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Expect a whole slew of picture updates in about a week, as tonight I went and bought my "Christmas gift" to myself, a Canon 20D 8.2 megapixel digital SLR camera. I've been wanting a SLR camera for a long while now and I've been doing research on it for the last few weeks, and decided to go ahead and take the plunge tonight. A leading cause of this was finding a really great deal on a used 20D that a guy was selling online that I knew would go fast. The 20D is actually discontinued now, and was first released 3 years ago, but it's still an impressive camera, and one I was able to get a quite a discount on. I was debating if I should get the 30D, but in the end, I didn't feel the few extra features the 30D got me was worth the extra money it would have cost. And the 40D, the latest model in that series, was simply out of my price range.
I wanted to save some money on the body so I could sink my money into something better than the standard lens, so I got a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 zoom lens and a Canon 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. I really like night and low-light/concert photography, along with landscapes, so I looked for good all-around lenses that would let me do that but that also wasn't ridiculous amounts of money either since I'm just starting out. And then picked up a UV protection filter and 4GB CompactFlash card to round out the package.
If that stuff looked like random gibberish to you and you're interested, check out this guide to camera lenses. But basically the 17-50mm part tells you the "zoom" of the lens. Higher numbers means a higher zoom of far away objects, for example a sports photographer on the sideline might have a 400mm lens. Lower numbers means you can get a wider angle in the photo, a landscape photographer might use a 10mm lens to get in as much scenery as possible. And the f/2.8 part tells you how much light it can let in. The lower the number, the better pictures it can take in low light. These are simplifications of course, and one can spend a LOT of money on lenses very quickly.
So what can it do that my pocket digicam can't?
- Take 5 photos per second by simply holding down the shutter button
- Take a photo within 65ms of hitting the shutter button, eliminating shutter lag and missed photos
- Take a photo within .2 seconds on flipping on the "On" switch, eliminating missed photos while I wait for the camera to turn on
- Take a natural looking non-blurry photo in a low light room with no flash
- Create cool background blur effects using bokeh
- Depending on the camera, an SLR allows for FAR more control over the settings of the photograph. My particular pocket cam lets me adjust just about everything already though, so it won't be a huge jump in this regard to an SLR.
- The very satisfying "click" sound as it takes a photo!
Of course I'll still keep my current pocket digicam since it's far more portable and some places won't let you in with a SLR camera unless you're press. For example rock concerts with tickets over $10. If it's under $10 the band is just happy to have someone taking photos of them, and showing up in the first place, and they don't care. Also the pocket digicam has movie mode. I'll also have to get used to looking through the viewfinder to frame the photo, as there is no LCD view to frame it, like everyone does nowdays with their cameras. It's not practical due to the way an SLR camera works, although the newest models do have that feature.
In completely unrelated camera news, Japan has some cool musical roads. I wonder what my commute would be like if they had that on Mopac.
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