iPhone camera apps

Something to Read on Holiday

/ General / , , ,

Bought an excellent book to read whilst on holiday – The Digital SLR Handbook by Michael Freeman.

I have a number of photo books by Michael Freeman that I used extensively when I was working in, and teaching photography. He writes really informative books on photography so when I decided I wanted something about digital photography he was the only choice for me.

Now for lots of good reasons I do not have a digital SLR but use a Canon Powershot S2 IS – an excellent bridge camera, quick to use, flexible, creative and light to carry when walking. Many things in the book were not applicable but it covered the things I want to get to grips with really well. Top of the list was histograms and exposure – and I have been working on that and have seen an improvement in the exposures. I also want to start to use Photoshop on my images and he has some good things to say about that.

The final thing I got from the book (so far as I have not read it all yet) is that my next camera is likely to be a Canon G9 so I can shoot in RAW. So out goes the idea of a Nikon P60 as a lightweight walking camera (lost interest in that when I found out it does not have live view of the exposure) and in comes the G3 – the only thing holding me back on that is that it uses battery packs not AA cells. Well I am not going to buy it tomorrow so by Christmas there may be something else on the market that does what I want in a compact digital format,

  • Compact size
  • Viewfinder (absolutely essential)
  • SD cards
  • AA cell power
  • Short zoom 5x optical at least
  • RAW and jpeg (now)
  • Image stabilisation
  • Live view
  • Manual exposure
  • Some useful modes – snow and foliage are two I use on my S2 all the time
  • Hot shoe (well it is a low priority)

Well it is “my” wish list.

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Photos at last – Coast to Coast Walk

/ Photography, Technology, Walking / , , ,

I finally got around to sorting out my photographs I took whilst walking from St Bees in Cumbria to Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire. See our blog here http://www.octagontech.com/category/coast-to-coast/. I didn’t carry my Canon Powershot S2 IS with me every day – I heeded the warning we were given on Day 2 when we were soaked through walking from and the camera case had let water through and although the camera was damp it suffered no damage after carefully drying it. On bad weather days I used the perfectly functional camera on my Blackberry Curve for snapping the journey. However if you carry your camera with you in the bad weather see what happens here http://www.rkwinternet.com/category/coast-to-coast-walk/ – however the insurancecovered the loss and Richard now has a new camera. Richard has also posted an epilogue to the walk – I have also written about the experience and plan to post it in sections whilst I am away on my next holiday, when I have time to proof read the entries.

Here is a picture of my new boots in the sea at St Bees – taken on my Blackberry – http://www.flickr.com/photos/clivecphotos/2586254243/. As a camera phone this is the first one I have been satisfied with.

For Coast to Coast photos look here at my Flickr set

For more photos www.clivecatton.co.uk

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