I played with a Panasonic/Lumix digital camera yesterday. Owner said it costs NT$18,000. Man, is it ever sexy! Has a Leica lens, manual or autofocus, built-in flash + hotshoe, takes great pics, seems pretty idiot-proof. Not very compact – a little smaller, but much lighter, than your standard film SLR. I’m seriously thinking about getting one, so I need some of you savvy folks to tell me why its a waste of money and why I should avoid it like the plague.
Thanks!
How many megapixels? Does it shoot short movies? Compact is better for digital as you can keep it with you all the time. Look at the current Canon lineup, like the s400.
The compacts are fine if you want to have a camera in your pocket for all occasions, and mine takes great pics. But something a bit bigger, with a manual focus, might allow you to control what’s going on a bit better and take more than holiday snaps. Plus, how ya goin’ to lure nubile young ladies home for a photo shoot if you don’t look like a real photographer?
My li’l Sony has one annoying trait: You set up the shot, and let it do all the thinking it should need to by pressing the button halfway. It gets all focused up, decides whether it needs flash or not, etc., and you stand there waiting for the eagle to spread its wings or whatever. And when you finally press the button there’s an infuriating additional delay before it takes the actual pic.
All you get is a photo of an empty road that was vacated by your eagle while your camera was getting its shit together.
Is this just a Sony quirk, or is it common to all digital cameras? I’ll be looking for a new camera in a few months so I’m interested in recommendations too.
Perhaps this will help you resist temptation:
“They’ll Stick With Film, Thank You”
“shutter delay” is more or less common to digital cameras but people often complain about the sony’s in this regard. check out www.pcphotoreview.com
digital is not the same as a regular cam, they each have their strengths and weaknesses. one of the things i like about digital is once you HAVE your shit together you can snap off about 20 shots in a row, at least one is guaranteed to be stunning, delete the rest!
Thanks, people. I think you’re right, Poagao – I should stick with a compact if I go digital. Be a bit pointless getting something as big as the FM. As for pixel number, I’m not sure, but its a LOT, and it has x4 actual zoom, x12 virtual zoom. Still, [quote=“Cranky’s link”]Ms. Finger also relishes the surprise element of seeing pictures taken with a film camera. She has put off developing pictures for the past year and just took in some rolls for processing. “There are lots of moments I don’t readily remember,” she said. “So there are going to be great flashbacks.” [/quote] is a massive plus for me.
I should stick with spending the money on a good zoom, a good wide angle and a massive battery so I can get into the night shooting stuff explained on http://www.lostamerica.com, which has really piqued my interest.
[quote=“daltongang”]“shutter delay” is more or less common to digital cameras …
. one of the things I like about digital is once you HAVE your shit together you can snap off about 20 shots in a row, at least one is guaranteed to be stunning, delete the rest![/quote]
True but if you have a moving target like kids or animals even a half second delay can make things impossible. Check out the new ultra compact Canon powershot SD10 (Ixus i) which has great photo quality, and one of the smallest lag times. dcresource.com/reviews/canon … ndex.shtml
Great for pointing and shooting with good results. No optical zoom but you can use higher resolution to compensate.
“Virtual zoom” or “digital zoom” is not something you want, believe me. Unless you’re a PI maybe. All it does is blow up the picture to make you think you’re zooming in. 4x optical zoom isn’t bad, though. My s300 only has 3x zoom, which isn’t really enough. Then again, when I want to go somewhere expressedly to take pictures, I’ll take my FM2. The Canon is for everyday “oh, that’s cool I think I’ll take a picture” moments.
How much in Taipei and where?
Thx!
I got better photos in Vietnam from my Nikon SLR than from my Fuji digital camera. There just seemed to be more depth from the SLR, and if you bracket your shots, you will get one with pretty-near perfect exposure. The meter on the SLR is better too, and the flash is much kinder.
Depending on what film you put in it, the colours can be much more vivid. Also you have much better control over the depth of field with an SLR, even if it doesn’t have depth of field preview. And can you do a long exposure with that digital ? Of course you know all this, so why don’t you get a digital SLR ? I assume they’re more than NT$18,000 ?
Otherwise, keep your FM for arty shit, and buy a little pocket-sized snapper for birthday parties etc, and a copy of Photoshop.
For me the hardest part of buying a camera was deciding EXACTLY what I wanted the camera for and how I was going to be using it. Did I just need a point and shoot? Did it matter if I couldn’t put it in my pocket comfortably? Did I want to be able to change lenses, and so on.
