Digital Camera Tag

Today Canon have announced the launch of their new enthusiasts SLR camera – the Canon EOS 60D, and I’m lucky enough to have been invited to Canon HQ in Reigate to get some hands-on time with the new EOS on the very morning of its launch. This is nothing short of an exclusive!

On the surface, they look much like any of Sony’s other Alpha SLR cameras, with only a few aesthetic tweaks, additions and changes to set them apart. But who said the camera never lies? Looks, after all, can be deceiving, and if the A33 and A55 look to you just like any other SLR, then the deception is complete.

On Thursday 19th August Nikon announced the release of their new entry level digital SLR – the D3100. Designed and created as a replacement for the best selling Nikon D3000, the latest offering from Nikon is actually far more of an improvement on its predecessor than their names suggest.

I think of the NEX-5 as my photographic Swiss Army knife: a small package with lots of tools, which will tackle 90% of the tasks you throw at it. Here are some aspects of the NEX which I’ve found the most useful or interesting over the past few weeks…

The world is a huge and amazing place with loads of incredible things to photograph. Unfortunately, the truth is that most of us will never get to see a lot of it, so sometimes it pays to set more reasonable photographic targets. With that in mind, your own backyard is as good a place as any to start, and you don’t need to have expensive specialist equipment. You might be surprised what you find there and the photographs you get.

And this raises an important first question: how big a part of the trip will photography be? The answer to the question will be determined by what kind of photographer are you and what kind of trip are you taking, which in turn will determine the gear you take, the methods you use and the photos you capture.

To call the Olympus Pen range and their Micro Four Thirds brethren a watershed in the camera market doesn’t sound quite right, even if it’s true. To call the Pen E-PL1 a watershed once housed for diving is maybe a little more understandable – though it’s not any kind of shed you’d recognise from your garden. Sharing the latest toughened up styling with the housed E-620 SLR it carries off a cute Tonka toy look with aplomb, but is it merely a plaything?

Once again Canon have attempted to create a camera with sufficient capability to ensure value for money, with longevity a high priority. Broadly speaking, this is not a camera that anyone will be bored of quickly, with a superb array of capture modes and controls which will grant enormous creative license to experienced photographers whilst being easy-to-use for beginners.

The prevailing fashion of our time is for dramatic landscapes – no matter what the subject – and low angles, wide lenses, high colour, pumped contrast and warm tones, all combining to create textbook impact. In the main, though, images with such impact become fictional representations of reality.

You have a digital camera, you have a mobile phone, and you know they have a few million pixels in them, but the latest models have more. Do you need them? Will your photos come out better if you have them? YAWN! The camera manufacturers’ pixel race has been the most boring competition since the last World Paint Drying Championships held in 1957.