Canon EOS 1000D + EF-S Digital Camera
August 29, 2008
Canon EOS 1000D Digital SLR Camera is one of the smallest as well as lightest EOS Digital model that have hit the digital SLR market of the UK. This model weighs just 450 grams and to add to it, the built is quiet ergonomic as well. Further, this camera is effectively protected by Canons unique dust prevention system known as EOS integrated system for cleaning. If you look forward to ponder over the quick starting up times as well as the accuracy in colour realisation exhibited by this digital camera, you could just end up with its exceptional DIGIC III processor that are generally used in advanced EOS models. This processor of Canon has the ability to lower the power consumption of a digital camera as well.
This digital camera is effectively qualified by a 10megapixel sensor of the CMOS type. The size of this optical sensor is 14.8 x 22.2 mm. This part of the camera is promptly complimented by a remarkable image stabiliser. The lens of this device explains a focal length of 1.6 x with EF lens. An autofocus system of up to 7 AF points stands tall in this sector followed by a number of AF modes. The shutter of this model is very much a focal plane shutter that is electronically controlled, yielding speed ranging from 30 to 1/4000 sec. Bulb mode is also facilitated here. A number of shooting modes like portrait, landscape, close-up, etc combine with a handful of effects like monochrome or sepia to enhance the picture editting capabilities of this model.
Canon EOS 1000D Black Digital SLR Camera features a remarkable eye-level SLR viewfinder with fixed pentamirror in addition to its 2.5” diagonal sized TFT furnished by 230,000 pixels approximately. In the absence of any considerable internal memory, this camera holds the expansion slot for SD as well as SDHC memory cards. This digital SLR further features a pop up flash of convenience that offers auto, fill-in, rear curtain sync, red-eye reduction and off modes in its turn. A AF illuminator also shows its presence here.
Other Significant Aspects of this Camera
Aperture priority, Shutter Priority and Manual Exposure Setting
Colour Video Support
Hot Shoe Flash Terminal
ISO 100, ISO 200, ISO 400, ISO 800, ISO 1600 and ISO auto
RAW, JPEG and JPEG + RAW still image formats
Automatic, Presets and Custom modes of White Balance
Canon LP-E5 Battery
Dimensions: 6.2 x 9.8 x 12.6 cm
Calling Your Shots at Night
August 27, 2008
You might have come across myriad photographs of the past, which defined night characters and those daytime photographs that came shrouded by a nocturnal impression. For a commoner, these specimen may not amount to anything worth pondering, but if you belong to that rare class of connoisseurs, you would not waste much time to identify them as the specimen of the much regarded night-photography. This practice can be dated back to some of the earliest celebrities of the sector. You simply got to praise them for their splendid efforts even with a crowd of odds around such as larger camera size, sluggish film speed or the huge wet plates in use in those days. In spite of all these technical limitations that prevailed then, these geniuses came up with blinders more often than not. Even today, with all the technical upper-hands shrouding the scene, almost every photographer who has seriously taken this art, should have tried a night shot at sometime or other, while a limited number of photographers have looked like devoted their skills exclusively to the enigma of night photography.
Some All Time Greats
If you dig deeper, you will certainly come to find that the early 1900s can be regarded as the golden age of night photography. This was the era when titans of this sphere like Brassai, Genthe, Stieglitz and Steichen, ruled the sector with their classic nocturnals. 1920s and 30s saw a good number of photographers aligning with the Surrealist Movement started working at night and what more, even a good number of their day photographs as well, bore nocturnal touch. One of those stalwarts was an Englishman called Bill Brandt, who too like the others loved the darkness of night more than anything else. He strived to reveal war-time as well as post-war industrial England. Then, if you have come across a famous (or notorious) photograph that depicted the burning of Hitler’s house, you obviously have savoured the artistry of a woman photographer known to the world as Lee Miller, who specialised in conceiving night images of the second world war. You should also be pondering over the legendry “Moonrise over Hernandez” realised by the great Ansel Adams that was explained with the sense of mystery brought about by a cryptic combination of a darkened sky, moonlight and above all the blanket of dusk.
