If I had a photograph of you...

[vin_petrol]

The second item of tech I wanted to buy to "enhance my life" was a very small digital camera. Yesterday I bought one.

I've already got one camera, but it's large and unwieldy and not something I would take out with me. In many ways, this parallels my experiences with traditional photography years ago. I had a lovely Minolta SLR which took fantastic pictures, but was utterly unsuitable for drunken nights out. Eventually I dropped enough hints and someone bought me a little "point and shoot" camera for christmas. This went out with me a fair bit and captured some events from the late 80s and early 90s.

I'm now conscious that (in my opinion) I don't have enough pictures from that era of my life. I want to be sure that in 10 years time I can look back on the naughties and think I have plenty of pictures. So, something small (and to an extent) slightly rubbish was required. No clever knobs or buttons: point and shoot. I also decided that thinness was important. It was likely to sit in the back pocket of my jeans. I only really needed 1-2 Megapixel - these pictures are clearly destined for the web, not physical prints. There's a camera in my phone, which it's been fun to use, but it is *extremely* crap, at just 640x480 (that's 0.3 Megapixel), and it lacks a flash too.

There was an excellent Casio that caught my eye: The Exilim card range seemed to fit the bill. Plus, I've long had a love affair with the 'quality' of the Casio brand :-)

On Saturday PCWorld did a little digital photography magazine which I got a copy of with my Guardian. As there was a party at miss_dark's that night I knew this was a chance to take some pics. So I drove over there on Saturday afternoon to buy one. They didn't have any Casios available, but there was an equally nice (and cheaper) little Agfa camera available: the Agfa Easy Pix SP2. At only 80 quid it seemed reasonable, so I bought it. Agfa don't seem to have a web page with it on I can point you at for more info. Odd...

So what's it like? Well, put it this way, you can tell it's only an £80 camera! At miss_dark's party I got to compare results with lots of other larger, more expensive cameras. I'm kinda glad to see it's not as good as more expensive cameras: at least you know you're getting what you pay for. Still, it fulfilled my requirements so no problems there. I think the most problematic issue was lack of any exposure control on the flash - it's a one power device, so it relies on the operator getting a good handle on distance and exposure. Still, at least with a digital camera you can quickly see the results and react to them!

Reviewing the pictures today, and thinking about things, I think that the Megapixels are kinda immaterial. Any pictures I take will end up being resized to fit into a web browser window at 1024x768, and will also be JPEG'ed. What I *really* need is something with more clever automatic modes to just take pictures no matter the situation. Ah well, you live and learn.

However, it does completely fulfil all the criteria I wanted in a camera. Fortunately, with digital photography you have a bit more leeway in the crapness of pictures you can take, as you can do a lot with them in image editing applications.

I've got to think about exactly how I'm going to prepare any pictures I take. The whole thumbnail/full size image seems to work. Maybe one of those fotopic accounts might work out. All being well I'm seeing wendles at lunchtime, and this is something she's done a lot of, so I shall ask her about it.

If someone says "don't take my picture" I won't bother - to be honest there are plenty of people around who don't mind their picture being taken. It also seems to be the case now, that at the social events I generally attend, a digital camera being flashed around means expecting to see a link to the pictures on LJ a few days later. I shall attempt to continue that, but (like many people) this probably depends on how busy I am with other stuff. Also, if I ever stick a picture of you online you particulary object to then let me know and I'll remove it. However, if you do something particularly 'newsworthy' that rule will not apply.

I've quickly prepared one picture I took, of a cat whose name I can remember: Curlston. I shall get the other pics online fairly soon.

Comments

[miss-dark.livejournal.com]

It is!! It's Curlston! *beam*

...particularly 'newsworthy'

*gulp* gosh does that mean we can't get away with anything anymore? *grin*

..and thank you so much for coming to my party it was lovely to see you and Trash *beam*

[vin_petrol]

*gulp* gosh does that mean we can't get away with anything anymore? *grin*

Well, if a UFO lands behind you I'll sell that picture to the world's media, even if you go "I don't like the look of my chin in that picture"! :-)

[miss-dark.livejournal.com]

oh dear ..and i would say that aswell!! *grin*

[miss-dark.livejournal.com]

oh dear i didn't seem to end my italics in the right place in that last comment *oops*

[adamw]

(Shall I see if I can close this italic tag? ;->)

Interestingly enough, I have pretty much found the same with my new camera.

I got a Canon Powershot A80 last week (a 4 Megapixel Camera), and have generally used nothing more than the 1 Megapixel setting so far - mainly for the reasons that you state. The other settings it has will no doubt become more useful as I learn how to use them!

Fotopic is very good and easy to use, however my confidence in it has been dented by a database crash that lost me a large number of photos the other week - and took me 2 days to upload again! (And I know a number of other people that have been frustrated by the same issue)

If you have your own webspace, I would recommend putting everything on there instead - I am preparing to move all of my photos onto mine using a php-based database called Coppermine, which even with my limited coding skills looks reasonably easy to try...

[echo-echo.livejournal.com]

Fotopic automatically resizes your pics so the only problem is really with the amount of disk space fotopic give you, which is rather generous. The higher megapixels are really only useful if you want to print them off.

[blue-jez.livejournal.com]

Higher resolution is useful for post-processing and cropping.

Should you want prints of any of them, fotoserve.com have given me excellent results.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

I've had three years' excellent use out of a Casio QV2800-UX. Cracking zoom lens on it, and within the limitations of a 2Mpixel camera (A4 prints are inevitably a bit grainy) it does a fine job.

I'm looking at either the Panasonic Lumix FZ10B, the Olympus C770UZ, the Minolta A1 or the Nikon 5700 as a replacement...

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

For superb prints, I strongly recommend Transpacolor.