I’m sure most of you in my legions of adoring fans have noticed the gallery I maintain on this website – just look at the menu to your right if you’re lost. It’s a delightful little romp through my drunken experiences around Hoboken… oh yeah, and some shots of my family. Since I bought my Canon PowerShot A40 last year I’ve taken over 7000 pictures in a quest to document my rather mundane existence. I love this little guy and have recommended it, and its successors, to everybody whose asked me about digital cameras. But as my “abilities” have grown and my inclinations have branched out into more “sophisticated” photography, I have noticed shortcomings that prevent a $300 from being what I want now. I’ll get shots from Tuesday’s OpenMic up soon enough and you can see that the photos, while generally well laid out and planned, do not have proper lighting and look a tad grainy. The Ristra tends to have lowlighting, and Tuesday was really bad which meant I was forced to use the flash all night with a 200 ISO setting. Enter digital SLR.
One of my primary concerns about getting a camera before was size. I didn’t want it to be too bulky as I like carrying it around and “sneaking it into” clubs (I don’t know why I’m using so many quotes right now). Although not as slim as some, the A40 has performed admirably over the past year. But now I’m ready for a “real” camera (there they go again). There are two people here at work (Lisa and Ray) who both have the same film SLR camera and are serious amateur photographers. That’s a category I’d like to put myself in, but I want to be digital as most of what I do is for the web anyway. It’s more than worth it to spend the extra bucks on a digital considering how expensive film developing is anyway. So today I’m flipping through the Computer Shopper Top 100 Products of the Year list (yeah, I can’t believe that mag is still around either) when I see it – Best High-End Consumer Digital Camera – Canon EOS 10D. My god she’s beautiful. 6 megapixels, 100-3200 ISO, accepts regular EOS lenses, auto-exposure bracketing, 3-fps burst mode – I’m drooling. Of course the body itself goes for $1500, so it’s not like I’ll be ordering later today.
At least it’s gotten me into research mode. I’ve even started looking at the new EOS Digital Rebel. With a starter lens it costs about a grand. That might be more in my price range, but then again it lacks certain features (too many auto settings) that might make the extra bucks for the 10D worthwhile. Regardless, I know now that my next camera will set me back a pretty penny because I’m looking to get serious. I have to remember that in this price range I should plan on keeping the camera for years to come – so saving a few hundred might not be advisable in the long run. We’ll see if I stumble across a couple thousand dollars sometime in the next few months. :big grin: