Digital SLR Time

One hobby of mine that has fallen by the wayside the past few years is photography.  Sure, there are times I pull out the Sony H-20 to do some random shoots of stuff but I've not been real serious about getting out and about in some time.  This is something I'm planning to rectify come this fall.

While the H-20 is a fine point-and-shot digital camera and takes some outstanding pictures with some nice features it's still not a DSLR type camera with options for various lenses, RAW file format capability, and other assorted options.  If I want to really get serious about getting back into photography as a hobby I'll need to step up my game, so to speak.

This will be a multi-stage effort on my part starting with purchasing a copy of Aperture 3 by Apple.  I've been playing around with the 30 day free trial and I'm hooked!  It's got some powerful photo editing features that rival and surpass what I've used with previous versions of Photoshop, integrates very well with my iMac, and is no where as expensive as Photoshop.  If you've got a Mac computer and like to take pictures do yourself a favor and try this software out.  You'll thank me later.

Second will be deciding which DSLR I want to get.  Up until my purchase of my Sony H-20 this past spring I've been a hardcore fan of Canon cameras.  As someone who was assistant manager of a photo lab and worked in the lab of a major camera store chain I've always been partial to Canon products and recommended to many friends and customers.  I've used other digital cameras from Nikon and Fuji but always felt that Canon products offered a better quality hardware/picture combination.  The Sony I have has been changing my mind about this somewhat.

One factor in the camera decision will be lenses.  With a Sony Alpha model DSLR I'll be able to use Minolta lenses but I've not had much experience with those so it's a bit of a hedge point for me.  I also prefer lenses made by Sigma.  They offer lenses for Canon, Nikon, and other SLR/DSLR cameras and I like their products.  I have to admit I don't know if they offer equipment compatible with Sony cameras or not, I'll have to get off my butt and look it up later.  One thing is for certain, a trip to the local Wolf Camera at Cameron Village is in the offing as I'll be able to go there and play with various models and lenses to get a "feel" for the current state of DSLR offerings.  I also need to find out if a professional photographer friend I worked with when I worked for Wolf still works there, his is advice that I trust.

My final factor is working out a budget for this project.  I'm including the cost of Aperture 3 in this as it's directly related and will be the first purchase around the end of August.  There will also be various accessory purchases to take into account such as compatible memory cards (at least 32MB), extra battery for the camera, a second zoom lens (at least a 55mm-200 with a preferable 55-300mm range lens), UV filter, and a bag for the new equipment.  An extra zoom lens shouldn't be too big an issue as lots of times DSLRs are advertised with specials including such a lens.  I've already got a decent tripod so that's one less thing to worry about getting.

This is a project/goal I'm looking forward to almost as much as the iMac one was for the first half of the year.  I really do miss going out somewhere with the goal of doing nothing but looking for what catches my eye and thinking of how I want to frame a picture to make it one that others will enjoy as much as I do.

Storm Clouds

We had a bit of a thunder storm come through where I live this afternoon and I snapped some pictures as the storm clouds moved in.  Here's the link to the Flickr upload.

Night Shots

I got stuck downtown waiting for my bus which had broken down so I decided to take some night shots with the new camera.  Here's the link.

Raleigh Pictures

Here's a link to most of the pictures I took today with my new Sony H-20 digital camera.  For many of the shots I left the camera in "Intelligent Scene" mode while switching to complete manual to compose a few of them.  The picture above is probably my favorite out of all the pictures I took today.  I also shot a one minute video at 720p but I've yet to look at it, much less upload it.  Look for that later on.

I am really liking this new camera!

Oh, be sure to let me know what you think of the pictures!!!

Camera Phone Photography

I thought I'd show off a few photos I took recently with my Palm Pre to give everyone an idea of the quality of pictures taken with the device.  All have been reiszied for space and bandwidth considerations but if you check out my Flickr feed you'll be able to see them at full size (and more!).

Here's a tricky lighting situation for the Pre, basically towards the coming sunrise but also fighting the street lights as well.  There's a bit of noise but you get the idea.

This one is a bit better but you can still see a bit of "flare" where the sun is about to come up.  However, the Pre does do a good job of catching the variety of colors in the sky.

Here's one of an empty bus I was riding Saturday morning and is a good example of how the Pre does a fairly decent job of capturing color under artificial lighting (and while riding a jostling bus!).

To be certain the Pre is not a substitute for a "real" camera (digital or film) but it does get the job done when you want to catch those "moments" of life.  I typically use it when I see something interesting that I want to share in my daily travels OR when I'm around the house and the cat is doing something cute.  The "shutter" speed is fairly fast for a camera phone, almost one snap a second, which means that it's easier to capture stuff on the fly without waiting too long between shots. 

One other thing I've noticed about pictures taken with the Pre is that they look better when they are reduced in size from their original.  Again, if you check these photos out on my Flickr feed and then look at the original uploads you'll see what I mean.  Then again, this is a symptom of most digital cameras that aren't at least DSLRs and especially with camera phones in general.

Oddly enough the best camera phones I've ever had a chance to use were by HTC.  For a while I had a Touch Diamond and then this past fall I got two weeks of hands on time with the HTC Hero on Sprint.  Here's a picture I snapped with the Diamond.

This was taken about an hour after sunrise back in June.  That is not noise fuzziness but rather burning off fog.

Here are a few pics that I got to take with the HTC Hero before I had to send it back.

In this one the Hero was able to capture a star in the morning sky, something I've not seen a camera phone do before.

Downtown Raleigh, early morning.  Even in the full sized image you can see some amazing detail in this pick.

Taken on Capitol Blvd. in Raleigh.  These cars were zipping by at a pretty good clip and you can still hardly detect any blurring.

Boo trying to help me out when working with the Hero back in November (I couldn't resist getting a cat shot in!).

Obviously the photos taken with the HTC Hero would be slightly better based on the fact that it has a 5MP sensor to the Pre's 3MP one.  There were two downsides though to using the Hero:  the trackball is the camera button as well as the digital zoom button which makes for some interesting challenges and the Hero lacks a flash.  The upside on the Hero was on device editing as well as various camera settings whereas the Pre has NO options other than flash, auto flash, or no flash.  That's a big draw back for the Pre.

However, there is no doubt, to me at least, that the Hero is the better camera phone of the two devices.  It just does a better job at colors and handling multiple lighting situations.  The camera functions on the Hero are tempting enough for me to think about getting one.

What's the worst camera phone I've ever used?  Easily the Blackberry Curve 8330 I had for a while last year.  Then again that phone had so many issues I refuse to even consider getting a Blackberry device for the next couple of years.  It was that bad.

Over the next year we should be seeing even better camera phones coming to market.  Motorola has one coming up that is an Android device and has an 8MP camera and a nice flash.  The HTC phones I've been tracking online look to improve as well, both WinMo and Android phones.  I have no idea if Palm is going to do anything better on the camera front.

One thing that is factoring into any decisions I make as far as phone purchases go this year is the quality of the photos they take.  I do not like carrying around more gear than I need to on a daily basis and I've all but stopped bringing any sort of digital camera with me daily so this is an important factor for me.