I want a new camera

A few days ago it occurred to me that my beloved Fuji Finepix F10 with its 3x optical zoom is probably not going to cut it for my upcoming safari tour in Serengeti. I began to research photography on safari tours and I discovered the almost universal recommendation of at least a 300mm lens (about 10x).

Given that I’m already over-budget as it is, a new camera was definitely out of the question and I pulled-out my older Fuji Finepix S5000 with its 10x optical zoom. I looked for some batteries, put them in, set the date, and fiddled around with it. Not satisfied with what I saw, I dug out the manual as well and read through it as if it was a new camera.

And just like that, I suddenly began to grasp the basic technical concepts of photography and how they worked together.

So I’ve spent the past few days playing with my old camera while wishing I could buy a new dSLR so I could really put to practice what I had learned. Today I decided to take some practice shots with passing cars on the road to see the effects of different shutter speeds and aperture sizes and I learned a few more things about my camera, about exposure compensation, and so on. I also became resigned that in sunny Africa, my camera was probably not going to produce the best results at 1/60s ISO 200 as it can only go down to f/9 while zooming. Even in sunny Australia things were over-exposed.

Then I decided to play around with the RAW functionality of the camera and here I was surprised. The resulting images, taken at the same settings, were much better without the camera processing it. In fact, all I can think of is: WHAT THE HELL?!

All the images were taken at 1/60s at f/8, ISO 200 with -2 exposure compensation. Below the images have been re-saved in lossless PNG after a resize.

And after processing:

As is obvious, the original RAW image looked pretty decent as it is whereas the original JPEG image acquired a really washed out look to it. Even after cleaning-up the JPEG image it was still nowhere near the untouched RAW original. I never thought I’d have to shoot in RAW but this looks like it might be a good excuse to do so–good thing I’ve got a 2GB xD memory card coming in on Monday as shooting in RAW is really going to eat-up space!

Can it get any cuter than this??

I was walking up Hunter St. after picking-up my lunch earlier this afternoon when I noticed a man on the sidewalk taking pictures with what seemed to be a camera-phone. Disturbingly, it looked like mine, so I peeked at it as I walked past him and noticed that indeed it was the K800!

Damn!

Well, anyway, it was at this point that I noticed two other people taking pictures as well and when I looked over to see what they’re taking pictures of, I saw …

I’m not sure why, but I turned on the BestPic feature of my K800 and I’m glad I did! The picture above is the first picture in the series of nine. If this feature really worked as advertised, that it takes four pictures prior and after the shutter button is pressed, then had I not turned on BestPic I wouldn’t have gotten the picture with the dog in the back seat looking at me.

The most surprising thing is that as I crossed the street to get a closer picture, the dog in the driver seat, as if sensing my intention, turned to face me and hung his fore-leg out the window. I kid you not! And yes, the dog in the back also turned toward me as well. Strangest thing. Well, in a good way. It was pretty cute and really made my day.

“Kodak moments” such as this really makes it hard for me to swallow the argument that camera-phones are gimmicks. In fact, the other people taking pictures aside from myself were all using camera-phones. Maybe one was using an actual camera, but my memory fails me. I do know for a fact that aside from the other K800 dude, there was another guy taking a picture with a camera-phone.

Hyde Park on a Friday night

Hyde Park, Sydney — Avenue of Figs (?) [1 SEP 2006]