Some people think that photography is akin to magic. They turn on the camera, snap a picture, and a day or two later they’ve got a mystical re-creation of the scene they saw in the viewfinder. With a digicam, it’s even more magical—the pictures are available instantly! How does it work? Who knows?
The best place to start is often right at the beginning—how on earth does a camera take a picture, anyway?
All cameras, regardless of type, work more or less the same way. They open their shutter for a brief time, allowing light to enter. That light then interacts with a sensitive photo-receptor (like film, or perhaps a computer chip), and an image is recorded. Let’s start by looking at a traditional 35mm camera to give us a little perspective.
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Ian Parker [Musician & Photographer] - HQ Wild Birds
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Every hobby has its accessories. I sometimes joke that my dive buddy only became interested in scuba diving after she discovered that scuba gear was a whole new way to spend money.
While there’s no doubt some truth to that, it’s also true that there are some things you really need to buy to accompany any activity, and digital photography is no exception. Here’s a short shopping list of things you might consider buying as you get more into shooting digitally:
1. A camera
It goes without saying that you need a camera, but don’t rush into the purchase. You can even use a 35mm camera to begin with, and scan the images into the PC for editing and printing. If you’ve read the previous post of this blog and decided what features are important to you, you can shop like a pro.
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If you haven’t read the first part, then you should read it first.
4. FLASH
Almost all digital cameras come with a built-in flash. The real issue is how well the flash works. Check to see what the maximum range of the flash is and if it works when the camera is in macro, or close focus, mode. You might also want a flash with special features like these:
Red eye reduction. This mode preflashes the subject to try to minimize reflected light from the pupil known as red eye.
Force/fill Force or fill flash is used to reduce shadows outdoors or in otherwise adequate lighting when the flash might not fire.
Rear curtain flash. This mode fires at the end of a long exposure. It comes in handy at night so that light trails precede the main subject, illuminated by the flash.
Some cameras also come with sync ports or hot shoes that allow you to connect more powerful,external flash units.
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Even though the camera field is evolving all the time, the basics really don’t change. Starting from this post, I will cover the most important elements to consider when shopping for a camera.
1. RESOLUTION
First and foremost, figure out how much resolution you need. This should be the first decision you make, because it determines what cameras you will be evaluating. Use the following info to decide what megapixel range you need:
Megapixels - Print Size
Sub-megapixel (VGA) –> Onscreen only (Web, email)
1 megapixel –> 3 × 5-inch prints
2 megapixel –> 5 × 7-inch prints
3 megapixel –> 8 × 10-inch prints
6 megapixel –> 13 × 19-inch prints, prints from small crop areas of the original image
Remember that even if you choose a 6-megapixel camera, you can set it to capture lowerresolution images—even a mere 640 × 480 pixels—making your camera quite versatile. Or you can capture a high-resolution image and reduce its size on the PC in an image-editing program.
The higher the resolution, the fewer pictures you can store at a given time, so there is a bit of a trade-off. If you buy a camera with too little resolution, though, you can’t ever add information to a picture, and trying to “blow it up” to print beyond its ideal size will generate a pixely, grainy mess.
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Do you need to get a new camera next year just because the megapixel bar has been raised—or some other cool new features have surfaced?
No, you don’t. Just like your desktop computer, a digital camera isn’t obsolete just because a new model came out with more memory or horsepower. It’s only obsolete when it no longer does what you want it to do. Consider my main digital camera. Although I get to see and play with a large number of cameras every year, I’ve stuck with what you’ll surely consider to be an ancient model—the several-year-old Olympus D-620L. I like this camera because it has a TTL viewfinder and an excellent macro, or close focus, mode. The downside? It’s a mere 1.4 megapixels. That’s so Twentieth Century. That’s okay, though—I use the camera to take screenshots for books, magazines, and Web sites. I rarely need a resolution much beyond 1,024 × 768 for those applications, and that’s well within the capability of this venerable old camera. For my more creative photography, I upgraded to the 5-megapixel Olympus e20n last year, and I suspect it will make me very happy for the next several years.
The bottom line? Find a camera you like and stick with it. Digital cameras are a costly investment, and they won’t “pay for themselves” in film savings if you replace them every year or so with a newer model.
No two digital cameras are the same. Each camera maker is known to some greater or lesser extent for implement-specific kinds of features—like interchangeable lenses, swivel bodies, and movie recording features. If you cut through all those goodies, though, you’ll find that most cameras share many of the same fundamentals. Let’s start at the top and cover your camera’s fundamentals.
A. The Optical System
At the heart of every camera, no matter how it stores its images, is an optical system. Most digital cameras have two distinct viewfinders—an optical one and a digital one. In most cases, the optical viewfinder is composed of a glass or plastic lens that shows you your subject directly—it’s just a plain window that lets you see through the camera to the other side. The digital viewfinder is an LCD display that reproduces what the camera’s CCDs are actually seeing.
Which one should you use? Whichever one you like. You’ll get better results, though, if you understand the difference between the two. The majority of digital cameras are point-and-shoot designs. With a point and shoot, you do not actually see what the camera sees when you look through the optical viewfinder. The optical viewfinder is a parallax-inducing viewfinder, a popular low-cost mechanism that dates back almost all the way to the invention of the camera itself. No doubt you have a point-and-shoot camera lying around the house with just such a viewfinder.
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Brand X Pictures Vol.035 - Model Citizens
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