Okay…the camera is dead. Long live the camera. 🙂
We can’t afford $500 for the Lumix–that’s just not going to happen. What we can afford (sort of) is $350 for a Canon PowerShot S2. I’ll lose on “gross mpx” (5.0 versus 8.0) and start time is a second longer than the Lumix (1.3 versus 0.3, because the Canon’s lens does extend), but I’ll gain good movie capabilities because the S2 is a decent still/video “hybrid” with stereo sound, up to 640×480, 30 fps. I don’t do much video, but nice to have so I don’t have to carry two cameras if I want to do both; I can live with the 1 GB movie size max because movies aren’t really my thing, stills are. I gain a super macro mode that will focus to 0″ (yaaayyy–look out, ant eyeballs), and does a good job of it, and I’ll get lots of manual controls. Not manual focus, but according to the reviews, the auto focus is quite good, and even the Kodak’s auto focus usually understood what I wanted unless I was pushing its light limits. I get lots of buttons, too, not a kludgy menu that takes forever and a fucking day to navigate while the dragonfly or deer or whatever gets bored and wanders off. I don’t really care about fewer mpx because I almost never print anything anyway, 5.0 is quite adequate for my needs, and even with an extra second start time, I’m still way ahead of the 3+ seconds it took my old one to start. I wanted a black body, not silver, but I don’t see anything in the S3 that makes it worth an extra hundred bucks, and I’m not going to die because I have another silver camera. I still get the 12x zoom (plus 4x digital, but digital is worthless anyway), and I get a good Canon lens, plus an available adapter and some special lens options. LCD screen also flips and rotates, which is definitely a plus. Chuck in a 1 GB SD card and I’m still coming in well under the price of the Lumix alone, and it’s do-able, which the Lumix is not at this time. It is, though, a fair bit of money, so I’m going to think about it for a while before I actually buy it. I probably will get it, but if something costs over a couple of hundred, it’s worth putting some thought into it before shelling out the bucks. We’ll see, and I am in a much better mood than I was yesterday.
I actually may find a “dead” (non-functional power supply) Kodak like mine on eBay or somewhere, just to see whether the problem is the sensor, and whether I can fix (one of them). I took a quick look yesterday and it looks like a dead one costs around $10. It’d be a fun project, and it’d be nice to know whether I’m right about the bit that died. I kept my old Minolta, meaning to try to find a power supply for it and see whether it could be fixed, but never got around to it. Hm. Anyway, I won’t toss the old Kodak workhorse; it served me long and well. 🙂
Oh, wait–I lied. There is manual focus, but it’s not a ring, it’s a four-way controller. Hm. That should be interesting to learn; sounds like it’ll require a bit of manual dexterity.
July 5th, 2006 at 10:45 am
I’m so sorry about your camera! Compromise sucks sometimes, but I have a earlier version of the Canon Powershot and I’ve been very pleased with it. I mean, it’s totally outdated (2MP!) But the lens is quite good (my SLR has Minolta lenses which I’m not as happy with) and the non-digital zoom is also quite satisfactoy. Another thing I like is the lack of serious noise over large single color shapes and in shadows. Mind, it wouldn’t pass a serious photographer’s specs, but for the 4×6 snapshots I have printed, it looks pretty good.
Here’s some links about how to modify a “disposable” digital camera so that you can reuse it:
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/06/10_digital_camera.html
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/08/hacking_the_cvs.html
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/06/make_audio_show_8.html
And for hacking a disposable video camera:
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/08/how_to_cvs_vide_1.html
and DIY macro photography with a disposable camera.
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/03/diy_macro_photography_with_dis.html
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/03/diy_extension_tube_reverse_mou.html
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/06/how_to_macro_lighting_rig.html
and a super wide angle digital camera:
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/06/11_super_wide_angle_digital_ca.html
July 5th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Well, that ought to keep me amused until I make up my mind. 😆 If I read one more review of the S2, I’ll be able to pull it out of the box and know where everything is right then and there, but it certainly does look like something that’ll work for me. I’m not a professional photographer–not even a particularly talented amateur–and though I’ll admit to some geekiness, I don’t need bleeding edge technology. As long as whatever I get does what I need it to do and does it well, it’s just fine. My first two digitals (Minolta and Kodak) were point and shoot, but it’s frustrating when I KNOW what I want the camera to do, but there’s no way to tell it that. I took some fairly decent shots with a 3.2 mpx point and shoot that had difficulty with low light (and white balance in incandescent light), so with a better camera, I reckon I can only go up. It isn’t all about the hardware, I know that from experience because an acquaintance was in a car accident and (with some of the settlement money) purchased the most expensive Nikon digital that he could get his hands on. Beautiful camera, and back then, 5.0 mpx was about as high as you could go. Know what he did with it? Took shitty snapshots (and let Windows “resize for email”…jeezus). Considering the amount that particular piece of hardware set him back, he should’ve been Ansel fucking Adams, but he wasn’t–may as well have had a one-point-whatever mpx P&S. I may not be a fully fledged geek, but I confess that I’m rather looking forward to seeing what all those cool little buttons do! 😉
Oh, fan…s (heh), does your Canon have that funky four way thingie to manually set the focus? If it does, is it difficult to manoeuvre?
