New Digital Camera
No, I don’t have one yet, but I plan on stimulating the economy by purchasing one.
One of the best purchases I ever made when I bought a camera was the Minolta Maxxum 9xi. It was Minolta’s ‘pro’ camera (Nikon and Canon were still the ones the ‘real’ pros used). It had excellent metering, shutter speeds up to 1/12000 of a second, 4.5fps shooting with an internal motor, and too many other options to list. Despite this being the digital age, these babies still sell for nearly $400 on Ebay and that’s just for the body. Some of the best work I’ve done was with that camera because of it’s versatility. Alas, I had to sell it some years ago and never went back to film because digital is so much better and inexpensive (no development costs unless I want to order prints).
In the digital age, cost has prohibited me from getting an SLR. It’s only over the last 3-4 years that prices have started to come down and even so, they’re still not cheap. You can get an excellent point and shoot digital camera for about $200, but an SLR will still start you out at $500 or more. But what are the advantages?
For starters, SLR’s actually have more accurate color representation. Many P&S digital cameras have extremely vibrant colors (sometimes too vibrant) because that’s what consumers like to see. Snap some shots of a bouquet of flowers, and those colors are going to pop. But sometimes it’s not that good when it comes to portraits as the reds are too bold and it makes even the manliest male look like he’s thrown on some lipstick. SLR’s give you what you’re looking at which is better. If I want to punch the colors up, I can do so in Photoshop later on.
SLR’s have much better flashes that help to eliminate red-eye. Red-eye on a P&S is hit or miss. Some protect against it very well. Others don’t. I’ve yet to see a review of an SLR where there were problems with red-eye on their pop up flash. SLR’s also give you the option of purchasing a separate flash.
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