Tag: image quality

2011-08-07

The Problem of Not Enough Light.

“I am constantly running into the problem of not having enough light,” my friend moaned in an e-mail. Join the club, dude. He asked a slew of questions related to what gear I use, or would suggest, to try to help combat that age old problem (ok…”age old” as far as photography is concerned anyway) of not enough light.

What are you using these days? I know you are very much anti-flash, which I basically agree with. But I am constantly running into the problem of not enough light. Are you mostly shooting with a 50mm f/1.8? Or are you jacking up your ISO? Or are you using a tripod? Which reminds me, my tripod recently broke, any recommendations on one (that is not in the crazy range, under $200)? Ok, so I am asking lots of questions, sorry. But one more, post production, what are you using? Lightroom? Photoshop? iPhoto?

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2011-06-14

$500 Camera Budget

We are back to that recurring question: what camera should I buy? I am often asked, but having recently put some work into finding the best options for a coworker who was buying a first camera setup for her son, I thought it might be helpful to share what I found and suggested. I worked quite hard to stay within a $500 budget, though some of the options below rely on used gear, and availability certainly can change quickly.

My chief aim was to avoid the kit lens which comes with all of the entry level digital SLRs. Not that they are rubbish, necessarily, but you will constantly be fighting their limited aperture, your photos will have the same feel as everybody else’s, and more than likely you will be more satisfied with a cheap, fixed-length lens with wider aperture. So, here we go…

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2009-11-20

What Camera Should I Buy on a Budget?

My wife insisted I post this. I wrote all this in e-mails the past couple days trying to help a technologically-challenged sister buy a camera for her starting-out-photo-student brother, and they are in different countries, so cannot shop together.

Here is the little background: because these suggestions are for a specific situation. The student-photographer-in-question will have access to loaner lenses through the photography department. So, one, he does not need anything more than a workable lens for himself. And two, all that glass is Canon. So, regardless of my opinions, he needs a Canon camera and should put most of the investment in the camera.

The sister almost bought a Canon 5D mark II and a lens for $2000…and that is about $1000 too cheap. Thankfully, the lens they ordered was an EF-S and would not work on the 5Dmk2, so they were able to cancel the order, which was most certainly some sort of scam anyway. Then, they started thinking about the new 7D or a 50D. And that is where we pick up the story.

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2009-09-19

Death to Megapixel Envy!

I think we are finally seeing the end to the megapixel wars…though I think we will still have some megapixel regional conflicts for many years to come. For years, few people have thought about sensor size, image quality, high ISO noise, or any other issues before they found out the number of megapixels of the newest and greatest cameras.

I give the biggest kudos possible to Nikon for “writing the peace treaty” in the megapixel wars by coming out with the 12MP D300, D700, and D3. As is seen by the number of pros using these cameras, many people are more concerned with other features like shooting speed and high ISO noise. Now, I can add Canon to the list of enlightened camera makers by making their new top of the line compact camera less megapixels than the last generation of the same camera! Sweet.

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2008-12-17

Quality Difference Between 6MP and 12MP

Should you set your camera to take the biggest photo size possible? Are more pixels better? You know, I would like to think people are actually asking themselves these questions, but somehow I seriously doubt it. Call me weird. If you are, though, maybe my experience recently in answering these questions for myself might help you toward find the best answer for you. I have even made up some example photos to compare the different image quality settings.

My wife recently bought a point-and-shoot for family use–honestly, it is mainly for videos. When I was setting everything up for her, one of the decisions I made was NOT to use the highest image quality setting. Call me crazy. A few factors came into play: image quality, file size, and how big the photos might be printed.

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2008-12-12

How To Choose a Compact Camera

I went through a process just recently that I see as one of the most common questions asked: “What camera do I buy?” In the last entry, I happened to have answered the same question, but for people looking at entry-level SLRs. This time, I am talking only of compact or point-and-shoot cameras. Of course, we all want something a little different, but I will try to keep this to what I would consider the essentials.

So, that is the first question. What is essential in a compact camera? Honestly, all we wanted was something small to do videos of our children since I am already carrying around my camera for the photographs. I think we can safely put the video issue aside, though, because almost all compact cameras take the same quality of video. What is the most important part of any camera? Image quality.

My search was to find the best compact camera possible, but not to pay a huge price for it. My research labors where not in vain.

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