July 5th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
It’s a powershot A-60 and it has manual “modes” where you can manually set the exposure and the aperture but there’s no manual focus except in macro mode (up to 2″, out to about 6″) and that’s so slow that unless you’re photgraphing something dead or inorganic, it’s not going to help much (it’s controlled by two buttons out of a diamond-shaped four-button array on the back of the camera). It does a have a thing where you can set the “focus point” of a photo by holding down the button a little and then moving the camera. Yeah, OK, it’s a crappy little thing. If I were still painting I would have to use the SLR to photograph my work. But the Canon does what I wanted– takes snapshots of things without film so I can print out what I want (or order snaps). I do seem to remember, though, that the manual (long since lost) was written and translated by someone who didn’t speak English. I remember looking in a review to try to understand what one of the little icons meant. Hope that’s gotten better.
July 6th, 2006 at 8:49 am
Oh, I’ll be fine as long as the entire manual isn’t in Japanese; I’ve seen my share of scary Engrish in computer hardware manuals (mostly mobos). 😆
I’m going to call around today or tomorrow and see whether I could get the S2 locally. I’ve (mostly) made up my mind that it’s the one I want, but if I can buy it here for not too much more and support local business, I will. We’ll see.
I understand exactly what you mean about not needing to upgrade your current camera. Some people have to have the latest and greatest, but I think it’s a waste of money to upgrade as long as whatever you have meets your needs. Besides, if you don’t use it very often, by the time you get even $100 of use out of it, it’s obsolete anyway, and it’s time to hop back on the upgrade treadmill. If I didn’t need (okay, want) more manual control, and (obviously) if it hadn’t died, I’d probably have just kept the Kodak. I certainly would’ve kept it until Christmas, then perhaps got last year’s Lumix. I almost never buy the latest and greatest; if there’s a flaw in the design, I want other people to be the ones to find that out, and I don’t like paying for the marketing hype of “new, new, NEW!” If it’s computer-related and you wait anything near a year, the price will drop significantly, and you pay something closer to a reasonable price. When I bought my Kodak camera, it cost over $350. Three years later, less than $100 for one NIB. The original list price of the S2 is $499, and it was released in (I think) early 2005. Now, it’s $350, and worth that. I couldn’t see myself paying $500 for it, though; if I’m shelling out half a grand, it had better say “Nikon” and it’d better be damned good. 😆
July 6th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
To be clear, though, if I were unspeakably rich (well into the fuck you money range, as neal Stephenson would say) I would be *such* an early adopter. Well, OK, maybe a wait-six-months-and-then-buy-it adopter (I probably will never be able to excise my father’s frugality from my brain. I could try real hard, though. Practice.). As it is, probably not this lifetime. I’m reduced to fondling gadgets when the store clerks aren’t looking and reading product reviews at 3:00am. [sigh]
July 7th, 2006 at 7:40 am
Oh, if I was using $100 bills for arse-wipe, I’d be so bleeding edge that I’d probably buy the damned prototypes! 😆 I’m not, so I have to be a bit more prudent. Not enough to make Dad proud (he’d probably cry if he knew that I consider a digital camera a “necessity”), but enough that I’m not living in a cardboard box on the street, begging for change as I take pictures of passers-by with my $2000 Hasselblad DSLR. I think I’ve changed my mind, though, and will get the S3 IS instead of the S2. I read a few reviews of it yesterday, and although there aren’t that many differences between the S2 and the S3, it is something of an improvement. It’s also got a gunmetal grey body instead of silver, and if I’m going to be looking at this thing on a near-daily basis for the next three years, then it needs to be something I like. I don’t want another silver camera, I do want a dedicated ISO button (I drool over buttons). They’ve reduced the ISO sensitivities a bit so there’s less noise at higher ISO (though the 800 on the S3 is essentially useless unless you clean it up with software and need only a small print), it does have a live histogram (S2 does only in playback, not record), it can do widescreen recording, and of course, it’s 6.0 mpx instead of 5.0. The LCD is 2″ instead of 1.8″, but I hardly think that 0.2″ is going to make that much difference. Other than those few things, the S2 and the S3 are pretty much the same. Same body design, same lenses. That does take the price up another $100, which means the price of the camera is very nearly that of the Lumix, but the Canon uses SD/MMC memory and AA NiMH batteries, both of which I have already because that’s what the Kodak used, so no need to buy any (even though Canon supplies a pathetic 16 MB card and alkaline batteries). The Canon also kicks Panasonic’s (and Sony’s, and Konica Minolta’s, and Fuji’s, and Nikon’s, and Kodak’s) arse in battery life. The Lumix has a LiON battery, so I’d have to buy an extra. LiON batteries are not cheap, and if yours dies out in the middle of nowhere, you can’t just run to a convenience store and get “emergency” replacements. Digital cameras eat alkaline batteries alive, but they’d do if it was that or miss some seriously fantastic shots. Anyway, I’m all over that cool movie mode with stereo sound and sound-only recording (birds, cicadas, crickets), which the Lumix does not have. Of course (heh), I haven’t entirely made up my mind, but I will…eventually. 😆
Fondling gadgets while store clerks aren’t looking? Do I even want to know? 😉