Hey Y'all ! Spring is just around the corner and things are starting to warm up! Hope you're having a great week. People often ask me how I come up with subjects for my blogs. Sometimes it's something that I'm working on or something I'm thinking about but sometimes it's stuff I hear on podcast. One of my favorite one to listen to is the Digital Story by Derrick Story.  That's where I got the idea for this blog is from his latest podcast Tips for small sensor photography. Please start listening to his podcast he has over 1000 of them with all kinds of topics.  Now for this blog. Tiny Sensor Cameras. We all have them. 

My tiny sensor cameras. What do I consider a tiny sensor camera? Well I guess anything that is smaller than a full frame sensor camera. Most of my time taking photo's has been with smaller than full frame sensor cameras. I have shot crop sensor cameras for quite a while and have just recently gone back to full frame again. Most of the photo's on this website that I have in my galleries are shot with crop sensor cameras. I like smaller sensor camera's because they are usually smaller and just fun to shoot. I have a small Canon Point and shoot that I love to shoot. I got it when my wife and I were going to Washington DC  for a week long trip and I didn't want to take a big camera with me while I was with her but I still wanted a dedicated camera. I got some fantastic photo's! I was very pleased. Of course I have my iPhone 16 pro that is with me all the time and it can take some great photo's also. So if you have a phone you have a tiny sensor camera .  Don't be afraid to use it. It's good for something more than just taking selfies. You can get great pantographs and macro and these cameras are great for street photography because no one really pays attention to someone using a phone to take a quick shot. Hey what about action cameras? Some of us use these little cameras to take video of our adventures but you can also use them for photo's also. Or you can grab a frame out of a video and make a photo out of it. Some of them really turn out good . I have used these for thumbnail photo's for YouTube videos that I have posted online. You can get unique angles and even under water shots from these cameras. 

Tips on using tiny sensor cameras. When using tiny sensor cameras you should use the same basic camera techniques as you do with your big sensor cameras. Holding the camera securely when taking a photo just as you would with a big camera. Slowly squeezing the shutter button not just jerking it down. Make sure the auto focus point is where you want it and it is in focus before pulling the trigger. I would suggest stopping down a stop or two from the lens maximum aperture for best focusing results. When doing a landscape shots I go old school and focus 1/3 into the scene and let the hyper focal distance do the work for you. Make sure that your shutter speed is at or above 1/60 seconds. Control your ISO keeping it as low as you can to help with noise in the shot. These are basic shooting principals that you should use with any camera you shoot. I also use external filters on my point and shoot camera. A polarizer or a 1/4 defuser filter works wonders for photography shots. I use a K&F 1/4 diffuser and polarizer in one that I got for 22 bucks off of Amazon. It works wonders and makes your shots look more film photograph like instead of being super digital looking. Smaller sensors are more prone to noise especially in lower light. Now these camera's have smaller megapixels than their big sensor brothers. Maybe only 12 or 20 but don't let that slow you down. If you get a shot that you want to print large you can use post processing to increase the size of the photo's resolution and make them great for print. Also if there is a little noise you can use de-noise in lots of programs to clear that noise up. 

Now are these little cameras as good as their big brothers. No they are not especially if you pixel peep at 200 percent. But how many photo's do you look at 200% when you're looking at photos online or in print? These little cameras are fun to shoot! I mean really fun. Lots of these little cameras have all kinds of cool and fun settings and film simulations on them that make them a blast to shoot. Another thing you can do is shoot in RAW + JPEG . When you do this you have the Raw image that you can do almost anything you want but when you also are shooting in JPEG which does processing for you also makes lens corrections to these little cameras that could make them more sharp. Sometimes I use the JPEG just as it came out of the camera and it looks great and other times I like to use the RAW so I can do more editing on it.  As you can tell I am a big fan of these little sensor cameras and use them a lot. You don't have to go out and buy a little sensor camera use your phone you can get some great shots out of them and can put all kinds of effects even long exposure. When I'm out doing water falls I like to take one with my phone and I can use the long exposure effect and can get dramatic dreamy water. We have a lady in our camera club that takes great photo's with her phone and I am always impressed on what she can come up with. Well that's enough of me for this week . It's warming up outside so Get Out and Shoot! A small sensor camera! 

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link