Just before I went to England I bought a new camera body. The Canon Kiss Digital N (the equivalent of the Rebel XT in the US) that I had bought in Japan three years ago had been in the shop three times for various things and parts were as slow as molasses coming in. So I sucked it up and bought a Rebel XTi which is essentially the same camera but with 10 megapixels instead of 8. The advantage here was that I could continue to use the lenses and accessories I already owned.
My wife had a very old Sony digital point and shoot that just went south on her. For a replacement, we wanted something not dependent on proprietary Sony MemoryStickDuoProPlus whatevers, so we went with the Panasonic DMC-TZ1 which is 6 megapixels and has a 10x optical zoom and uses standard SD cards.
We both took tons of pictures, me more than her, and we had over a thousand shots between us when we returned. As I was very slowly sorting them and uploading them to Flickr, I noticed something odd. For the most part when we took pictures of the same thing we usually had a different composition or emphasis. But these two pictures of the National Gallery were nearly identical.
The top one is mine and the lower one is hers. Click on either picture to be taken to the Flickr page or see the full image (warning: very large files) by clicking on either this link for mine or this one for hers. The Canon seems to have a slightly brighter exposure and a very different white balance, not that I understand what that terms mean. So I cropped a very small portion of each to see what I’m getting with my camera with nearly twice the megapixels and easily ten times the weight.
As you can tell, not much. I love my digital SLR because of its power and potential, but I’m still learning all the features of it. It seems that when you just need to capture some quick memories those little pocket cameras do just fine.
You can see more of my rather cloudy London pictures here. And be forewarned that I will be trickling out more in the weeks to come.
BlatantCommentWhoring™: What do you take pictures with?
7 comments:
I think the picture from your camera is much better... the color looks more realistic (of course I wasn't there so I don't know what color IS realistic) and the quality seems better even at the lower res (but especially at the high res).
If I were picking a picture to use for publication, I'd pick yours.
I am a 2 camera gal. I need 2 cameras. I have an Olympus 55OUZ, 7.1Megapixels and 18x optical zoom. It is reasonably portable and takes great pictures. The Olympus has a ton of features where you need some serious training to figure out. Then there is my beloved Kodak Crapass. Crapass has 4 megapixels and gets 3x worth of zoom. Crapass has taken over 5000 pictures and looks like it has been run over by a truck. Crapass has been dropped, kicked and tortured. It's filled with sand from the beach. Nothing can kill Crapass.
There always seems to be an issue with the Olympus. For several months last year Olympus refused to speak to my computer. A month ago I stepped on Olympus's xd picture card and it quit working. I can jump on the SD cards I use with Crapass and they don't have issues.
What I have learned is that I need the Olympus to take clear pictures of the black bears, grizzly bears and herons that occasionally chase me. But if you look at my blog, what you don't know is that most of those pics, including the flowers were all taken with Crapass. You can manipulate colors of any picture once you download them so don't get hung up color. The tulip pictures have not been changed from crapass's download, and those flowers are very red.
Crapass's big advantage is that I don't mind getting Crapass a little wet or dropping it Crapass is much lighter than the Olympus and fits better in a pocket. If Tavon holds me up at gunpoint out there on the corner of Gay and Oliver I will gladly hand over Crapass. I might be willing to put up a fight over the Olympus.
BTW, here are my panoramio pics. If you click on a pic and then on extra information you can see which camera I used. Frankly, I think some of crapass's shots are pretty darned good. I might also mention I know nothing about taking pictures.
I only use Kodak Easyshare because I don't have the money for a SLR. However I've always thought my photos come out quite nicely at a fraction of the cost.
CHAM... Love your pictures.
Judging from the map of the tulips picture on Key Highway, that picture could have been taken in my sister's yard.
Crapass does a very good job.
You made a good choice on the RebelXTi. One feature I like on it is the automatic sensor cleaning feature. We just got back from the Alligator Farm in St Augustine where all the bird are nesting. I'll have some shots up on my web site soon.
I too received a Canon Digital Rebel XT last year for Mother's Day but I LOVE it and no problems thus far. I had a very crappy sony point and shoot so going from that to an SLR (since I'm trying to capture an active toddler) was a dream. But I'm an extreme novice and I had big dreams of learning all the manual settings and actually getting decent at photography which never happened. Although I love my camera to death, I do hate lugging it around and I never break out my other lenses for it. I really wanted a Nikon but I knew that it was more than I needed since I practically use them like point and clicks anyway.
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