Got me a new camera now, finally. And that is some days ago already, just so that you know. A few problems arised and all of a sudden there were a game show going on, so I weren't able to post this article by the time that I wanted.
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My shiny new DSLR of walletbane.
It's a Canon EOS 50D with a Tamron SP 17-50mm F/2.8 Di-II attached.
Cannon states this camera is somewhere between novice and professional. As far as I'm concerned, it outputs signifficantly better pictures than my point-and-shoot Sony Cyber-shot, and is able to take many consecutive shots pretty fast compared to other cameras in its class. The lens is of course, probably more important to overall image quality. It's a wide angle lens that becomes normal when you zoom in. It doesn't zoom much for an all-around camera, but I'm still planning on using only this one for now. Am not taking a lot of pictures of landscapes or hard-to-reach objects, so my expensive lens should be enough. It deals with lots of people moving around indoors pretty well, and has surprising capabilities for portrait shooting. And then, it's not that it was really-really expensive. It's third-party after all. 18000 NT$
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The sharpness of the lens is really great. And then it's good for taking pictures during night time, which is my top priority for now. The combination seems also to make the pictures more luminous. I feel that this way, I can snap photos that are more true to the extremely well-lit Taipei.
Above picture is taken with the new camera by 6.30 pm just outside Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition hall 3 (somewhere near Taipei 101).
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This picture is of the park by Banciao Main Station - which contains the MRT station nearest my current home.
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And there goes another shot in Taipei 101's neighbourhood. A lovely well lit place with lots of people around.
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Went to Taipei Game show again today (Saturday), and snapped some more pictures. I'm quite amased at how easy it is for me now to get really great shots of single people. On the point-and-shoot I used before, I had to point at the exact right position and then make the planets align. Obviously, that's the idea of point-and-shoot, and there's a good reason people are willing to pay so much more on the bigger cameras. Still, I am really surprised at how easy it is to do this. Can decide amongst a number of autofocus points and the camera focuses exactly on the object I'm interested in. The camera adds in a little bonus bokeh (blur on out-of-focus objects) by itself. Actually I don't need anything but to zoom and the auto feature gets the other stuff just right. And that is, much more just right than the unintelligent Cyber-shot that doesn't let you pick anything.
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Yet, I pretty quickly got to love control. Setting ISO, Aperture and shutter speed by yourself actually isn't such a big work to do, and I'd say it vastly improves the photosnapping in changing conditions. High ISO speed causes ugly, digital noise. An aperture that's wide open will reduce picture sharpness, (although it's pretty hard to see the difference with my lens.) And finally, low shutter speed blurs out moving objects. High shutter speed, low ISO and narrow aperture makes the photos darker - less exposure. It's really that simple it seems. You pick the lowest shutter speed when not much movement is going on. When outside during night time, slam the aperture wide open (that is, set it to the lowest possible setting) as well as setting the ISO up around 800-1600 (or 400-800 if your equipment is awesome) depending on the shutter speed. (Lotsa cars and people around this place, so I can't leave it too low.)
That's what I know so far at least. You can find that stuff all over the internet pretty quickly. They're well explained too, but to me, it seems really just terribly advanced when you read it compared to just snapping photos yourself. All that stuff about how to take it the right angle and golden panels and whatnot, I'm not an expert on currently, but for just 3 days of rampant snapping, I feel the manual control is no bother already. I can never go back to point-and-shoot again, that's 100% sure.
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Now, to be a little Canon EOS 50D specific, there's one feature for this DSLR body that's worth noting. As stated earlier in this post, it can spree photos pretty quickly. 6.3 photos a second, actually. Which is just great for taking photos of giveaways where people have to catch the stuff. - Or perhaps more likely, sports. I don't have such a great control of this feature just yet, so the pictures I've taken so far are not really the best of those I have.
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What an awfull lot of people.
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I wonder what kind of blog post this became. Some sort of cross between review, guide and computergame exhibition? Or just ramblings in excuse of posting more cute Asian girls?
Sorry to dissapoint you again, eventual female readers.
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