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Posts Tagged ‘camera’

So the inevitable happened…I finally succumbed and bought a compact camera. Now I dislike compacts with a passion, they’re small, not ergonomic, have a very plastic feel to them even though some are made of metal, produce noisy images, don’t have much in the way of manual settings unless you get a Canon G series, and so on…
However, due to breaking my right wrist (i’m right-handed) i couldn’t lug the 50D around so i needed something smaller as a dump-in-my-jacket-pocket, take everywhere camera, and I needed it to shoot somewhat decent 720p video. In comes the Ixus 130. Knowing I wasn’t gonna demand much from it, I went for the 130 instead of the 210 touchscreen model, and I fell in love, so much so i’m thinking of ways to get my Macbook anodized in orange…

It’s got a decent build, most Ixuses do, looks amazing, especially in orange, is pretty much the size of a credit card and only slightly thicker than an iPhone, so it’s great to just have on you. The image and video quality is comparable to other cameras at the same price point. For someone who dislikes using the auto mode on anything, this little camera’s auto mode is actually impressively smart, not resorting to flash every time there’s a little less light than it would like to have.

And now for the drawbacks….it’s small and sleek, which is great if you’re just admiring it while it sits on a shelf, the surface isn’t too grip friendly and the buttons are small for my fat fingers, especially the D-pad. From what i’ve seen so far, it’s noisy above ISO 200. I do’t really know if that’s normal for a pocket camera, since so far i’ve tried avoiding them like the plague, but crank the 50D to ISO 1600 and it’ll almost beat ISO 200 on the Ixus 130. The exclusion of optical zoom in the video mode is an annoyance but I guess that at this price point Canon had to leave something out. In other words I’m eagerly waiting for CHDK to start supporting the Ixus 130.

Sample images:

Sample 720p videos:

I’m a fan and avid follower of the This Week in Photography podcast. It’s a great resource for everyone interested in photograpy regardless of their level of skill but a part of a discussion they had during an interview struck me as odd. They talked about the positive change in the way camera manufacturers think and referred to things like the creative auto mode on Canon cameras.

For those of you who’re not familiar with this, it’s a mode that shows sliders on the lcd  so you can intuitively chose between say a blurrier or a sharper background. My understanding is that this is done to assist beginners, make them previsualise the effect they’re creating before they press the shutter while not showing actual shutter speed and aperture values. By removing number values a photographer is meant to focus more closely on the picture they’re making. This is basically meant to remove the thinking about settings factor out of photography.
Is this really a positive change from the photographer’s point of view? Getting to know your gear is the first thing you should do when you unbox it. Knowing where buttons are on a camera and being able to have one finger on the shutter and one eye looking through the viewfinder and still find buttons and change settings. In other words very few dslr users actually look at the rear-facing lcd to adjust settings. Most people i know use the top lcd and the viewfinder so placing crucual controls on the rear lcd is a bad idea from a usability perspective. Another point is that you stop thinking about little but important details such as where the sweetspot for the particular lens you’re using is or the position of the sharp portion of your image. This makes a difference between a good but not tack sharp shot and a great shot.

From a conservative point of view it’s just plain wrong. Moving from looking through the viewfinder and being able to do mental arithmetic to calculate iso, shutter speed and aperture to using sliders that make the background more or less blurry is a large paradigm shift. Granted that our digital tools allow us the luxury of not needing mental arithmetic, but that’s as far as i’m willing to go. I’m in no way conservative when it comes to technology, i love my gadgets and for the most part i’m an early adopter of new gadgets and firmwares. But photography is runs way deeper than what new firmware your camera’s using or what new functions it has. It’s an art. People were getting amazing shots with pinhole cameras made out of cardboard boxes decades ago. Now more and more people are relying on technology to take the a great image for them instead of thinking it through and really focusing on what they can do to make the image better.

Then again i’ve not seen the CA mode on Canon’s higher end cameras, only on the xxxD and the xxD series. These are cameras that either beginners or advanced amateurs buy and as such, they  need to appeal to their target audience. Features like the CA mode might be of some use for this target audience, but i’ll still argue that dumbing down the use of a camera is not going to help these people become the photographers they could be in the future. A basic, dumbed down feature set should be reserved for lower end compact cameras.

That’s about the end of my rant, comments and hate mail are welcome…