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Posts Tagged ‘camera’

Graphics Design Defined

When considering the question, “what is graphics design” I’m reminded of the movie Groundhog Day, where the camera man tells a would be female companion, “you know, people think I just take a camera and point it at stuff, but there’s a lot more to it than that.” The same goes for graphic design. Take a look at the video these guys put together. I can’t say that I’m excited about their choice of background music, but the meat is there anyway. Good job dude.

The Drudgery of Film

Back in2000, I finally traded in my film camera for digital.  My film camera had been a Minolta SLR, for which I had purchased an after market flash and a  couple of lenses of varying focal lengths.  It was somewhat laborious trying to teach myself to take good photos with a film camera.  I had to take notes of the conditions and camera settings for each frame and them compare those notes to the finished product after I had the film processed.  Needless to say, this did not produce much fruit.  There are so many variables involved in creating good photographs that, even with my notes, I didn’t learn a lot about improving my photos.  For the most part, I resigned myself to taking snapshots under good light or with a flash, and left the creative photography to the professional photographers.

Digital Saves the Day

Then came that fateful day, I think it was my birthday in the summer of 2001 when I sold my film camera to an aspiring photography student and purchased my first digital camera, a Toshiba PDR-M70 for $799.  This was a nice little camera for it’s day as the review in that link will tell you.  After installing the downloaded firmware upgrade, it was even capable of shooting in full manual mode.  It was 3.3 MegaPixel camera with an aluminum body and a rechargeable lithium-ion battery.  This latter feature was a big deal when most of the digital cameras available at the time used AA’s which they went through at an alarming rate.  I looked into getting a spare, but never ended up needing to.  I didn’t use the camera super heavily, so the original battery pretty much lasted me through the four years during which I used it.  The camera itself held up nicely; it still works, with the exception of the 4-way control button on the back which, as is customary among consumer electronics, broke (no lie) 6 days after my four year extended warranty expired.  Alas, it had served me well, but it’s day had finally come.  The most important benefit I gained from going to a digital camera was the ability to experiment and instantly see the results of that experiment.  This allowed me to really see the effects of different lighting, angles, apertures and shutter speeds on the shots I was taking.  It also gave me the freedom to ‘fire away’ knowing that I could just delete bad pictures.  Of course at 3.3 Megapixels, my 16MB smartmedia card only held about 27 photos.  Fortunately, however, I was able to pick up a spare 32MB card on sale for about $65 at the now defunct Circuit City.  I probably still have that too.

Modern Digital Cameras

Fast Forward a couple of years and I’ve got an itch for a new camera again; maybe two. I won’t begin again the age old debate about Canon vs. Nikon.  I had no bias originally, I just tried to do my due diligence and ended up selecting a Nikon D80 with the 18-135mm kit lens along with an SB-600 flash.  Ken Rockwell may have had something to do with my decision.  He has a great site if you are interested in a highly opinionated, yet largely accurate review of Nikon (mostly) and Canon hardware.  As you may know, my D80 is already several models behind the times, but it’s a far cry from my old Toshiba and a lot better, in many ways than the latest model point and shoots.  I’m not going to get into reviewing specific models or comparing brands.   Each brand carries similar levels of cameras.  To keep things simple, I’ll just discuss the Nikons with which I am familiar since they have a broad range of models (Kodak fore example doesn’t have a high end SLR).

Available Camera Types

For the purpose of this discussion, which is regarding non-pro consumer / amateur photographic equipment, there are three types of cameras.

Compact digital cameras, which are typically the size of a deck of cards and quite capable of taking descent still images in good light.  This cateogry  includes cameras like the Coolpix L22 or the higher end S8000.  These cameras have lenses which collapse inside of themselves.

Handheld cameras that are SLR-Like, like the coolpix P90 offer more features, better performance, but with a reasonable price, in a slightly larger package.  These cameras have what appears to be an external lens, which contains better optics than the compact cameras, however the lens is fixed and cannot be replaced.

True SLR cameras like the D90 and D700 offer the most flexibility and power at a range of prices which are a good deal above the previously mentioned compacts and handhelds, but for good reason.  We’ve discussed that electronics get old and obsolete.   The same is true for Digital SLR bodies.  The replaceable lenses, however, if well cared for can last a lifetime.  Nikon has done a great job of ensuring that newer camera bodies are compatible with older lenses.  It is the flexibility of replaceable lenses which, more than any other feature makes the SLR stand out from among the other types of cameras available today.

Hopefully, I’ve provided a brief introduction to the benefits of going digital and an even more brief look into what your options are when selecting a digital camera.  Watch for the next installment, where I’ll go into a good deal more detail on at least one of the above camera types.  If you have any specific questions in the meantime, please feel free to comment on this post and I’ll do my best to answer.  Until next time… Keep pointing, keep shooting.

john