Camera one of two

A while back I asked readers for suggestions on what camera to buy.  And several very thoughtful suggestions were made, some for cameras I had not considered.  I carefully checked out each one, and many thanks to everyone who shared suggestions!

When I used to shoot film, I had several cameras to meet different purposes.  I had an Olympus XA, a tiny 35mm rangefinder with an outstanding lens that I could carry with me everywhere.  I had several Olympus SLR’s and lenses (all fast primes) to handle a wide range of situations from flat-field macro to portraits.  I’ve owned a couple different 6x6 TLR cameras for when I needed waist-level viewfinder. 

Over the years I’ve done a lot of different kinds of photography.  Long ago I did wedding photography but after several weddings decided it was just too stressful.  The kinds I really enjoyed included portrait, product, documentary, candid street photography, scenic, macro, and for want of a better term, ‘fine-art’.  Each has its own (often overlapping) technical requirements.

Eventually it became impossible for me to spend time in the darkroom, and I went all-digital.  But no single digital camera can do everything.  So it’s a foregone conclusion that I’ll need more than one camera.  My friend Pete has an Olympus DSLR and the image quality is simply outstanding.  But I pretty much live on a bike and his camera is too large for my backpack.  Also, I really like a waist-level viewfinder for macro and candid photography.

A couple readers suggested the Canon S5 IS, which I had not heard of, and that’s what I wound up getting.  It has a 12x zoom, image stabilizer, excellent macro capability, face recognition, and a folding viewfinder that allows waist-level photography (Joy!). It also has an internal eye-level viewfinder.  Plus, like any modern digital camera, a million other features which may be occasionally useful but hardly essential.  I will wind up using the panorama effect a lot…

Continued...

Posted by George on 08/31/08 at 12:08 PM
Geeky • Photography • (4) Comments • Link
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