The Compact vs. SLR Review (part one)

According to my experience of digital compact, and on the other hand, SLR cameras, I now put them face-off. Looking out of my window into the dim evening light caused by the light pollution of Helsinki makes me feel like going to take some pictures and now that i'm temporarily without my SLR the compact camera would be the only choice. The greatest fallacy about compact cameras (which I from here on refer as CC) is that one can't take good pictures in low light conditions with them. Yes the smaller sensor of CC creates more easily some noise. Furthermore, the undeniable fact is the aperture value which or "lightness" of the CC is usually withing the range of 2.8-5.6 for a typical 4X-optical zoom. Yet there's some CCs with even f2.0 in the wide angle end of the zoom. So if one is willing to shoot hand held with limited light there's nothing to compete against SLRs attached with low-f prime lens. But if there's no need to freeze the motion with fast shutterspeed, the advantage of SLR is about to narrow. That is by the stabilizing effect of mono-, or even better, tripod. Unfortunately too few CC owners are enjoying the stabilizing gains and keep on blaming their poor eguipment on those blurry shots.

Despite the fact that I used to call my compact film camera "the magic box" there's almost nothing supernatural or extraordinary in the field of photography. Even with my math grades that was relatively fast to learn. Talking about exposure, there are only 2+1 factors in the equation which can be quite flexibly stated as follows: Exposure = ƒ(shutterspeed, aperture or f-number, and ISO-sensitivity). The basic knowledge to adapt is that in the stable light conditions increasing either shutterspeed or f-number ask more light to compensate the change . Controversaly increasing the ISO makes the image brighter, other variables staying constant. So now we have the background in place and return to the functionality of these two type of cameras. If I know decided to go out with the borrowed CC and a tripod, there's sill one problem to face. Namely, there are extremely limited ways to control the exposure because the camera just allows to manipulate the exposure as is. Thus for a well exposed photo there's usually only a few combinations of f/av and ISO. So if I wanted to create a long shutter speed photo of the moving cars i might find myself in front of major dilemma. With some cameras one is able to manipulate the shutter speed by focusing into darker area in the same distance and then hoping the miracles to happen. Saying this I have to admit that I enjoy the control of the exposure with my SLR. Maybe it's an unfair comparison that im going through here but the CC has its advantages, too. And Im not stating that there's no CC with real manual controls of the above mentioned functions (yet I've even owned a powershot A-series camera with those) but I just say not all of them do have.

About the brain-eater I introduced last time I haven't yet introduced the final statement. What I consider to be the main advantage of CCs, is their wide depth of field which can be translated as "the length that is within the focus range". The science behind On contrary, many CC owners see the very same characteristic the main come down of the camera. That does make sense for portrait photography where it is often needed to get the person to stand out from the background. For that the question is no more just about f-number and focal length of the camera. The distance of the optics from the sensor matters too. And the closer the lens is to the sensor, the wider the fepth of field becomes. So again SLR owners (users) are enjoying the flexibility of choices to reach their photographic goals. In the next episode, I'll come to the conclusion with the battle of the mouse and the elephant.


[Both of the photos have been taken with a compact camera. The former one with Canon Ixus50 and the latter with Canon PS A610]

Pictures from yesterday and some discussion

These pics were taken by the digital compact camera I borrowed from a friend of mine. To be more precise it was a Digital Ixus 50 5 Mpix camera that has seen its better days already. I have to say im pretty delighted to the results which causes another brain-teaser.
Having pretty recently returned from a 10-day trip to Italy with all of my heavy camera equipment I now ask myself a question: is it worthwhile to haul of the metal in a heavy shoulder bag to get good pictures? That's a question many amateur photographers consider, only other way round, when justifying themselves the benefits of a new shiny digital SLR they see in the store window.The former question is unavoidably way harder to answer since the negative answer leaves all the expensive equipment purposeless. So let me return to the question later in order to have sufficient time to come up with the bullet-proof justifications.

no title

I'm going to publish some photos that didn't just make it to the challenge. This one's taken on October 25th. By the way, it's going to be a very rainy week again.

