More thoughts on buying a camera

New "Camera"! , originally uploaded by Shermeee.

One of my coworkers, Rosanna is buying a new camera. Her current camera is many years old and the battery won't last more than a few photos. So she has been shopping around and we've talked about different cameras she could want.

I want to talk about buying a camera... again.

After talking with Rosanna, she started her buying decision based on budget. Most people do. She is buying the camera for a trip to Italy and wants something that is easy to travel with. More specifically she wants a lot of zoom.

She's been going through lots of different cameras trying to decide on the best one. She has some pretty general wants, nothing really specific like time lapse, just a better zoom.

After talking more with her today I realized what she really wants in her camera purchase. She could be happy with any one of 100 cameras. What she really wants is to feel confident that she got the right one. So here is my buying advice for Rosanna:

1. Make a list of things you trust about your future camera. This means pick a brand you know you'll be happy with. List some features that you really like and used from your old camera. I'm going to guess that most people like me use probably five to ten features about 99 percent of the time they shoot and use the other hundred features available on the camera one percent of the time. For me It would be: Canon, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, P Mode, Macro, Timer, Video, maybe zoom, it also need to have a time lapse feature or at least have a firmware mod to add it for kite photography, or maybe flash, I try to avoid using the flash. Those features make up 99 percent of my shooting. If I bought a camera that was missing one of those features, I'd be quite unhappy with that camera.

This will be the "meat" of your camera finding. Once you got your list made, and your budget set then...

2. You should be able to narrow down your list to just a few cameras. Use this fantastic tool to find all the cameras with your features. I love this tool on DPreview.com. Then you can pick based look and feel etc.

3. Pick one you like best.

4. Find the best deal on that camera. Stop second guessing, stop looking at the green grass on the other side of the fence. If you really went through your list from #1 you will be very happy with the camera you get.

Sunset over NYC

Take straight from the camera this evening. The buildings in the distance are in Manhattan. This is looking from the east.

Great minds think alike.

I'd like to say I'm as good of photographer as my wife. But she really has an eye for photography that I just don't have. However, we both took this same shot. It makes me think I'm actually thinking more like a photographer. The first photo is mine, the second is hers.

Putting both of them together it's interesting to see how different they are even though the general photo is the same. The major differences being, she crouched down for the photo, and I didn't. And of course the time of day was very different.

Finally some photos from the sky!

It's taken a long time but I finally got some photos from my new kite. We went to Sanibel Island, Florida for a wedding.

So I took some photos during the wedding. They turned out spectacular! Well at least this one did.

Warm spring in New York City

This was the view of crowded Central Park on Saturday.

I tired to get the kite up in the air but there was no wind. I would have loved to have a crowd shot from the sky, and the city surrounding the park.

But I'm pretty happy with this.



I you look really carefully you can see a baseball diamond. That's about where I was trying to fly the kite. I got it up in the air a couple times but with so many people around I didn't want to risk letting a bunch of string out only to have the wind die again. Then the kite comes crashing down on someone.

I have yet to attach a camera to this big kite. I will soon.

(I added upped the Blacks setting and added some contrast in Lightroom.)