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Looking at Cameras

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tomos:
tomos, you didn't mention what you're most interested in taking pictures of. Portraits vs landscapes vs kid's soccer games vs macro all have different needs, and would benefit from different feature sets.-CWuestefeld (July 12, 2011, 12:09 PM)
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good point, I mostly take pictures out there in 'nature' - so landscapes yeah, but close up stuff too. Took some pics today outside with the Olympus E-PL2, just uploading them now.

It seems to be a good balance for what I want, quality image but small package (Pentax make very small DSLR's dont they?). The only thing that bothers me about it is if you let it hang in your hand, it does not feel secure - it's too small to have a decent relaxed grip on. But while I'm taking photos it's fine so I'll buy a hand-strap (dont like shoulder straps - have them on the camera bag already!).

I'm struggling a bit with the tech - the resolution - the amount you can enlarge the image on the LCD (14 times I think) - landscapes just look out of focus at that size...
I think the IS doesnt make up for the lightness of the camera at times - I had a couple with camera shake at 1/60.

Here's a couple of samples - just took screenshots rather than resize

Looking at Cameras





the Cornflower is cropped (otherwise images not touched), could do with more blur in the back, which this lens cant offer. Not sure how much blur you can get with this sensor size, but there's a panasonic lens that's supposed to be very good that goes down to something like F/1.7 (this lens only goes to F/3.5).
I dont see myself getting lots of lenses, although this reviewer's passion for lenses is contagious (see the first portrait for a nice blurred background).

tomos:

it's nice to have a camera again :D

CWuestefeld:
Nice work, tomos.

For doing landscape stuff, one advantage of a real SLR lens is the ability to stick a circular polarizer onto it. This really helps manage the sky color, as well as bring out other colors more vividly. However, I'm not aware of any non-SLR polarizing filter.

Really bright lenses are themselves a big problem, because of their price tag. But I don't think that's what you need to get that shallow DoF for your cornflower picture. I may be wrong here, I'm nothing like a pro, but here's how I understand it. The F number of the lens tells you how much light it lets through. And the more like coming through, the higher an f-stop you can shoot at. And f-stop is proportional to DoF. So a lower F number thus allows for a deeper DoF, which isn't what you're looking for in this case. (having written that, I'm now off into Google land to see if I can verify my understanding...)

tomos:
Thanks CW

I never could get my head around the terminology - DOF means how much (depth) is in focus, but no - this reduces with the F number. So lower aperature is the first step, but I googled and found out that the distance between the subject and the background is important too:
http://mansurovs.com/how-to-obtain-maximum-bokeh
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/photography-beginners-forum-photo-gallery/146826-how-get-bokeh.html

CWuestefeld:
There are way too many "f"s in photography. It means, variously:


* The focal length of the lens (this isn't what we're talking about at all)
* The minimum aperture that can be used for a lens (I think this is what you're talking about)
* The aperture setting for a given shot (this is what I'm talking about)
The smaller an f-stop number you choose to shoot at, the smaller your DoF; larger f-stops yield deeper DoF. But it requires greater light to capture an image at a higher f-stop (because the f-stop is actually the denominator of a fraction that describes the size of the opening thorough which light comes).

So a lens that can do a smaller f-stop gives you the ability to capture shallow DoF, as well as giving you the ability to capture a given shot in darker light.

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