Challenging
Photography at night hours, more often than not, proves to be challenging for even a consummate professional. At times even shooting with a digital SLR would tend to emulate the process with a film camera. The long waits for results that follow the setting of long exposures that ranges from 3 to 5 minutes, the high margin of error and the fast changing natural ambience calls for the precision-sense in you. That says, you should be precisely knowing the culmination of that reading with which, you intend to shoot and should always be capable to explain why not, with another combination. Moreover, holding the camera for long periods due to some long shutter speeds that hover around anything between 10 to 30 seconds is quite demanding as you can imagine. This is even more deteriorated with the hassle of blurring at the instance of the minutest camera shake.
Packing for an Event
To optimise your night photography results, apart from your medium format or 35mm camera with the options of manual controls and time setting (bulb), you would find these thing handy;
A notepad and writing devices for noting down exposure variations
A good tripod
Any Digital Timer
Any sort of small flashlight
Extra Batteries for the Camera
Locking Cable Release
Lens tissue to clean the lens in foggy conditions
A plastic bag to cover the ccamera in foggy conditions
Exploit the circumstances to the maximum
We earlier discussed the hassles of longer shutter speed or bulb shooting along with the inconvenience of holding the camera for longer periods due to the same reasons. The ideal solution here, is the engagement of a sturdy tripod, with which, you can set long exposures for your digital camera. You are at peace of mind too with no worries, such as camera shakes irking you. Implimenting an external shutter release device, can virtually eradicate the hazard of camera shakes, though, this can be effectuated only if your camera supports this device. We are obviously talking about the spoilsport called blurring. However, you cannot take blurring as undesired at every instance of photography, certainly not, if you are a thorough professional. For you know that at times blurring can be harnessed to merge harmoniously with creativity. For example, those blurrs resulted from speeding cars at night time on a motorway, which can be optimised if the motorway is next to a lit cityscape or skyscraper. Another fine tip here, is all about increasing the ISO speed of your digital camera, for higher the ISO speed, better the tolerance of quicker exposures. This is increasingly significant while shooting in the absence of a tripod. More precisely, you might find it extremely demanding to maintain your digital camera still for 1/15 th of a second or perhaps longer in order to keep blurring at bay by obtaining the ideal light for that scene. Here, a higher ISO setting would definitely relieve you by making the camera tolerate a 1/30 th of a second exposure or quicker. However, you must also be familiar to the fact that an increased ISO setting is always accompanied by an increased amount of noise.
When?
Even though a genuine night-photograph refers to something conceived an hour or so after sunset, the best advice for you would be to seek your target at or shortly after dusk. This is for, the ovverall light amounts to an explicit balance of natural as well as artificial light at this point of time, while the mood obviously refers to night. This can be significant if you look to nighttime cityscape photography. At dusk, the sky though appears dark would felicitate some amount of sunlight enter your camera. This makes it easy for you to capture handheld photographs with lesser fear of camera shake hazards. As the old proverb goes, ‘All good things have to end’, the dusk is also short lived, at least for a day. Considering this fact, you can locate you shooting sites beforehand. Checking in the weather websites for the sunset time would also do you a world of good.
Pentax K200D Digital Camera
August 27, 2008
Pentax K200D Portable Digital Camera is entry level camera studded with a 10megapixel sensor. This camera also holds significance as the fourth model of the Pentax company’s K series. Pentax held a peculiar operating mode of launching a pair of models synchronisedly, one among which being bettered by image stabilisation while the other not being so. Here, it seems they have dropped that idea.
The sensor of this compact digital camera is of the CCD type that touts of an effective strength of 10.2megapixels. The built-in image stabilisation feature in this digital camera adds sheen to the detailing capabilities of it by anulling picture blurrs due to camera shake. A vertical focal plane shutter with speeds ranging from 30 to 1/4000 seconds adorns qualifies this camera’s remarkable lens. ISO ranges here, refers to ISO 100 to ISO 1600 and set of five scene modes along with auto, Sv and PASM explain the exposure modes. An automatic white balance feature, smartly followed by a manual mode and nine preset modes takes care of the colour enhancement segment of this digital camera. The metering system in this device refers to evaluative, spot and centre weighted metering apart from the prominent TTL metering of 16-segments.
This digital camera is blessed with a penta-mirror viewfinder that is fixed as well as moulded. Though, the predominant device here is obviously an LCD display of 2.7 diagonal inches that comes embedded in the rear part of this digital camera. This LCD display is adorned by 230,000 pixels. A built-in flash with a synch speed of 1/180 seconds does the perfect illumination job for this device.
