From the BAP get-together;
Lucas of Lackadaisical.
While at the Bay Area Photographer's get-together last weekend I was experiencing
something of a camera inferiority complex as I was surrounded by DSLRs
(mainly Canons). Once again I'm falling for the marketing hype and peer pressure
that seems to say that if you don't have a DSLR then you're not taking your
digital photography seriously. As I browse Craigslist I'm seeing a lot of Canon
10D's for sale for reasonable prices as users upgrade to the 20D and I'm almost
tempted to make the leap. Then I remember the often ignored advantages of a
prosumer digicam and I have second thoughts.
The BAP group are all enthusiast photographers
and they know what taking a picture looks like and. therefore, they stiffen
up when you bring your camera to your eye or when they hear the mirror slap
of a SLR shutter being tripped. I'm reasonably happy with the candid's I
got from that meeting (today's picture being one of them) but I probably wouldn't
have got anything half as decent had I being carrying an SLR. I would have
been self-conscious about using the camera; my fellow photobloggers would have
been self-conscious about being the subject - as a result I would have probably
snatched a snap or two but I wouldn't have felt comfortable taking a dozen
pictures of a person as they talked and listen. As it was, I was able to sit
with my camera braced on my knee and with the lens pointing in a different
direction than the LCD screen suggested and snap away unnoticed. With the silly
artificial shutter noise on my camera turned off my camera is virtually silent.
And if I buy into a DSLR system how much is the equivalent of my F717's
built in 38-190mm f2 lens going to cost me?
Sometimes I wish I had an optical viewfinder. I wish I had the facility
to shoot RAW and that the higher ISO settings on my camera weren't so noisy.
Then again, would I miss the compact package, the lens speed and depth of focus,
the true macro facility and all the other bells and whistles that come with
a modern digicam? Perhaps I should be looking at the Minolta A2 rather than
a secondhand 10D. Then again, I already have more cameras than I can possibly
use so perhaps I should buy into the manufacture's constant upgrade sales message.
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