The Canon S3 has a 12x telephoto range, giving it a 35mm-equivalent of 432mm. This extreme zoom range allows you to get quite tight on your subjects from far away, making it excellent for applications like birding.
Instructions
1. Use the top right toggle switch to zoom your camera. The S3 has a fly-by-wire zoom, meaning you tell the camera to zoom with an electronic switch and the camera will then physically zoom the lens for you. This is slower than the manual zoom on SLR cameras.
2. Turn off the digital zoom. Digital zoom is a feature that gives the appearance of extra telephoto range by cropping the image in-camera. There is no point to doing this, as you can achieve the same effect with more control and precision by using an image editor after the fact. By turning off digital zoom, you will keep the entire image, giving you more options later.
3. Make sure that your image stabilization feature is turned on. While this will drain more battery, it will help stabilize your lens against motion blur caused by your hands shaking. This is particularly important when using telephoto, as a tiny amount of shake is translated into a large amount of motion blur.
4. Ensure that your shutter speed is high enough. Motion blur, caused by unsteady hands, can be a problem at long enough focal lengths. The standard rule of thumb is to use a shutter speed no slower than 1 divided by your focal length, so at the S3's maximum zoom, this would be at least 1/400. This rule can be pushed if you have the image stabilization enabled. Alternatively, you can place the camera on a tripod or stable surface.
5. Acquire a telephoto conversion lens. There are numerous third-party conversion lenses on the market that can extend the telephoto range of your S3, generally by a factor of 1.5 or 2. However, depending of their quality, these conversion lenses will reduce your image quality and maximum aperture, and they may interfere with your auto-focus as well.
Tags: telephoto range, blur caused, conversion lenses, digital zoom, image stabilization, motion blur, shutter speed