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1st Digital Camera Experience/Impression... Update: 128MB Memory Stick Hot Deal! LAST DAY!

O

Ornery

Lifer
Edit:

Newsc2 was complaining about the time it takes to set the exposure, focus and shoot with his digital camera. I could be wrong, but I think that may be the nature of the beast. I just started shooting with mine seriously today. It's not suitable for "snap-shooting" quick, off the cuff shots, which is really what I wanted to do today. There may be manual overrides to help speed it up, but that will involve reading the manual! :Q

I've been spending a GREAT DEAL of time setting up a machine 30 miles away, on the west side of Cleveland. It's virtually my new home! Met a lot of people in the process. I snapped as many shots as I could of people working at their everyday tasks. Those shots were frequently blurred with motion of the individual. I suppose I could set the shutter speed quicker, but I wasn't thinking about it at the time. I finally told the last "subject" that I was going to take his picture and that it would take a second to focus, so he held still for this shot. It's a 300KB jpeg just as it came out of the camera. It's 1280X960 in what Sony calls "standard" mode, as opposed to "fine". I can get about 45 of those images on the 16MB memory stick that came with it. Yeah, my $62.00, SanDisk, 128MB Memory Stick just arrived from Buy.com today! 😀

Thanks again to vi-edit and especially Netopia for hooking me up with this new toy at an awesome price! And yes Joe, I'm registered as Ornery at Sony Talk, but haven't had much to say. Back to being a lurker for a while 😉
 
Awesome! Glad you bit the bullet and hopped on board the digital boat.

It's a great camera, and if I had known about the price at the time I purchased, I probably would have went with the F707 over my G2. Oh well, water over the damn, and I'm very happy with my purchase.

It should provide you with thousands of quality shots!
 
Some of those peckers at Sony Talk snagged that thing for about $550.00! Kinda put a damper on my "Hot Deal", but I shouldn't complain. Now there's a topic there about what the next step for Sony will be, and whether it's a good idea to jump on the F707 or wait... NOT ME! I've been waiting a year already, and all I wanted was the S75! LOL.

I read a lot about the G2 before I opted for the Sony, and it was on my wish list too. Again, I was looking to spend under $400.00, which put the G2 out of reach too. Didn't stop me from scoping out the prosumer stuff, though. I was even peaking at the Nikon Pro models just for the hell of it, but who was I kidding? Guess it doesn't hurt to dream! 😀
 
Glad you're enjoying your new digicam Sony fanboi 😉

I have my eye on the Canon PowerShot A40, now I just gotta bite the bullet which is not as easy as one would think.
 
Nope, I can't picture der Rossmeister with anything less than a G2. Good luck finding a serious deal on one of those, though! I keep reading posts from people who are looking to buy their second or third digital camera in just a short time. I didn't want to join that crowd. I'm not a serious shooter, but I could see myself regretting buying something "good enough". Over time, I forget what I paid for things, but never forget what I should or could have bought instead. In this case, I saved over $1,500.00 buying this lowly Sony over a Nikon I was checking out! 😉

snow patrol, I'm in the heart of Indians country! Ole' Lester probably has an Indian's cap for every occasion, LOL. I got called out to their place last night at 11:45PM. It's a half hour drive with no traffic. Some clown managed to roll his truck and caused a half hour delay :frown:. By the time I got there, I was in quite a mood. After I got things going, I showed Lester his picture online. He copied the address down so he could show his kids. I met a lot of nice people on this job, and I'd like to get more pictures of them. This picture of Mike was taken from about 100' away. That's the kind of shots I want. He didn't know I was shooting and was standing relatively still in good sunlight. He waved right after the shot, which is what you get all the time, what I DON'T want!

Well hell, they just called again. I'll take the camera with me and see what else I can do...
 
Since the chances of me becoming a serious photographer are slim to none I doubt I'd get a G2 (as awesome as they are).
 
Man, I need one that is at least 3.3 megapixels. Any hot deals Rossman? 😀

The Canon camera I wanted to pick up from Dell is $600 but I would like a nice 15%-20% coupon off 😉
 
Man, I have to practice with this thing a while. This picture of Laura had to be brightened in PhotoShop. It's exactly the type of image I'm striving for. I set the shutter priority to 1/100th, hoping to eliminate the motion blur. I assumed the camera would adjust the aperture or film speed more to compensate for the low light, but it didn't or couldn't. Could have allowed it to flash, but I'd prefer not to use it, plus these girls were about 35' away, and still don't know I snapped the picture...

I played with it a little since I got home. Froze a twirling necklace using the flash and 1/1000th shutter speed. Shot a few mpeg movies and screwed around with the shutter speeds some more to figure out the limitations. Damn, I'll have to crack that manual!

I found an old wide angle lens that will screw right on to the F707 lens without an adapter. It's called a "Spectrastar Hemispheric Video Lens". It was purchased 12 years ago to attach to our first Sony camcorder for videotaping our second son's birth. Haven't used it much since. Shot this image of my oldest son's desk with it, and the sharpness doesn't seem degraded. There's no way to auto focus with the lens on there, as there wasn't for the camcorder either.

I don't know, RossMAN. You don't need to be a "pro" to appreciate quality, and no doubt you'll own this thing for a LONG time. Wish I could help you find a deal for one!
 
