Digital camera

[avram]

I took advantage of no-tax-below-Houston day (there should be a third, and last, such day tomorrow, according to the signs I saw) to invest in a low-end digital camera. It’s a Canon PowerShot A10. Only 1.3 megapixels, but it’s got a 3x optical zoom, which suits my purposes. What? Oh, my purposes are to use it to take reference photos. I can store the photos on my hard drive and call ’em up on my monitor when I need them; that’s why 1.3 megapixels is fine. Takes up less space than a physical reference file, and I don’t have to wait for the photos to be developed.

The salesman was a real hard-sellin’ sonovagun. He talked me into getting a 128 megabyte flash card (the 8 meg card that comes with the camera only holds 16 pictures, so this was a worthwhile purchase, and the guy on line next to me assured me that $44 [after a $20 rebate] was a good deal for such a thing) and a battery recharger. I made my save against getting a flash card reader when I learned that I could just pipe the images right into my computer through a USB cable.

Comments

Canon A10

[webbob.livejournal.com]

So far I'm pretty happy with my A10. The "photo stitch" mode and software for making panoramic shots looks pretty nifty, they've always been interesting to me. A good outdoor camera, with equivalent film speed of ANSI/ASA 100.

If you're going to spend a lot of time hoofing around with it, an external battery pack might be almost as good an investment as a bag to hold lots of loose batteries. Seriously, if you find yourself editing the contents of your flash card or composing shots with the LCD, you will go through a lot of batteries.

CompactFlash prices

[webbob.livejournal.com]

dealmac.com lists some Lexar (http://dealmac.com/artclick.html?39865,58114) 128 MB CF cards for the same price you paid (once shipping's included) as the lowest they'd seen in mail order.

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

I'm wandering around with about 256M in flash cards and 3 sets of rechargeable batteries on a regular basis. This is enough for a couple hours of serious photography. I have exhausted each in my normal course of use, though, and (once I'm employed again) will probably buy both more storage and more batteries. And a bigger camera bag.

The USB flash card reader is worthwhile in my experience. Get a cheap noname unit; this isn't something where one brand has any advantages over another. I've got a Hagiwara from Cambridge Photo; it's adequate and MUCH better than the cable that came with the camera.