Digital Photography
I have been using Francesca's little pocket digital camera (a Fuji A500) since we moved down here. Mostly I've needed photos of houses (while doing our house search) or the occasional shot of a rose, or a praying mantis in the garden, or some snapshot-ey thing like that.
However, recently Francesca's mother decided to go to the southern passage to Alaska (from Seattle via ferry) and so she wanted a digital camera.
I recommended to her the Panasonic Lumix LX2k (that Tony has and that we used at JKA). The main reason being the wide format and wide angle together with image stabilization leading to high quality photos in low light of landscapes and calving glaciers etc. She's not a camera buff, so she's sticking with auto mode for the moment, but another nice thing about the camera is the manual pop-up flash. You can force off the flash by just popping it down into the body of the camera. Great for museums, another place she's known to frequent.
Helping her shop for cameras got me to thinking about digital photography, and how I'd like to get back into more advanced photography. I was a big photo-head during the late 90's while working at Barra. I shot hundreds of rolls of slides, and became a pretty darn good technical photographer, but then dark days came when my Pentax Zx5-n SLR bit the dust, and the digital revolution hadn't yet gotten into full stride. It wasn't until 2005 after experiencing digital photography through my wedding guests, especially Ron and Eitan who were early adopters, that I decided to start back up with photography.
I bought a Fuji Finepix S5100 (a 4 megapixel SLR-like digicam) and went for several photo shoots with Francesca in northern california (including Lassen, the coast, and local parks and things near Lafayette).
The Finepix is a good camera that takes good photos, but it's not an SLR. For one thing, it's got a small screen and a small video viewfinder. No details, just really framing of the photo. An SLR has optical viewfinder. For another thing, it's a small sensor camera, which means massive depth of field. It's impossible to take a portrait with blurred background, or a picture of a bug on a flower without also seeing the ugly car in the background, and the guy picking his nose in said car's front seat. you get the idea.
So while there is a lot to be said for the digital pocket camera as a replacement for my venerable Yashica T4 with zeiss lens. The S5100 isn't that replacement (while the Canon A590IS looks to be a pretty good and inexpensive camera for that role).
So I'm looking at DSLRs again, and this time it will be Canon. So i'm looking at the Rebel XSi body only, with a selection of lenses, and with support for high capacity SD cards which have become the de-facto standard for cameras.
Sure it'll wind up costing $2500 to get a nice setup with wide zoom, standard prime, macro tele prime, and tele zoom with image stabilization but I'm looking forward to being able to go out and take the kinds of shots I used to get on Velvia with a modern high res digital, and then blow them up to 16x20 prints and put them on the walls of our new house. I mean everywhere. And no idiot print-shop employees will be fingerprinting my precious slides or negatives...
However, recently Francesca's mother decided to go to the southern passage to Alaska (from Seattle via ferry) and so she wanted a digital camera.
I recommended to her the Panasonic Lumix LX2k (that Tony has and that we used at JKA). The main reason being the wide format and wide angle together with image stabilization leading to high quality photos in low light of landscapes and calving glaciers etc. She's not a camera buff, so she's sticking with auto mode for the moment, but another nice thing about the camera is the manual pop-up flash. You can force off the flash by just popping it down into the body of the camera. Great for museums, another place she's known to frequent.
Helping her shop for cameras got me to thinking about digital photography, and how I'd like to get back into more advanced photography. I was a big photo-head during the late 90's while working at Barra. I shot hundreds of rolls of slides, and became a pretty darn good technical photographer, but then dark days came when my Pentax Zx5-n SLR bit the dust, and the digital revolution hadn't yet gotten into full stride. It wasn't until 2005 after experiencing digital photography through my wedding guests, especially Ron and Eitan who were early adopters, that I decided to start back up with photography.
I bought a Fuji Finepix S5100 (a 4 megapixel SLR-like digicam) and went for several photo shoots with Francesca in northern california (including Lassen, the coast, and local parks and things near Lafayette).
The Finepix is a good camera that takes good photos, but it's not an SLR. For one thing, it's got a small screen and a small video viewfinder. No details, just really framing of the photo. An SLR has optical viewfinder. For another thing, it's a small sensor camera, which means massive depth of field. It's impossible to take a portrait with blurred background, or a picture of a bug on a flower without also seeing the ugly car in the background, and the guy picking his nose in said car's front seat. you get the idea.
So while there is a lot to be said for the digital pocket camera as a replacement for my venerable Yashica T4 with zeiss lens. The S5100 isn't that replacement (while the Canon A590IS looks to be a pretty good and inexpensive camera for that role).
So I'm looking at DSLRs again, and this time it will be Canon. So i'm looking at the Rebel XSi body only, with a selection of lenses, and with support for high capacity SD cards which have become the de-facto standard for cameras.
Sure it'll wind up costing $2500 to get a nice setup with wide zoom, standard prime, macro tele prime, and tele zoom with image stabilization but I'm looking forward to being able to go out and take the kinds of shots I used to get on Velvia with a modern high res digital, and then blow them up to 16x20 prints and put them on the walls of our new house. I mean everywhere. And no idiot print-shop employees will be fingerprinting my precious slides or negatives...