June 2010 Photo Challenge

[Mouse]

Guardian, eh? Guard... dog... Yay! Now to get my wussy puppy to look fearsome.

 

[Ursa major]

How'll you do that?

 

[Mouse]

I'll give him a Mohawk and a nose ring. And a tattoo.

 

[AE35Unit]

Indeed. And, as I mentioned, the quality of the lens itself, and the image sensor, are paramount.


An old, 3 or 4 mpx camera with a high quality lens and sensor will still take great photos.

Yea its fine having oodles of mega pixies but the problem is most cameras are small,pocket size and so come with a tiny sensor,and trying to pack too many MP into a tiny sensor leads to problems with noise primarily. A case in point is my Panasonic bridge camera. It has 6 MP,the same as my Canon DSLR, but because its sensor is the size of a finger nail,and so the pixels are squashed closer together,theres a shocking increase in noise!
As a result the Panasonic,despite having a fine and fast Leica lens, is crippled! If they'd given it 4 or even 3 MP it would be an awesome camera! But more MP sells more so…

 

[Sephiroth]

Quite so. One of the reasons I chose my Fuji bridge camera was because it had one of the largest sensors of all cameras of this type (it's a chunky unit), and when comparing sample images, it was clear that it suffered less from noise than some of the others (it's 11.1 mpx), particularly at higher ISOs.

That, and the lens is pretty decent, too. I don't think I could have a much better camera without getting a DSLR, instead (which I will, at some point, but the cost is prohibitive).

 

[HoopyFrood]

Hello, what Fuji bridge do you have?

 

[Sephiroth]

The (now superseded) Finepix S100FS. (Here is one review from two years ago.)

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Well, now, when I said dinosaur, I was talking 2mp, not even 3 or 4, and a permanently-child-smudged lens, LOL!

We shall see...I took some pictures last night but ran into some sort of timeout in uploading to the computer, so I'm not sure if any of them is quite right yet.

 

[Sephiroth]

Well, just resize your pics a little smaller than you might have, otherwise, and they'll look every bit as fantastic as they would with a higher-resolution camera.

When I shoot on fast continuous mode, my camera defaults to 3 mpx, and it's more than adequate.

(You can say the child-smudge is deliberate. It's an artistic effect. We'll pretend we didn't have this discussion. )


Looking forward to seeing your photos. And you can always upload any interesting ones you don't want to enter in the challenge to the Photo of the Day thread, or the Photo Challenge Rejects thread (both are here in the Technology forum).

 

[CyBeR]

Hey guys.
Thank you much for your concern, I really appreciated it. But honestly, sorry to have worried anyone...since I live in Romania, there are really no big nasties to worry about here...we only have the horned viper up in the mountains and the cross spider in the cities and villages. The later is hardly a threat to human life.
I dunno what bit me, but I'm feeling better today (had a busy day at work too, helped to get my mind off of it) and I have a nice round bruise with it. But nonetheless, I'm fine.

Speaking of cameras, I went to the mountain last year. My Canon S3 had just passed away, so I got stuck with a tiny Benq compact, of 10 MPx I believe...either 10 or 8. Although it was a great help that I could just reach into my pocket and pull it out, it annoyed me to no ends in trying to get a decent shot of the views up there. I can't understand how people may prefer this over a decent, less expensive bridge.

 

[Erin99]

Speaking of cameras, I went to the mountain last year. My Canon S3 had just passed away, so I got stuck with a tiny Benq compact, of 10 MPx I believe...either 10 or 8. Although it was a great help that I could just reach into my pocket and pull it out, it annoyed me to no ends in trying to get a decent shot of the views up there. I can't understand how people may prefer this over a decent, less expensive bridge.

I think it depends on your point-and-shoot camera. I had an Olympus C750 for a few years, and I was SUPER happy with it. In fact, when I gave it away I was sad at the thought of never seeing it again. Yes, it never competed with my DSLR, but in many ways it was much more suited to using outdoors. And it being lightweight helped, too!

