Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Oh Camera! where art thou?

21st February?!! Wow, has it really been that long since my last post! I need to get back to this blog more frequently but truth be told, there hasn't been much to write about anyways this past month... I took an unscheduled break from the whole MBA-researching, career-planning and future-worrying thingie for the month of March but now I am back!!

As April came, it brought with it the 'keeda' of buying a new digital camera and what began as a simple task of ordering a heavily discounted SONY model (DSC-H9, to be precise) at a employee sale soon turned into something infinitely more time-consuming and confusing when I thought... DSLR, why not? Thus began the saga of long hours spent staring at the computer screen trying to make sense of ISO, sensitivity, 35 mm equivalent, noise, stabilization, EVF, telephoto lens etc etc, checking out one model after another from Nikon, Canon, Sony and Olympus - Nikon D40, Canon EOS 400D, Nikon D400, Olympus E-510, Canon 30D, Sony A100... the list was endless! There were so many options and so little to differentiate between...

But now after spending a lot of time and learning a lot about how a DSLR works and what its advantages/disadvantages are I think I would be better served by going back to my previous decision of getting a compact high-zoom (if I can find one, that is!).

The one reason why I had first thought of getting a DSLR was because I was looking for a super-zoom camera (zoom in the range of 10+) . The cameras got very SLR-like as the zoom range increased so much so that they almost felt like one (size and weight wise) and I thought if I am going to be carrying such a big camera with me, why not go the whole distance and get a DSLR instead? But now I know that for a amateur photographer like me, a DSLR would be an overkill especially because all that I am truly looking for is a super-zoom stable camera that produces great pics and is easy to carry around.

So now that I have sorted that out, there still is a long way to go till I finally decide on the model I will buy but the following criteria are an absolute must (in order of priority) -
1. super zoom
2. sleek design, no SLR look-alike for me
3. not too pricey
4. not older than early 2007
5. does not have outright negative reviews
6. video feature

So the hunt for the perfect camera continues....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well written article.