Boring Places (I)
Boring Places (I), originally uploaded by logicblue.
I got my first digital point and shoot out of lust. It was Canon's first digital ELPH and it was the smallest on the market. It was square and boxy with an amazingly tiny LCD by today's standards. I carried it with me everywhere and loved taking covert pictures. Eventually the battery lost its ability to hold a charge and I stopped using it.
A few years later I bought Canon's latest digital ELPH and picked up where I left off. Only things began heading in a different direction. I was still carrying my camera everywhere and taking pictures of everything but I also started taking photography more seriously. Eventually it was obvious a point and shoot wasn't going to cut it and I would need an SLR.
I started off with a digital Rebel, and after I got a few good chunks of glass in my collection, I upgraded to a 40D. I still managed to bring my much larger camera with me everywhere, but slowly I found less and less interest in snapping shots of all the random scenes around me. The camera stayed in the bag more and more, and eventually I stopped carrying it with me all together. I had started bringing various 35mm point and shoots with me, but with my photographic output declining, I decided now is the time to get a new pocketable digital.
Of course my expectations of quality had increased a lot since the days of my first digital point and shoot, and after a lot of reading I had narrowed the selection to either a Canon G10, Sigma DP2, or Panasonic DMC-LX3; They all support RAW. I'm a fan of Canon, the DP2 has a APS-C sized sensor, but ultimately I was won over by the LX3's f/2.0 lens.
I picked a great time to buy it too. The LX3 is notoriously hard to find and I got it for less than the MSRP. And just a week after I did, the average price jumped to $750! The noise can be pretty bad at the high ISO's (it supports ISO 80-3200; 6400 in "High Sensitivity" mode) but with the fast lens and image stabilization, you can easily get away with shooting at lower ISOs. I'm generally impressed with the image quality. It also shoots HD video which is something I'm excited to play around with. Hopefully my stream will be updated more often, with more casual snaps.
I guess we'll find out.
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