Camera Progression
Published: 2012-01-29 Last edited: 2023-11-07
Recently, a colleague of mine has started to organize a photography course for employees, where the instructor will be a colleague of mine who has actually published books that contains his photographs. I decided to take the course, and found it a good excuse (that, and Christmas,) to get a new camera.
The newest camera is the fourth that I've had, and the second digital one. The first camera was a Kodak pocket Instamatic 500, that was given to me since it was broken. I may actually have been able to take some photographs with it, though I am not one hundred percent sure. I do remember that we had some unused flash-cubes that I used.
The second camera was a Konica POP-EF 88, which was new and working when I got it. It has served me well documenting a lot of holidays and mundane activities. It doesn't have any fancy features, it being a point and shoot.
My first digital camera, the third overall, was a Canon Powershot A400. It's the one I've been using until this January. It is also of the point and shoot variety, but it does have some manual features, like choosing ISO and white balance. I was getting slightly vexed about the things that it couldn't do, though, like setting shutter speed and aperture.
Because of that, when I started looking for a new camera, I was specifically looking for one that had manual (in addition to automatic) controls, could save pictures in RAW format, wasn't too big or expensive and produced pictures with good quality.
After reading reviews online, and looking at online dealers of photography equipment, I chose another Powershot, the Canon Powershot S95. It had all the things I was looking for, and had gotten quite good reviews.
The only negative remarks that I remember are the battery life, which was about 200 pictures, some complaints about the video recording feature, and that it could be difficult to grip it properly.
For me personally, I haven't found the problems listed to be very troublesome. When it comes to battery life, I don't remember ever taking 200 pictures in a row without access to power. If I wanted good video recording, I would have bought a video camera. The last one I have run into a bit, it being smaller than the A400. There is also the motorized flash, which is where I used to have my left index finger. Though I'm getting used to the new size.
It would seem that the newest version of the camera, the Powershot S100 arrived last year, but that one had a pricetag I didn't like yet. Besides, I'm usually on the congealing edge of technology anyway.