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| Digital Camera: Canon A10 - Porcupine (14/04/2002 9:24:35 AM) |
Looking at replacing my standard 35mm film camera with a digital camera. Went through the whole process of tracking down what I wanted and came up with my ideal camera: Canon A10.
I like photography. I take a lot of photographs. In the past couple years I've had a Canon Epoca, an Olympus IS100 and an Olympus IS300. I've taken a crate full of photographs. The photos I took on my trip to Europe came to over $400 on film and development. And that was after shopping around for the best price, which was $150 less than what some developers wanted. I then sort the photos, store them in a special flip book that I like, and stash the negatives aside for storage in special acid free neg holders. Then a bunch of my relatives want some of the images so I have to get duplicates for the locals and scan and email others for distant (geographically speaking) relatives.
Now, I'm not a person with too much spare time on his hands. I have EverQuest to play, ASP code to write, stars to gaze at, birds to watch, essays to write, etc. It took me months to do all the photo stuff.
So, digital photography looked better 'n better. I could have the images and burn them to CD. Throw the CD to anyone who wanted stuff, or just email the things. NO developments costs. Very fast turn around from click to viewing the image. No scanning. But I don't have prints. Thinking about this carefully I realised I didn't give a damn. I much preferred the ability to carry my pics around with me on one CD (a third full so far) than the crate of photo albums I have.
I had to decide what did I want in a digital camera spec wise? Clean clear images, a reasonable zoom, a nice wide angle, use flash memory card (coz my Psion does), good battery life.
Then it came to how many pixels. I initially wanted as many as I could get. 3Megapixels looked like the go. But I realised that if I didn't want to print the things, then all I needed was a screen full. So 2Megapixels, er no, 1.2Megapixels would be fine. Hmmm. It also meant that the images would take less space on my disks, and I could fit more of them on the camera before having to dump them to PC.
Now the memory in the camera is a big issue with me. I wanted to be able to take this camera away where I could photograph for a month without needing access to a PC. After looking about a bit I noticed the Flash RAM went up to 512Meg! Probably a bit too much, heh, so I opted for 256Meg, which I estimated would be around 500 images depending on compression ~ turns out to be around 700 on normal and probably about 1400 on high compression. Should be more than enough for my trips away. If I spent any more than one month away then I would probably get withdrawls from lack of computer.
Did a web search for "digital camera comparison" and got a horde of pages, some really good. Then its just a matter of reading. After narrowing down my specs, I had a list of about four cameras around the same price. The real kicker tho was user reviews. On the other cameras, people had positive and negative things to say, but were generally pleased. Good. Means you couldn't go too far wrong whatever you really wanted. But the comments I read about the canon regularly involved people wanting to make love to the device. The Canon A10 was the most expensive of the lot, but I was sold. Just a matter of tracking down a seller.
There are a large number of overseas places, particularly in the USA where I could have purchased this camera at a much better rate. But I'm always troubled with delicate optics being transported to Australia, what customs might do and international waranty issues. So I pay more for the locally sold product. Sometimes a lot more, as the USA seems to have some awesome bargains from certain stores. In Brisbane, Sunlit computers sell the Canon A10 for the best price, but never seem to have stock. Photocontinental are just a great all round store for cameras, but are more expensive - but not that much more. And they had stock. Done!
Purchased the camera, then some flash ram from the great people at the disc shop.
Then I went nuts! Photographed all sorts of stuff. This camera has opened up a whole new level of photography for me. I now experiment on things that I would never have done with film. Freedom! And the quality is just excellent. At work we have two digital still cameras, an Agfa and an Olympus. Both are reasonable machines, but really suck batteries. The canon is extraordinarily frugal. I managed to get 160 images on normal alkaline batteries before I swapped over to NiMH AAs.
So my tip is to buy the best digital camera for your needs. If you like photography then digital photography is for you! It will save you heaps! |
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| I've heard tell it ain't as good as the A20...
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