Originally posted by: dude
Man, I need one that is at least 3.3 megapixels. Any hot deals Rossman? 😀

The Canon camera I wanted to pick up from Dell is $600 but I would like a nice 15%-20% coupon off 😉
Click to expand...

buydig.com has the minolta f100 for 438. 4 mp.
 
Thanks, but I'm actually lookign for the Canon Powershot s40.

RossMan: I see I just missed a $30 off and 10% off at Dell.
I checked tech bargains and they only got 10% off dell. Unfortunately, that only makes it about the same price as everywhere else. 🙁
 
Hey Everybody!

Just thought I'd link some pics I've taken in the last week with the F707. I'm no Pro, so be gentle with me!

These first three were me playing with the close-up / macro settings sitting in my office. No special lighting, but for the dime I did have to shine a flashlight in from the side because the lens was almost touching the darn thing! Also... all of these pictures have been reduced to a fifth their normal size and compressed with 10-12% jpg compression, so they aren't as high res or as clear as the original 5MP shots they came from... use your imagination!


Dime
Keyboard
Phone Keyboard

This is a closeup of my niece:
Niece

InfraRed (in TOTAL darkness) Shot of 3 of my kids:
InfraRed Kids

This is a panorama I made with 8 seperate overlapping shots. The result was a single 23.8 MP picture. It's downsized here to about 2.2-2.5MP.
Corn Farm

Another Panarama with a twist... made from 3 seperate pictures, again overlapping.
Triplets

The last on is another made up of about 8 overlapping shots. It's downsized, but it's still a 3 Meg file, so download at your own risk (if you're on a slow line)... this shot covers about 120 degrees and is stitched together. The end result is a picture of about 16.1 MP.

Front Yard


I'm really getting into this panorama / stitching stuff. You can create photos that are MUCH higher res, and therefore can be blown up much, MUCH bigger. Yesterday I tried my first two layer (doing a panorama ((on a tripod)) and then tilting a little higher and doing another panorama and then joining the pics into to panoramas and then joining the two panoramas into one huge pic) shot... it took a LONG time to process using panorama factory, but it worked.

Cheers,

Joe
 
Great buy. If i had to do it over again, i'd save myself the 100 bucks or so and buy the dsc75 over the dsc85. unfortunately when i bought mine (dsc85) there were no reviews out and i just bought it because it had a good megapixel. oh well. either way it's a nice camera (both of them i mean)
 
netopia: you really need to clean that computer keyboard. I did like the triplets picture. How did you put that together?
 
I'm glad I was never seriously bitten by the digital camera bug. I've got a 2MP Samsung, but I just got it primarily to have a point-and-shoot to make a history of our recent vacation. My coworkers on the other hand are absolutely obsessed with digital cameras and photography now. I think they've all updgraded their cameras about 2-3 times within the last several months. They started off in the $150 range and some of them are now spending over 4 figures on a camera. Two of them are graphic artists though so it's understandable since they use a lot of the stuff in their work.

If you're looking for a good digital photography forum where photography (and not the camera) is the actual centerpiece you might want to check out Fredmiranda.com. That's where my coworkers post a lot of their stuff. They've learned a lot in just a couple months and while they were already good photographers they're quickly becoming fantastic photographers. Unfortunately, that's all they ever talk about now 🙁 I need to fire up the UT server at work again and give them another distraction 🙂
 
I did like the triplets picture. How did you put that together?
Click to expand...

I used Panorama Factory. It can be downloaded (shareware) from this site. If you use it more than 30 days, it's $35 to license it. I understand that there is a better, FREE product out there, but the site is down and has a note saying it won't be back up until after Sept 20! The other negative about the Free software is that it is appearently INCREDIBLY difficult to use and even has front-ends written by other people just to try to make it easier. Panorama Factory, on the other hand, is UNBELIEVABLY EASY to use and the wizard walks you right through from beginning to end.

The neat thing about this is that you could litterally "stitch together" many, many (15-20 or more) photos in a grid (like a tic-tac-toe board) and be able to get beautifully detailed prints in incredibly large sizes which actually look BETTER than a 35mm with a wide angle.

Let us know if you create anything!

Joe
 
"This is a close up of my niece:"

Man, when you say close, you mean CLOSE! 😛

I'm really liking those "stitched" shots too. Do you have to lock the automatic exposure while you take the panorama shots? I'll look into Panorama Factory right away!

Parrotheader, this can be quite an addictive hobby, but one the whole family can get into, unlike so many other hobbies. Since I got my camera, my oldest son got the whole lesson 101 on depth of field, shutter speed and aperture brightness etc. He absorbed it all, because he's really interested. I have his grandfather's ancient 35mm from 1950. I compared that to my 20 year old Contax SLR. Pulled them both apart and showed him the differences and what was similar. Next step will be to associate all that with the F707. He's quite artistic, so framing shots should come easily.

I'm still getting used to the lag while it focuses and adjusts exposure. I think I have it licked, though. You can press the shutter button halfway to allow it to focus etc., then push the rest of the way at the right moment. You can do that with the focus too. If the subject is off center, put the spot meter on the exact point you want in focus, push the shutter button halfway down, allow it to adjust, then compose the shot off center and push the button all the way down. Sounds like a lot, but it's going to have to become second nature to get this thing to do what we want.

Keep 'Em Coming, Joe!

BTW, here's a reduced one I snapped at the air show yesterday.
 
i meant it more in terms of like "why was your camera swaying around and taking strange pics of various women". hehe😀
 
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