interchangeable lenses. The great advantage of film SLRs was that you took exactly what you saw as opposed to something slightly different that you saw through the viewfinder. This is no longer a benefit in the digital world because you see the image that you are going to take.

Happy snapping