I came to the conclusion I needed two cameras.
One pocket point and shoot for everyday use, like the canon SD10 (ixus i), and one phallus camera for when I want to take more interesting pictures and indulge the National Geographic fantasies (groovy wide angle, jumbo telephoto etc).
Check out the new digital SLR from Canon. The Canon Rebel (EOS300D) is niiiiiice. I am saving up for it ($US 1000). I often drool over it here. http://dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos300d/
absolutely, if you want to get the precise fraction of a second you want, you can’t do it. however you can just sit there like a moron with your finger pressed on the shutter and reel off a bunch of shots of the kids playing while you drink your beer, one is bound to be amazing 
try doing that with film
Actually, with many film SLRs, you can. It’s called Continuous Advance or something like that. I have it on my Minolta.
I have had great success with my old Canon s100 and would certainly recommend either the S400 or the sd100 heartily. The are truly well designed I think. Very solid feel to them. And my s100 has been great for the kind of photos you would take with a compact camera.
I had given a lot of thought to buying the digital rebel or sony’s high end offering but at that price I think I’ll stick with my film base slr and have the prints digitised.
I finally got my Digital Rebel two days before Christmas . . . after having ordered it a good month and half ago . . . actually, two weeks ago the Canon folks told our shop it might be as long as a month before they got new supplies in . . . I was not a happy camper . . . this puppy was not supposed to be a Christmas present . . . but it is a wonderful one nonetheless. It is very powerful with some great image-taking tools . . . albeit, I pretty much use it in manual mode so I can use the Loreo 3D-Lens-in-a-Cap loreo.com as part of my desire for a digital SLR was to make my 3D photography more convenient.
When I’m not using the 3D attachment, the Canon digital rebel lens that comes with the kit (get the whole kit) is great.
Of course, while it’s small for a SLR, it’s huge for a digital . . . it doesn’t fit easily into a pocket but it’s exactly what I’ve been waiting for for ages.
Does anyone else here have a digital SLR camera? What was the move to digital like? I’ve been taking lots of pictures with my digital point and shoot, but the quality is so-so (I’ve got a Casio Exlim EX-Z4) and I really want to be able to take digital pictures with shallow depth of field and long exposures.
In particular, I was looking at the Canon EOS-300, which would go with the Canon lens and acessories I already have for my film EOS body (which I almost never use now because of the convenience of digital).
One of the problems is that the DRebel seems to be several hundred dollars more expensive here in Taiwan than in the US (one camera store quoted me $38,000NT while online prices seem to be around $US900-1000), even though a lot of photography websites go on about how Canon got the price down by manufacturing it in Taiwan instead of Japan.
Would I be able to find one cheaper in HK? Keep looking around in Taiwan? Hit myself repeatedly and ask why I would spend so much money on a camera?
I was on holiday in Japan when the Kiss Digital first hit the streets (that’s the Japan brand for the 300D or Digital Rebel) and I was frothing. My wife was convinced I must have misread the box as there was no way a digital SLR could be as cheap as what we saw. Eventually did get my 300D here in Taiwan. I love it and the price was well worth it. As you already have lenses, you’ll get even more use out of the sucker. When I ordered mine in Taiwan, it was really hard to find and friends in the US and Hong Kong had trouble sourcing for me so I ended up waiting for the supply difficulties here to get sorted out. You probably won’t have those problems. It really comes down to what you want it for and is the possible savings worth waiting until you go overseas . . . or, risking overseas post.
I used to shoot a lot of film, lots of it, with my vintage Realist (1941 model) but now I shoot pretty much just digital. I can throw stuff on disk and just print what I want or I can throw entire directories of fresh shots online via my fotki galleries (no resizing images needed).
I can’t imagine going back to film. I know there are purists out there who disagree, but then the inevitability of moving to digital for most folks is pretty much written in stone . . . it’s just a matter of when, not whether.
[quote=“kelake”]I have had great success with my old Canon s100 and would certainly recommend either the S400 or the sd100 heartily. The are truly well designed I think. Very solid feel to them. And my s100 has been great for the kind of photos you would take with a compact camera.
I had given a lot of thought to buying the digital rebel or sony’s high end offering but at that price I think I’ll stick with my film base slr and have the prints digitised.[/quote]
How much is a roll of film, and how much to have it developed and printed? Once you realize that you vacation photos would get you 20% of the way to that digicam, you start taking them more seriously.
Digital cameras tend to be more expensive in Taiwan than the US or Japan. No idea why…probably something to do with import taxes.