And I'm missing the snow already, but luckily on next weeks thursday we'll head to Ruka for a long snowboarding weekend! WOhoooOOO!:)

day 31

Past month has been full of happenings. Maybe it's also due to the fact that I've written daily, why I've realized many even surprising phenomena from life. It feels like a strange coincidence that during this month I've had, on one hand the time of my life, and on the other hand witnessed sad things like the loss of our loved grandma.

Keeping the blog was probably a suitable way to handle my own thoughts. And what comes to photography, maybe I progressed a little bit but at least I become pretty effective at taking advantage from the moments I didn't have lots of time to take photos. Sometimes I felt stressed about the challenge, have to admit, but I have no regrets afterwards.

Because I've got the mind of an engineer, I have to submit some statistics from the
period of 31 days:

pictures taken: 1196 or ~ 9 Gb
hours spent to editing: approximately 45 hours
hours spent in total for the project: much!

So the challenge is done. To conclude I'd like to emphasize my indebted thanks for the support and comments I received!

day 30

(No text today)

Okay guess I'm obligated to write something. This morning meant early wake-up and traveling to Imatra for me. I had packed my camera with my but I didn't have time to take pictures. And it was raining all day, even when I came back to Helsinki. So I considered that it would be best to skip the floorball match from the evening and instead have a relaxing evening at home.

If I hadn't met a guy from my floorball team in the grocery store, I would absolutely have fulfilled my mission of ultimate peace and relaxation. But since I had promised to join the match if I was back early enough, I had no plan-b to avoid sports.

For that reason I had only half an hour to take the photo of the day. In terrible rain. Actually I took only six or seven shots, half-a-minute exposure each, and rushed back indoors. The original filename for the picture I chose is IMG_0299.CR2 which means that I've taken over 20'000 pictures with the camera. In my photo development software I've got more than 10'000 pics. Thus, according the percentage from above, the cost of one picture equals, rounded down, 20 cents. So if one faces a claim that photography is an expensive hobby, he/she can feel free to cite to this scientific evidence as a counter-argument.

day 29

We planned to shoot some portraits in the afternoon light, and earlier this morning I was sure that we would get cool shots as the weather was cool. But it turned out to be all gray when I met with Krista. So we just wandered to square of Tuomiokirkko but there wasn't anything interesting. And if I wanted a picture of the church, it had to be amazing piece of art because we're talking about one of the most photographed places in Helsinki.

Later on we walked to the harbor and found a full set of commercial lights placed in front of the main door of a building. Like jackals we took advantage of the opportunity and had our own photoshoot in some others set! Even though the traffic was pretty busy in front the building, we got something to walk out with.

Still, I wanted to publish an other shot today since I've been lacking the chance to shoot "traditional" portraits. Tomorrow I'll go to Imatra and hopefully manage to take the POD from the journey!

day 28

Have you already seen the Finland's Nature Photo of the Year? If not, it might be worth to take a look:

http://www.vuodenluontokuva.fi/default.asp?V_SITE_ID=3

There has been lots of critical conversation and even debate about this years winner pic. While some bloggers have praised it as a "superior piece of art with amazingly beautiful dark tones" and "wonderful work and smart way to criticize climate change", others have shot it down as "staged suburban photo with no elements of nature".

I have to that the photo sold itself for me at the first glance, although it would possibly have fitted better to other kind of competition. That must be because its style is pretty close to my standard what comes to photography. So I don't pick my side in the debate but just inform you that this particular photo would have been my choice for the Nature P.O.Y:

http://www.vuodenluontokuva.fi/Default.asp?V_DOC_ID=4194

I love its softness and especially the green tones! And what comes to the light, it must have been very challenging to freeze the motion while letting enough light to the censor. I might have been in trouble with my 20D (yes you can consider that as an old-timer already) as the new camera censors seem to be far ahead what comes to high ISO numbers. Luckily I haven't yet fallen into bird or nature photography, because otherwise I had neither time nor money to do anything else!:) And actually I've just recently noticed that one can easily shoot with ISO 1600 if the frame is properly exposed. So no need to be afraid my Canon, we still have years (or at least months) to come!