I am opening up a new discussion. I would like to know what make and model digital camera you own and how much you like it? Also, is there anything that you don’t like about your digital camera? How easy is your camera to use?
My first digital camera was a 2 mega pixel Ricoh ROC 5300. If I remember correctly, I paid about $400 for it. I bought it on QVC or one of the home shopping networks. I owned it for about 7 years, and I always took very good care of it. It was a great camera. The camera was small, easy for me to use, and quality of the photos was excellent. My camera quit on me a little over a year ago. I was heartbroken when my camera stopped working.
I now own a 8 mega pixel Olympus Evolt E-330 digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera. I have 2 lenses for this camera. I have a macro lens and also a portrait lens. I use the portrait lens most of the time. I believe that I spent about $1,400 for the camera, 2 lenses and a 1 gigabyte memory card.
I am very happy with my macro lens.
My portrait lens is OK. The portrait lens that I own isn’t a fast lens, and it is not big and cumbersome which is good. It is the best lens for the price that I wanted to pay for the camera, lens, and memory card. I didn’t want to spend more than $1,500 for everything.
The main thing that I don’t like about this lens is that I don’t have as much control of the depth of field as I would like. The faster the lens the more you can adjust the depth of field for your photos.
Depth of field, for those of you that don’t know what I am talking about, is the area that will be in focus and out of focus for certain lens openings and shutter speeds. Depth of field is also affected by the length of the lens. Depth of field is also controlled by the amount of light that is bouncing around in the camera lens. Basically, the more light that you allow in the camera and the longer the time period that the light comes into the camera when the shutter is open the shallower the depth of field.
Being able to decrease the depth of field allows you to blur the background area of your image by making the depth of field shallower. This places all of the attention on the subject of your photograph. Of course you have to have the right camera equipment in order to do this.
Owning a faster lens would be more expensive and the lens would also be bulkier since the lens would be longer. So that is the trade off.
I don’t really need the shallower depth of field much right now, so I am happy with the lens that I own.
Unlike my first digital camera which only took me about an hour to become familiar with, my Olympus camera was a real big learning experience for me. A DSLR camera is nothing like a single lens reflex (SLR) 35mm film camera. I found that out when I brought the camera home. I had no idea how to use the camera when I took it out of the box. I was completely lost. I spent about 12 hours reading my camera’s owner’s manual and becoming familiar with my new Olympus camera.
Some things that I really like about my Evolt E-330 camera are the large size LCD viewing screen. My Ricoh camera had a tiny LCD viewing screen.
I also like that I can take 3 photos per second with my new camera. My old camera took a long time before I could take another photograph. There was probably about a 3 to 5 second lag time with my old camera before I could take another photo.
I also have great control over the amount of flash output with my Olympus DSLR camera. This is handy as a fill light source to help remove shadows. I don’t remember if I had any control of the flash output with my old camera.
The self-timer on my Olympus camera has 2 time delay settings instead of just one.
Now it is your turn to tell me about your camera. You don’t have to say as much as I did.
Jim Juris