Pentax K200D Black Digital Camera offer the shooter, autofocus as well as manual focus options that makes it an ideal choice for aspiring shutterbugs. It further allows memory slots for SD and SDHC cards. The connectivity of this device refers to Hi-speed USB 2.0 and it is powered by a set of four AA cells. Other significant aspects of this digital camera are listed below.
- 630 grams of weight
- 11 AF Points
- DNG, PEF and JPEG File formats
- Dust Reduction
- DOF Preview
- Pentax KAF2 Lens Mount
Samsung S750 Digital Camera
August 25, 2008
Samsung S750 Compact Digital Camera comes with a unique ASR technology that prevents the deterioration of image vividness as well as colour detail that is common with flash photography. This technology enhances photography in low light conditions by actively barring the ill effects of camera shake. Apart from this feature, this digital camera comes with a remarkable 7.2megapixel CCD that explicates poster sized photo printing with precision. This model, apart from being a high-resolution model, also presents a number of striking features that supports its resolution aspect to the hilt.
This digital camera provides a 35 mm zoom lens of 3 x optical zoom. The focus ranges given here are 31.5” to infinity at widescreen and 15.75” to 31.5” at telescopic mode. A macro focus ranging from 1.97” to infinity at widescreen and 15.75” to infinity also is a smart provision here. A 5x digital zoom too appears in the features list of this camera.
Exposure control in this camera refers to a remarkable aperture range, shutter speed of 1 – 1/1500 sec, multiple white balance modes and ISO speeds ranging from ISO 80 to ISO 400. A built-in flash feature of this camera excels in providing the required light for optimal image realisation. It provides a number functions like auto, fill-in, slow synch, off and red eye reduction mode.
This digital camera comes with an LCD panel of 2.5” in size and 230,000 pixels in resolution. This display of the camera is increasingly significant in the absence of a viewfinder. Further, the display of this model aptly fits the video playback allowed here apart from recording.
Samsung S750 Portable Digital Camera supports a galaxy of memory devices like MMC, SDcard and SDHC cards apart from sporting a built-in memory of 16MB. The compression types used here are JPEG, DPOF 1.1, DCF and EXIF 2.2.
Other Significant Features
AA batteries x 2
USB 2.0 and Video Out interfaces
Self Timer
Integrated Microphone
Weight: 140 g
Nikon Coolpix S550 Digital Camera
August 23, 2008
It is something strange that a camera of the size of Nikon Coolpix S550 Compact Digital Camera accommodates a sensor of 10.0MP resolution. However, this digital camera has strived hard to keep its high-resolution aspect well backed up by a 5 x optical zoom as well as a 4 x digital zoom. The optical sensor of this model is of the CCD type and measures up to 1/ 2.3” in size. This model’s zoom lens comes with a focal length of 6.3 mm to 31.5 mm, supports automatic focus adjustment and motorised drive enabled zoom adjustment. Further, this lens facilitates a mini focus range of 35 cm and a macro range of 10 cm from the camera.
The LCD colour display of this camera is of the TFT active matrix and comes built-in the device. Such a display, to a great extent, annuls the absence of a smart viewfinder. It is really effective when video mode is turned on with its 230, 000 pixels resolution. The screen of this camera further allows digital image rotation, detection of camera orientation, cropping of image and autofocus functioning with face priority. This camera also accommodates an integrated memory of 50MB.
The light sensitivity of this device refers to ISO 100 to ISO 800 apart from an ISO auto. It is a relief that this camera comes with automatic as well as programmable exposure modes. White balancing aspect of this camera excels with automatic and presets modes. Presets here include cloudy, flash, daylight, incandescent and fluorescent. A galaxy of shooting programmes ranging from landscape and close up modes to sun set and smile shutter modes adorns this camera. The special effects offered by this model are black & white, sepia, cool, portrait and vivid. Finally, a continuous shooting mode with a speed of a frame per second is an ingredient of this digital camera as well.
Nikon Coolpix S550 Silver Digital Camera comes with a built-in flash with red eye reduction mode and extra features like AF illuminator, fill in mode, slow synchro, flash off mode and auto mode. Additionally, a self-timer with 10 to 2 sec delay time, audio recording and USB 2.0 compatibility stands tall among the other features.
