What Camera do you have?

Originally posted by David Burke
Steve – have you got a new job working for the Church PR?

LOL – no mate, I’m about the most un-religious person you could ever meet. I was just doing the usual tourist thing, it was either JC or the birds on Copacabana beach, but I figured I’d get arrested if I started taking photos of nubile beauties sunning themselves. 😉

For aircraft pictures :

mainly : Nikon F-5 + 28mm + 35-70mm + 80-200 + 300mm (Nikon AF-Ds)

additional : a Sigma 400 + 1.4 converter

backup : Nikon F90 X

a Pentax Espio Zoom 135mm is used for holiday pictures

I´m currently looking at a Nikon D100 digital camera, but still not sure I want that one.

Steve – have you got a new job working for the Church PR?

…and here’s one which was just pure luck. There was a medium level cloudbase, and a lower level covering the mountain which had the same colour as the higher level. All of a sudden, the top of the lower level dipped and Christ popped out. Very eerie…

Cheers Garry. To be honest, it was a case of right place right time. We were cycling round the bay, I stopped to look behind me and see where the others were, saw the view, realised there was a boat up ahead, and thought I’d give it a go.

This next one – the statue of Christ at sunset – was partly a case of right place right time (with regard to the break in the clouds) and partly planned, but the helicopter I was in gave it too much shudder. It could do with being a lot sharper, but I’m still quite pleased with how it turned out.

“thats an impressive picture and some fine photoshop work”

Thanks, I did it to test the automatic pano feature in Photoshop Elements but because it took the pictures freehand and there was a dip in the middle images I had to stitch them together manually and fill in quite a bit of sky… I just got a copy of Elements 2 and I am going to test to see if its pano feature can do a better job. (of course if you do it properly with a tripod and 12.5 or 18 degree stops it would do a great job… the only editing would be for removing moving objects… like people that appear in more than one shot).

BTW nice pic Steve… I am a novice when it comes to putting together a nice photo, but your shot with a boat in the foreground and the city in the middle ground and the statue and mountains in the background shows good composition skills that I still don’t have an eye for yet (when taking photos).

Rio de Janiero. Statue of Christ on top of Corcovado in the background. Not too bad for a little point ‘n’ shoot, eh?

That’s nice.

Argentina?

Moggy

For 15 years I used a Miranda (Dixon’s own brand) 35mm, with a 70-210mm lens which I used to attach for airshows. I used to get one or two decent shots per roll at airshows, although most of my statics were okay.

Like Moggy says, the biggest downside is that you just don’t know how good or bad your shot is until you get it back from the developers, by which time you’ve paid for it. If it’s cr@p, tough luck.

I still use the Miranda from time to time, but last year I acquired a basic point and shoot digital camera. It’s an HP 620, which also has video clip capability. It’s been much better for me when I’ve been travelling and doing the tourist thing, as I can shoot away all day, then review the shots when I get back home / back to the hotel, and sack the ones I don’t like.

To be honest, I don’t see much degradation in quality between the 620 and the old Miranda, and I’ve also got an HP P230 photo printer which can print out selected shots on 6×4 photo paper direct from the camera or memory card, which really does cut down the costs. The camera and printer together would have cost about £250, but as I work indirectly for HP, well… 😉

Anyway, as far as quality is concerned, see what you think to this one…

thats an impressive picture and some fine photoshop work

I find magnification to be more useful than a measurement of focal length… what does 900mm mean to you?

X3 tells me immediately that the image will appear as if I was 3 times closer to the subject (it doesn’t mean things will be 3 times bigger as some assume).

My camera is a very cheap ($200) digital camera. It only has a digital zoom of X2 which is OK for the stuff I use it for. When using digital zoom it really depends on the quality of the algorithm that is used to make the image look larger… the cost is always a little quality but if you really want quality then you would be using film or a very large pixel count digital anyway.

Here is a series of pics I took manually and stiched together with Photoshp Elements. (Note I had to rather harshly compress it from its original 3.5MB down to this 93K image… Physically it was larger too… being a panorama sorry about the width)

The image is of Lake Hawea in Central Otago.

I’ve a Rollei compact 35mm and just added a Nikon 5700 Digicam.

The big advantage of the digi is the ability to experiment at no cost and instant feedback. Yesterday for example I tried taking a shot through the car windscreen whilst we were driving through Thetford Forest. By selecting a very slow shutter speed I got some quite interesting ‘motion’ shots. None worth keeping, but it’s just another bit of learning.

Moggy

PS Mrs Moggy was driving, not me.

I found this out – the 3x optical is great on my camera but not enough for what I use it for (bike photos)…….. digital zoom is ****e

Digital camera’s are a whole new world of photography – you point (you prefocus – saves 3 seconds) and shoot (results is 1 second latter) – so it’s slower than a normal camera (if you prefoucs 1 sec, if not like 3 or 4).

But what is really great you look at the photo you just took on the preview screen, bear in mind you can chop it, blow it up or enlarge and then keep it or delete it. I have a big enough memory to take 100 great quality photos (NB remember to get quite a bit of memory as on board memory is tiny).

But you have to print them out if you want traditional photos – personally they go on my website so no bother but if not ………

rabie 😉

Dhfan,

You’re quite correct. A “digital” zoom is somehow a stretch of the optical capture of the picture. In many cases the result is crap.

You may wish you hadn’t asked this.

SLRs: Olympus OM10, OM20, OM40, OM-1N, 3 x OM-2N, OM-2, Winder 2, 28mm, 2 different 35/70mm, 50mm, 135mm, 75/250mm and 2x converter.
Ordinary 35mm: Olympus Trip 35, mju zoom, mju II.
Digital: Olympus C300 Zoom.

Told you.

As far as I understand it, with a digital “snapshot” type camera, 3x optical zoom is equivalent to around 35mm – 110mm or so.
Forget digital zoom. Unless you’ve got some huge number of megapixels it’s a waste of time and you can always do it on a PC anyway.
If I’m wrong I’d be delighted if any digi experts could put me right.

What does a digital camera mean by 3x digital/optical zoom?

Standard lenses have their zoom measured in a 70-200mm (as an example) format. What does this equate to?

A Minolta Riva Zoom 140 and a cheap digital one.

i got given for my birthday a Kodak LS443 digital cmarea, 3x optical zoom, 128mb memorey, 4 megapixles

it snot bad and im haivng fun with it at motobike meeting – have yet to go plane snapping with it yet

while on one hand i would liek a posher one it would be bigger (this one fits in my pocket) and it would take up more webspace (just past 60mb for my website :rolleyes: )

rabie 😉

Originally posted by Snapper

But I can’t take a deceent picture to save my life. Perhaps I need a Leica…..

It’s not the camera Snapper, I had the same problem couldn’t take a good picture for love or money.

I enrolled on a course to learn how to, and now I have a better understanding of the workings.

When-ever anyone asks why their pictures of aircraft are always just a dot in the sky, I tell them that they didn’t wait until they could see the whites of the pilots eyes.

The worst part of the course believe it or not was working with models, trying to get the right pose. Apparently you have to relax the subject, try as I did I couldn’t persuade her to come home where I told her she would far more comfortable. The wife didn’t understand either.

I have a “manual” Olympus OM-10 where every little change has to be made by the user – no autofocusing available, no auto-wind – nothing!

I also print and develop in school and have the facility to develop black and white film at home and then scan in with my Microtek film scanner.