Memes + more London picspam

[kribu]

Still not feeling too great, but nothing like yesterday - nose still blocked (and sore from yesterday, although I put plenty of cream on it last night - which burned like hell, but was worth it) and throat could be a bit less sore, but in general, I'm hopeful it'll have passed by tomorrow.


76 words

Not that bad really - not massively good either, but I still do most of my typing in Estonian and my brain always needs a bit more time to re-orient itself with English.

ETA: Yes, I know it said 68 before, but I took it again. Practice helps!


Snagged from dickgloucester.

Your Pirate Name Is...

Lord Master of Horror

What's Your Pirate Name?

Seems about right. *nods approvingly*

Also got a few more random London pics uploaded, so here they are.

Click for a bigger picture.



A bit of ceiling in the British Museum.



A squirrel somewhere close to the British Museum. (Damn those things are fast. It was practically impossible to get a good shot as they just wouldn't stay still!)



The Gherkin.



Security barrier (er, somewhere by the Houses of Parliament I think?) in the rain.



Big Ben.



Random street crossing.



No idea what this is. A building in the City, anyway.



London Bridge.


I've actually managed to make a tiny start in catching up with all the reading... although I've only managed to read a few of the shorter exchange fics so far. Should get myself some tea and get on with it.

Comments

[kribu.livejournal.com]

The best all-in-one solution would be something like what I had in London - an entry level DSLR (I strongly recommend Pentax K100D ;-)) with the Pentax/Tamron 18-250mm lens. Or the Sigma 17-70mm lens, which doesn't give you as much reach but is a very nice general purpose lens.

No lens change needed. :-D

Which is something purists wouldn't say, as the image quality of such a zoom lens means that certain compromises have been made, but it'll beat a superzoom camera by a huge margin in anything but absolutely ideal light conditions. And you can easily use it on auto (or P mode where you can still change some things but which is essentially auto) - 99% of the time there wouldn't be any need to change any settings really.

Of course, this combination weighs a bit over 1 kg and doesn't come too cheap (the bodies of entry level DSLRs are not expensive compared to better compacts, but e.g. the Pentax/Tamron 18-250mm lens is likely going to be around 500 euros). On the other hand, you get much better image quality (especially in less than ideal light) and better dynamic range.

For anything smaller, my top suggestion is the Fuji F31 (er, yes, I am recommending the cameras I have myself ;-) with the good reason that I did think it through when I got mine), which may not be available any more; if not that, then either the F20, F40 or F50 (the latter two are newer and more readily available but not quite as good any more).

For medium-size with a bit more reach, and still decent... I'd probably go for the Canon G9 for the luxury option or the Canon A650 IS, which should be priced more reasonably (they have the same sensor and same lens though). Neither is really what I'd want at this stage, but if I didn't have a huge pool of cameras at home already, then the 6x zoom and decent optics+sensor would be a good combination.

One thing most compacts have issues with is very slow shot-to-shot performance with flash. The two aforementioned Canons should be relatively decent. The Fuji F31 has a terrific battery and is much better (not that flash is usually needed at all with it). Any Canon that only uses 2 AA batteries is going to have problems with that, and most other compacts as well.

DPReview.com (http://www.dpreview.com) has excellent reviews, which might well be worth checking out.

I suppose the question is really what your priorities are! Mine are very clearly good low light performance without flash, since - apart from mid-summer - 90% of my photos will be taken in low light (and I don't just mean night). With anything less than DSLR, there will be a loss of image quality (but you would win in convenience and price).

I wouldn't suggest ultra-compacts, especially those with non-extending lenses. They're convenient and handy for snapshots, but they really involve too many compromises for my taste.

[juno-magic.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you so much for your recommendations. That's really very helpful!

I bought my first digital camera early in 2005, and as I didn't know how I'd take to digital picture taking, I didn't spend a lot of money.

By now I'm doing a LOT of macro shots ... flowers, food, also close-ups for digital design, like still life pictures of books. And I -would- like to be able to take pictures of stuff that's not a mere four metres away from me. Currently my stomach ties into angry knots when I just glance at shots of stuff that are a little farther away. *sigh*

As for light - *generally* I seem to end up in surroundings with rather too much light. Except of course when I'm trying to take pictures inside cathedrals. *more sighs*

I'll check everything out you mentioned and then I'll probably bother you with a thousand questions. I'm thinking that I might use a part of the pay for my next translations assignment to get a new camera. *squee*

[kribu.livejournal.com]

With macros, I half think a compact might be the way to go... although if it's close-ups of larger objects (flowers, food, books), then a DSLR would do as well - you can't really do proper macro with a non-dedicated lens with a DSLR, but for such things, the Sigma 17-70mm lens for instance is quite good enough.

Macros really are the one area where compacts excel compared to a DSLR with a general-purpose lens. Although as I said, with bigger objects (as opposed to, say, insects), any decent modern camera should do fine.

Too much light isn't necessarily a good thing either! :-D As it can easily lead to clipped highlights, overblown (white) skies etc. It's really a dynamic range problem and one most cameras can't deal with too well on auto... you might really need to fiddle a bit in such conditions, e.g. use exposure compensation.

In low light the ideal thing would of course be using a tripod. But not that many places (especially museums but also quite a lot of cathedrals, I think) are not going to allow that. Unfortunately using an average compact hand-held in a dimly-lit cathedral or museum is not going to give great results.

I think this picture is what cemented my belief in the Fuji F-series... took it with my F10 in 2005, and I am positive that I could not have taken this picture with any other compact camera around at the time, not at 1/20 seconds at ISO 1600 (meaning, hmm, an 1/2...1/3 s exposure at ISO 200, I think, which is about the best other compacts could do at a time without a big loss in quality):

(http://pics.livejournal.com/kribu/pic/0001qp4h/g13)

Yes, the darker areas are noisy when looked at full size, but this is a straight out of the camera pic, with zero processing of any kind... a DSLR would be better of course, but still.