cameras...

a pretty vanilla subject here on the 'net, but one of interest at the moment. With the new baby on the way, my frustrations with our current cameras are escalating. I fully plan on dutifully taking way too many picture of our first-born and would prefer if my underwhelming skill was the major problem with the pictures, not the cameras. Of course, if I had great skill, then the camera probably wouldn't matter as much. I liken the phenomena to needing that new driver for the golf bag... "man I could hit it 10 yards farther into the woods with this club!"

I currently have a Canon A70. The A70 is a good compact camera - and more importantly when it was bought, a great value (quality/cost)... and it still is. But, it has the sort of issues you expect with this type of camera (and one that was used in a mini sandstorm in a dune field in Death Valley) - focusing is sometimes there, sometimes not - only 3.2 megapixels. And the real thing is that I am not a fan of the flash in general. fixed flashes often washout the subject, etc. this one only has one setting - full blast. I really like natural light, which typically means a lot of digital noise because of the small CCD (not enough photons getting to the detector).

So, I have been digging around and looked at a few cameras... there is the replacement Canon A620 a 7MP camera... noise will probably still be an issue, but with the extra MP's it could be okay. Then there is the Nikon D50... which looks to be a great D-SLR at the entry-level, and the Canon 350D (another D-SLR)... I have seen some great photos in natural light on the daily dose of imagery, and on flickr of course... the downside to these last two cameras is they are some extra coin, and the examples are of course by people with serious skill... but hey, even Tiger Woods needs a good driver to succeed!

There will certainly be future posts on this subject sometime... especially if I ever follow-through and purchase a new camera - which will be balanced with other baby needs, and the wife's desire for a camcorder, which is a whole other subject....