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I purchased my first digital camera in 1993. It was a Nikon Coolpix 2100 with a 2 mega-pixel sensor. For once in my life I exercised caution and chose a fairly inexpensive camera to start with. Some of my friends cautioned me against buying a camera with only 2MP but I have to say that I have been pleased with the quality of the resulting pictures. The pictures in the second gallery were taken with this camera. Despite being happy with the results I soon found the limitations of this kind of camera. It was designed for the point-and-shoot user and is fully automatic. This presents problems for the serious amateur who likes to have full control over the camera settings. It’s true that, by judicious use of the myriad menu options, the user can force the camera to come some way towards the optimum settings for a particular shot - but this is not really satisfactory. On the other hand the camera is small and light and slips easily into a pocket, remember, it’s no use having the finest camera in the world if you don’t have it with you when you need it. This brings us neatly to the central contentious issue with digital cameras, how many pixels is enough? The answer is……..enough to satisfy you! Personally, I think around 2MP with a decent camera is perfectly adequate for the everyday photographer. OK, I know that 5MP is becoming the average but bear in mind that there are some fairly poor lenses out there and more megapixels won’t compensate for poor optics. Since that time I have owned; aPanasonic Lumix DMC-LZ3 5MP with 6X zoom; a Minolta Dimage S414 4MP with 4X zoom and, currently, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS7 10MP with 4X zoom. The first Lumix was an improvement on the Nikon but not entirely satisfactory. The Minolta had a great lens and many desirable features but was very heavy on batteries, twenty or thirty shots and new batteries were needed! Around this time I realized that age had caught up with me. Many of my photographs were blurred and I realized that my hands had become too unsteady for low-light hand-held shots. The answer was the current camera, the first I had owned with image stabilisation. Now I rarely lost a shot to camera shake and this has come in very handy as most of the photographs I take are of my grandson (who won’t stand still for a moment). Some of my (richer) friends have bought professional SLR digital cameras costing a few thousand pounds , either Nikon or Canon. I must admit I rather covet these cameras but I have to be realistic, I don’t have the funds and the type of photography I do now does not require this level of sophistication. This brings me to another facet of digital photography, photoshop! It might only take a minute or so to take a photograph but a further ten minutes work in photoshop can work wonders! In fact using photoshop is an art in itself and well worth the effort. It is simply amazing the number of ways you can transform a photograph. I currently use Adobe CS5 creative suite and have added plug-ins to remove noise, apply filters and mask out unwanted parts of the image. For those with an interest in software I use: Nik Dfine 2.0; Nik Sharpener Pro 3.0 and Vertus Fluid Mask 3. I also use other plug-ins but these are the main three.
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The Konica-Minolta A2. An eight megapixel camera with 7x zoom lens and anti-shake mechanism |
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The digital revolution has revitalised photography. Freedom from the vagaries of processing and the ability to enhance and print your picture on your home computer has brought a new dimension to the hobby. Not everyone agrees but I think that film will die out very soon. |
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The complexity of modern cameras.
A Sony DSC-F828 |
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Nikon Coolpix 2200 |
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