New Camera

We all know that we’ve had Halloween since the last time I’ve made a post.
In point of fact, there’s also been a birthday and an anniversary in this same time-frame and it appears I’m only a month in arrears.

So, there are pictures of those events, but that’s not what finally got me off my duff – it is (was?) my new camera.

Ya seeeee, in the weeks before Halloween I was busily engaged in making PacMan ghosts for my office costume party. TheWeeOne wanted to film, direct, bestGrip, and narrate “A Five Year Old’s Version of How It’s Made”.

What is quite clear to me know is that while Wee excels at filming, directing, and narrating (for a five year old) the machinations of a costume build her grip is rather typical for a five year old.

So, I upgraded!

After some research, I came to realize that our iPhones are suitable as point-and-shoot, have with us anywhere cameras, and that paying a premium for a good quality, “take anywhere” compact camera wasn’t an operating goal of mine any longer. So, I moved up the chain (and in the process COMPLETELY ignored some rather good advice about DSLR’s from my friendly neighborhood photo-geek) and traded a Canon SX40HS for some CreditCard points we’ve accumulated.

My targets were:

• • long optical zoom lens – check.
  • decent low-light imagery (low noise) – check
  • very fast frame-per-second option – check
    (These 1st three were must haves based on my expected usage shooting poorly lit dancers at a distance who tend to jump around a lot)
  • small enough to carry in a purse or small bag – check

(This and $$ were the biggest reasons for ignoring aforementioned photo-geek)

• powerful enough to enable good manual features – check
• macro options – check
• RAW support – zzzzzt!
  (but with CHDK, I may not have to wait long…but that’s another post)
• Canon if possible – check
  (I’m not married to Canon but since TheMommy and I generally know the interface, well, there is value in familiarity)
• Good video capabilities – check

So, here are some sample shots to get things started.

With a long lens, it turns out, image stabilization is rather necessary to counteract shake. This camera has an excellent pre-set feature for taking low-light photos, without a tripod.

Check out this shot of the moon on a clear night.

Pretty awesome – and at 100% crop, with no retouching, you can see some blurring and jaggy jpg’s

The way it does this low-light anti-blur thing is it takes four shots in rapid succession, each one likely too low to see much individually – but then the camera lines them up a little bit (stabilize) and stacks them together, on the fly, to make one good (perhaps) image.

You can see what happens then if a moving subject enters the scene.

But seriously, the bike lane marker and other things in the background?! Not blurry.
This won’t really help with moving dancers methinks, unless I can call it artistic, but it sure is fun to play with on still subjects.

The feature on this camera I know I’ll use is it’s super zoom; The range is (35mm equivalent) 24-840mm which I’m told is the equivalent of three separate SLR/DSLR lenses. Granted the quality won’t exceed those three lenses but, I am much less likely to A) bring three lenses to a performance and B) have the right one on at the right time. I still may not get zoomed in/out all the way in time but…I’ll take that tradeoff.

Check out the image stabilized, wide angle, low-light mode, shot of downtown Seattle from Alki.

But you know, without any retouching, a 100% crop of this picture shows, whatever you call that – lots of bleeding lights – and quite a bit of noise. Not pretty at 100%.

So, let’s zoom in all the way, don’t change a thing on the settings and see what a 100% crop of The Space Needle will look like.

Now, that’s pretty cool. Put that sucker on a tripod in manual mode and you might resolve people in them-thar windows.

And, since you’ve made it this far, I’ll demonstrate the results to be had using the ultra-fast, 10 frames per second mode. What better than two TheMermaids jumping…

…off the bed…

…and off the ground.

Both of these were middle shots of 6-8 pictures – the other shots weren’t quite as impressive although interesting to look at in succession.
This mode, unrestrained, does tend to fill up memory rather rapidly. More to come.