What a Shot!

I am proud of my Nikon D80 :)

Digital Photography - 1

Thousands of cameras are being used at this very second and a million pictures are being uploaded on to the Internet this very hour. A host of devices including mobile phones, pocket PCs, organisers, other hand held devices, web sites and desktop applications are used to create, share, edit and upload digital content (videos & photographs). Some notable changes in sharing video came with youtube.com. Flickr.com, picasa.com are two well known image sharing web portals. The ease with which people can share their pictures has made a huge difference. Some of the simplest and neat features such as slideshows have made sharing photographs a nice experience. Everything I say about photographs holds good for videos too. Youtube.com brought out all the funny video which was once lying on some hard disk and was hardly used. With the increasing ease to share Digital content, people have derived new interest in creating them. It can always be argued that the host of technology to share digital content came because of the increasing ease to take pictures or create video. Either way, the fact is that Tera Bytes of digital content is exchanged everyday on the net. Let’s look at some of the digital devices used to create Images and Videos. Point and Shoot Camera A point and shoot camera is a user friendly camera meant for anyone and everyone. Point and shoot camera segment originated from a simple need. Most people are not interested in shutter speed while shooting a kid blowing candles. Neither do they want to know what is meant by ISO, forget about aperture! If any of the above does not make much sense then all I want to say is that there is a large market segment which does not like to know the intricacies of operating a digital camera. The requirement is simple. The consumer knows the camera is used for shooting a couple of parties, landscape, night life, sometimes a portrait or two. He expects a nice picture each time he clicks. All he needs to remember is to keep the shutters open and set the right mode. Mode? Now what is that? All Point and shoot cameras (No exceptions that I know of) work in automatic mode within broad categories such as portraits, landscape, night portrait and so on. The user is expected to point the camera and shoot. The camera does the rest. Some of the shortcomings in a point and shoot camera is the quality of image (debatable) and the fixed lens mounted on it. The limited and sometimes claustrophobic limitation in creativity leaves many wanting for more.

1. Check Image Above

Point and Shoot Camera -> Olympus stylus 780

Prosumer Camera

A prosumer camera came in to market to bridge the gap between Professional and consumer camera. The camera includes many features found in professional cameras but continues to be user friendly (debatable). Several Semi Automatic modes are defined in such cameras. These cameras offer higher resolution with added features to control the exposure. A good built in flash is a standard feature with these cameras. This segment is one of the fastest growing as they have the advantages of both consumer and professional cameras.

NIKON COOLPIX 5000 (Image at the start)

The obvious choice for non professional users who have hit the limitations (or know) of Point and shoot camera. Cameras in this segment can be used to create excellent prints and the image censors/processors used in these cameras come close to professional cameras. Since the audience for this camera can be first time photographers, a word of caution. A higher mega pixel camera does not necessarily have a good image sensor. This camera suffers from some limitations. The lens of the camera is fixed and that’s all you have got. COOLPIX 5000 for example gives a range of 28 mm to 85 mm (35 mm equivalent) which is about 3X zoom. This limitation can get on your nerves at times. A very important difference between Prosumer and “real” SLR (single-lens reflex) Cameras is the View finder. The view finder shows the object of interest through the lens of the camera. Prosumer cameras may show the object on the LCD and may not have a view finder. If the Prosumer camera has a viewfinder, it may still not show the object through the main lens of the camera. However, nowadays there are Prosumer cameras which behave very similar to SLR Cameras.