So... I think the make of camera predetermines how much hassle/pleasure you'll get out of it.


Glad you're well today!

 

[Sephiroth]

Glad to hear you're feeling better, Cyber.


And you were up in the Carpathians, I presume? How wonderful! I didn't realise you were from Romania. I'd love the opportunity to take my camera there.

As for point-and-shoot cameras -- I don't like how unsteady they feel in your hands. I like my big, chunky Fuji bridge. It always feels really easy to stabilise for a clear shot at the telephoto end of the zoom. It's true that they're convenient, in that they fit in a pocket, however.

I can confirm that the Olympus C750 works very well, though. ~_^

 

[crystal haven]

Hello photo challenge people.

I had a look at the photos for this challenge and then, I forgot to vote. Sorry. But on a positive note, I will try to remember to vote for the July challenge.

You are all clever. I don't have a camera and don't understand the strange language you all speak - pixels and stuff. I enjoyed all the photographs, but I really liked Talysia’s railway line, and HoopyFrood’s photo of the stairs - I found myself wondering where both these went, and wanting to go further into the photograph to see.

 

[J Riff]

Is there a preferred way... uh, how to get the pic up there without the attached thumbnail thingie..is there a simple html trick? Max size of photo?

 

[Culhwch]

You are all clever. I don't have a camera and don't understand the strange language you all speak - pixels and stuff.

And we haven't even gotten into apertures, f-stops and exposure compensation...

 

[Culhwch]

Is there a preferred way... uh, how to get the pic up there without the attached thumbnail thingie..is there a simple html trick? Max size of photo?

Double-post, sorry, but I'm too lazy to edit the last one!

If you are attaching the image via the forum's attach function, I don't think there's a way around the thumbnail. If you want to post bigger images in your post, you'll need to use an image host site like Flickr or Photobucket, and then you can use the image tags (

) to insert your picture.

 

[AE35Unit]

And we haven't even gotten into apertures, f-stops and exposure compensation...

Its times like these i get an urge to teach someone the basics of photography! i have tutorials posted somewhere on another site…

 

[chrispenycate]

Its times like these i get an urge to teach someone the basics of photography! i have tutorials posted somewhere on another site…

Does that mean "The speed of light in different transparent media is different, so a beam of light travelling from one to the other gets bent at the surface…" or "…so it is generally considered a good idea to remove the lens cap first, and not put your thumb in its place"?

I suppose it's more about depth of field and how to get my little Nikon out of autofocus mode – even for a snapshot camera they must have put a manual mode somewhere, mustn't they?

 

[AE35Unit]

I suppose it's more about depth of field and how to get my little Nikon out of autofocus mode – even for a snapshot camera they must have put a manual mode somewhere, mustn't they?

Hmmm,probably has Program Shift or something which isnt really useful as the EV remains the same! it might also have exposure compensation somewhere,denoted by a +/- sign which IS useful. Also it might have exposure lock [o or *] which is another way of getting a different setting. I hate auto only cameras, altho modern ones are much better and can be relied on most of the time.

 

[Talysia]

Hello photo challenge people.

I had a look at the photos for this challenge and then, I forgot to vote. Sorry. But on a positive note, I will try to remember to vote for the July challenge.

You are all clever. I don't have a camera and don't understand the strange language you all speak - pixels and stuff. I enjoyed all the photographs, but I really liked Talysia’s railway line, and HoopyFrood’s photo of the stairs - I found myself wondering where both these went, and wanting to go further into the photograph to see.

Thanks for the mention, Crystal. It took a while to find a bit of track that just went straight off into the horizon like that.

I have to confess to being pretty much a point-and-shoot kind of photographer, and I'm not as au fait with the technical terms as a lot of people here. Still, that's what I like about this contest: anyone can enter, regardless of skill.