bollocks! camera time!

I hate to think the blog is a stomping ground for materialist rants, but what else is new.

I’ve long-been a proponent of digital photography. I understand some of the arguments in favor of analog film-based photography, having trained in it myself for multiple years, and still turning to it every so often to provide certain solutions that digital cameras still can’t provide (not in my price range anyhow). On that financial note, I also understand the affordability of these digital technologies, and their ease-of-use and immediacy – and the ability to manage images digitally is a truly astonishing feat, and something I won’t give up as long as I don’t have to.

Way back when, in 2000, I bought my first digital camera, a Sony Mavica, the FD91 model (I still have it somewhere). A hefty many many hundred dollar investment, it was a sub-1 megapixel (.8MP) camera that recorded to floppy disks. Yes, you read that right, floppy disks! It was physically massive, a burden to take anywhere so forget about being able to pull it out of your jacket pocket – the only place big enough to hold this thing was the trunk of your car.

More than three full years later in December 2003, I bought an upgrade, a Sony DSC-V1, in preparation for a trip to Germany and to document my expected last six months of living in London. Again, a hefty investment – these things usually are – but well worth it. A brick as it might be, being an all-metal body (one of its selling points at a time when many cameras were being pressed out with plastic bodies), I’ve carried it with me nearly everyday everywhere I went. My Picasa program now manages over 15,000 images, or over a dozen images a day, something unachievable with 35mm film.

People who know me know my camera has gone through some damage – what you see up above I refer to as ‘battle scars’. Not so much abuse but rather constant use and travel have meant my camera is on its last leg. I don’t carry my camera in a bag or pouch else that’s another thing to keep track of and slows me down when most of my shots are spontaneous, so the constant in-out of the pocket and rubbing up to whatever else I’m carrying means scratches are inevitable. Recently, the camera, only under certain conditions, started to develop a spot.

At first I thought it was just the lighting conditions of a specific day, then I started to notice the spot in the same location on completely different shots (i.e. one outside, one in studio, etc.).

The timing is right, same three years and several months later. Time to upgrade.

My first two digital cameras were Sony, but don’t get me wrong I’m no Sony enthusiast. At the time however they made the best hardware for the market, so that’s what I went with. This time around I still thought I would see what they have to offer. The W90 seemed an obvious upgrade, with most of the same features, still in the Cyber-shot family, and an increase from 5 to 8 megapixels. ISO 3200 could prove useful, and a burst function of 100 images would be fun to mess with. But what’s this? No Manual control, and I would still be stuck with the highly proprietary Memory Stick format (the only thing off-putting about the V1). Shopping in the same megapixel range and higher consumer end of options, I’m now looking at the Canon PowerShot G7. The ISO only goes to 1600 but the chassis is much-more in tune with my sensibilities and would grip better with my hands, plus I don’t need my cameras to be as small as my credit cards! And Canon are another company whose products I’ve always admired (my current inkjet printer is a Canon, well-pleased with that piece of hardware).

Another very hefty investment, right under the $500 mark not including a memory card with lots of capacity, but as I’m preparing to go to Europe I can’t imagine this trip with spots in every photo, so in a way it’s a necessary investment. (oh and the G7 is 10MP, so I’m effectively doubling the amount of information in every shot! woot!) Unless anybody has any other recommendations?