How can *I* take ok photos?

Someone mentioned recently that it was surprising that, given my vision problem, I can take in-focus photos. Actually I usually can't ;)

I went though most of my life never owning a camera - too expensive and also, with the growing eye problem, impossible for me to focus. But after my mom died I had some extra money and by then cameras had auto-focusing capabilities. My friend Susan was always posting beautiful photos online and so I asked her advice about cameras - she pointed me towards the Olympus C-740 3MP Digital Camera with 10x Optical Zoom - it doesn't cost much now but at the time, 13 years ago, I think it was about $300. Here's a photo of the back of it, from the Amazon page ...



So, now I had a camera that could focus for me :) and all I had to do was point it in the right direction and hope for the best. Unfortunately it isn't that easy. The camera has trouble distinguishing what I want focused on and I usually have to take a multitude of photos to get even one that is in focus - sometimes none of the 20 or so I can take at once are in focus. Usually I delete the bad ones, but here's what most of my photos look like when I first put them on the computer ;) ...


- supposed to be the roses in focus, not the trees


- my fridge ... it hurts to look even at this ;)


- eeek! I cut off his head!

So, if anything does turn out ok, it's a combination of luck and the auto-focus :)