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Bet when you go to your local grocery store you forget to take the darned re-usable bag out of the car and have to backtrack across the car park to get it. It's never a good start to a shopping trip, but at least it's better than trying to juggle cabbages and green beans on the way out. If you've ever erupted in green beans while trying to fish the car keys out, you'll know that people can be cruel with their laughter...
The cloth bag is the easy way, and if we remember it the first time the whole thing is easy. Much the same with our no-frills photography expedition. We needn't carry an IGA bag, but we need to organise our mental groceries beforehand.
Hit the menu button on your single-lens camera. Have you ever changed it from factory default settings since you got the thing? Some never have, and to be fair, have never felt bad for that. There are some occasions when the settings that rolled off the line in Kyoto are perfect for what you're doing. If the camera is to be used by people who have no idea what they are doing ( and there are times when that includes me ) the factory defaults often produce excellent results - far better than deliberate choices made randomly. Letting the hooks do their work is not just for the Simpson's cartoons.
But look back in imagination from the end of your photo journey. Is the factory setting of a jpeg and programmed exposure in sRGB going to produce an image that you need? Is it going to be a compromise? What if Kyoto gets it wrong and you'll have to wear it?
Set out on an experimental process that alters some of the factory sets to suit your own needs. The colour space of sRGB is pretty good for most screen usage - you're soaking in it now, Narelle - but you may want to do more with printing later. Perhaps the Adobe RGB settings or another choice will be better for you. Try them out and see.
Find the sweet spot of resolution on your lens - look for it at about 2 stops down from maximum aperture. It may not be readily apparent but shoot and blow up until you discover the setting that is absolutely best. Then deviate from it as you need.
Decide which colour rendition seems to be best for you. Your eyes, not mine, so not scolding if you like super saturation or low contrast or whatever. I favour one setting on my Fujifilm cameras that many others would pass by - in my case the Pro Neg Hi seems to be the closest that I can get to the way that I see things through my spectacles. Do not expect to be the same, but please yourself.
See if a flash attachment is a help. In many cases for me - it is. I deliberately select a camera that will allow studio connection while in a studio and that can supply a small fill-flash when out in the open air. It's one of the reasons I keep several older models of body in current use - they have flashes that are very helpful. If you find flash anathema, leave it turned off.
Choose a photogrammetric mode. Wooo, big word. I must be getting better. Actually, just decide whether you're are going to benefit most from an average, weighted, or spot light meter reading and go with the majority decision.
Set your viewfinder and/or LCD screen to match what you're likely to encounter. I set my LCD screen to a high intensity but leave the finder one at regular setting. I know that sunlight will white-out the outer screen just at the awkward moments.
And finally...see if all these settings can be accessed with something other than a menu button. I'm lucky, and you may be too - there is a Q button set on the back of most of my cameras that throws up 16 things that might need to be changed as a graph on the LCD screen. I have the cameras set to their most normal usage, but can bounce into different settings from that Q screen - I rarely have to use the menu settings.
It is, indeed, possible to push the camera into a bag, pull it out at the venue, shoot at the settings with no changes, and then bring the files back home safely. I keep RAW files as a backup for my jpegs, but am frequently delighted that the RAW are not needed for the results I want. When I make mistakes, they are royal ones, and then the RAW files are the saviours.
