Cameras Over the Decades
Note: I have re-sized all the pictures to 1024; it makes it faster to upload.
Note2: Since photobucket does not provide free hosting any longer, I am re-capturing the photos and re-uploading them. No idea what the quality will be like.
Over the past decade, I have owned four point and shoot cameras. Along with that, I have learned more about photography and manual camera settings.
I can't remember if this was the first digital camera we had, but we bought it in 2002. It was a Kodak Easyshare DX4900. It had a tiny LCD screen, plastic finish, 4.0 megapixels, and a cool self lens cover that moved when you flipped the on switch. It used CCD as it's image sensor and had an optical viewfinder.
I know we had a camera before this 4900, but I can't remember what we had. I remember taking the above picture with both cameras and comparing them and felt amazed by its detail.
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| That's an MP3 player?! It's so huge! |
This picture is from 2004 while I was in college. You can see how dated this picture is from the Creative NomadZen Media Player that is basically a harddrive.
Later on we bought Mom a camera. It was a Kodak Easyshare DX4530. It was 5.0MP and it it had more buttons on the back.
In 2007, I replaced my Kodak with a Canon Powershot SD800IS.
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| So itty bitty |
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| Such a huge screen! |
The 800IS had a plastic and metal frame. I really like the metal feel, but if you drop it, it will get dented and the dents are difficult to...er...um... "undent". With this camera I could adjust the ISO speed and this marked the beginning of my studies of photography. Unfortunately, it had very little manual control, therefore my learning was limited. I had studied about F stops and shutter speed, but I couldn't manually control those on this camera. I could only control the ISO speed (if I remember correctly).
But I learned about macro shooting and made plenty of macro shots.
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I've never learned what these are called
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| I was trying to get a pic of the frog |
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I was obsessed with blurry backgrounds to focus on the subject.
This camera had effects, so I learned how to do that.
In 2010, I replaced the SD800IS (right) with an SD4000IS (left).
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800IS has some battle damage
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As you can tell, my old 800IS has some battle scars. I've dropped it several times but it still worked perfectly.
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| First picture with my 4000IS |
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I bought this 4000IS camera with a quick review because I was leaving for China the very next week and had to ship it overnight. This camera attracted me because it was has a wide lens, super slow motion video, and semi-manual control. I could manually set the shutter speed and the aperture would set automatically OR I could manually control the aperture and the shutter speed would be automatic. And the lens aperture had a very low (or high? I don't know the terms well enough) value of F2.0.
I took the same picture with both cameras, but I couldn't find the 800IS photo.
The only problem is that the only control was a dial wheel. You had to be quick to switch settings. Luckily, I'm pretty good at memorizing system interfaces so I could navigate the settings quickly. And as you can see, the screen is much wider but there is no optical view finder. I would often use the optical view finder when my battery was low.
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I guess I like poweraid and doorways...
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I gave my 800IS to my cousin Reuben. The camera eventually was lost in China due to a pickpocket; Reuben left the hand strap dangling from his pocket and as we were boarding a bus, a man crowded up against Reuben and then suddenly left. We sit down on the bus and we realize Reuben's camera is gone.
Fast forward to 2 years later. The 4000IS had a problem. Many models had the problem of dust getting into the lens and the lens gears jamming up. I never had the lens gears jam up on me but dust did get into the lens.
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| Well that doesn't fit quite right |
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This camera met its fate when I tried to clean the lens. I opened it up, got scared, and put it all back together. I couldn't stand the dust speck that was present in most of my pictures so a few months later I opened it up again. I had to open the lens housing and get a lens brush in there to clean it. I put it back together and it worked however the lens gears were all out of whack and it was stuck in the open position. So, this time I opened it again and adjusted the gears. Unfortunately, I forgot to remove the battery this time around and when I plugged in the cable for the flash, the flash went off. I imagined I shorted something out because it wouldn't power on. I waited a day and it still wouldn't power on. My mother had just arrived to China and I wanted a camera to take pictures. I had actually had my eye on a particular camera for a while and was looking for an excuse to buy a new one. And no, I didn't purposefully break my 4000IS.
So, 2012 and my latest camera was purchased in China but made in Japan. I bought it alone so it was quite entertaining to buy the new camera. The sales girl didn't speak any English so I did my best to try to communicate.
My newest camera is a Canon (again!) Powershot SX240HS. It is a compact superzoom. I've had my eye on this camera for a while but the reviews said there are two problems with it. One is the white balance seems sub-par and the popup flash is right where I hold the camera. Other than that, it has full manual control. As well as Tv and Av settings. It has some new bells and whistles that I probably won't use but I'll try them out for fun. The aperture is a little higher (lower?) than my 4000IS, it's at 3.5 compared to 2.0 from my old one. Instead of a CCD sensor this one uses the (not so) new CMOS image sensor.
This camera has better controls. The camera is a little bigger than my previous camera but that's okay to me. I was given a 4GB SDcard and pouch for free, so whenever I 'm not using my camera, I put it in the pouch to keep it as dust free as possible.
I read that the battery life was also sub-par but thankfully the 240HS uses the same battery as the 4000IS so I now have an extra battery and extra SDcard! 厉害！
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| Dragon fountain |
